More to say later
Jan 19, 2006 Infertility
Just had to let you all know that I’m disabling pictures ‘cuz of bandwidth theft. I may create a password only blog with pics but they’re coming off the regular blog. It’ll take awhile to get ‘em all moved out so there may be some here and there for awhile.
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Tracy asked about surrogacy
Nov 18, 2005 Infertility
You know, as far as the primal wound stuff goes. Well, one of the antiadoption considered being a surrogate (to help an infertile family NOT ADOPT) but a lot of the primal wound stuff is about the biological act of carrying a child. Then again a lot of it is also about seeing yourself reflected in the eyes of another so it might be that gestational surrogacy with the egg of the intended mom would pass muster.
But yeah, it’s an imperfect world. Surrogacy can be a perfect choice in an imperfect world.
Also, the information about adoptees is based on anecdotal research. I don’t think there’s been the same research done on persons born from surrogacy or embryo donation or egg/sperm donation although I believe it’s starting. It seems like I’ve read about the medical outcomes for ART but not so much the emotional outcomes. A little bit maybe. And I think at least with sperm/egg/embryo donation that those children have some — but not all — of the same issues of adopted kids.
I do think that a lot of the issues around adoption come up not just because of the primal (i.e., biological) connection but also because of our attitudes about families. Think of the language of adoption — “gave up,” “abandoned,” “unwanted.” That’s just not part of the vocabulary of ART. So even if the bio component (the mourning a child might do when leaving the womb of his surrogate for the arms of his intended mother) is present, I think the intentions from start to finish make a difference.
I don’t know though. Anyone else have any thoughts on this?
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Fertility privilege
Nov 16, 2005 Adoption, Infertility
I’ve been thinking about the controversy over Karen’s tongue-in-cheek post, specifically about whether or not adoptive moms-to-be have a right to the “stork parking” spots just the same as pregnant women.
Being a secondary infertile makes for a lot of fence straddling and this is one of those times where it comes in handy. I can remember days when seeing a stork parking sign made me depressed but I can also remember those last few weeks of pregnancy when I felt like I had a bowling ball lodged in my pelvic cradle and walking across a parking lot was a feat of Olympian endurance. (I didn’t have a car then — I rode the bus — but if I had I might have appreciated a closer parking spot.) And there were differences in how people treated me while expecting as a pregnant woman and expecting as an adoptive parent to be although not in the way other people have described. Dare I say it but people who knew I was adopting actually treated me nicer. Truly. Sure, it wasn’t obvious to strangers that I was adopting but then no one ever got up to give me a seat on the bus even when I was so enormous towards the end that I looked fit to burst. But when people found out, say, at baby stores they were inevitably nicer to me because adoption is more of a novelty.
Too, when I was pregnant at the shelter (along with my co-worker) neither of us had a baby shower as well attended as that thrown for the woman who came home from China with a daughter. We (my co-worker and I) were common, young pregnant women but the woman on the third floor was a sort of social celebration. Everyone knew they had been trying for some time and so everyone was extra-happy (tears, I remember tearful smiles on the elevator) when she finally became a mother. They felt a certain amount of ownership having been witnesses of the long journey and having vicariously experienced her frustration and joy.
But even knowing that it didn’t make things easier for me when I was trying for a baby (especially before I was adopting) because what I wanted wasn’t necessarily the special attention that I perceived pregnant women were getting (the questions — “Do you know if it’s a boy or a girl?” — from strangers, the occasional smiles from folks who catch a glimpse of a pregnant mom patting her belly). No, what I wanted was the assumptions I could make had I been more fertile. You know, that I could plan my family as I saw fit without input from strangers. That I could pee on a stick, have it turn blue and start buying baby clothes without worrying that something bad was sure to happen. That’s what I wanted. That’s what I envied. I can understand how a stork sign could bring all of that up, remind me of all of the privilege I didn’t have and felt I was due.
Which leads me to my next thought. If fertile people are privileged, how would a fertile person go about unpacking their privilege? And would they even need to? Should there be stork parking spots for adoptive folks? What about those who are child-free? Because even though a woman who is barely ten seconds pregnant could theoretically park in that spot, I always figured they were for women nearing the end of term or so undone by morning sickness that the less they have to stagger, the better. By which I mean that pregnancy is physical and that’s a fact and allowing a pregnant woman to park closer doesn’t really do any harm — it doesn’t take from anyone. And we adoptive parents, we don’t need stork signs because adoption can be a bitch but it doesn’t give you swollen ankles.
Now I understand that what Karen was writing was farce and that she’s not really about to start a letter campaign about stork parking spots and really what she was putting a voice to was this frustration with fertile privilege. Clearly blogs like Karen’s are important for a lot of infertile women who think these things and maybe don’t have a place to vent them. She types things out that most people might not have the guts to say and all you have to do is take a gander at her zillioins of comments to realize that there are plenty of women who are relieved that someone is finally speaking their own thoughts aloud. I don’t want to take from that. I think that’s an important service (all hail Queen Julie, whom history will one day recognize as the forerunner of infertility blogs) because I think when people are allowed to say (write), “I’m mad as hell!” that they are better able to get out there and fight the good fight. To demand better care from their doctors and kinder treatment from their friends and family. In other words, I’m not here to tell people not to feel a certain way or not to comment on blogs in a certain way because the way I see it, infertility is plenty hard and you do whatever it takes to get you through the day.
That said, I really don’t know if there’s anything the average pregnant woman can do to unpack her privilege and frankly, I don’t know if she should. What I remember about being pregnant is how closed in upon myself I felt. I did feel like the world was revolving around me and I think there’s a biological reason for that. I also felt incredibly vulnerable and that certainly drove my feelings of self-importance. I remember crossing the street and just as they usually did the cars would cut a little too close trying to turn right on red even with me in the crosswalk and it felt so much more personal because I was pregnant.
I don’t really like to compare how it is to be expecting a child via a pregnancy versus what it’s like to be expecting a child via an adoption. For one thing a pregnancy experience has so damn much to do with the context while an adoption is a deliberate act, choosing upon choosing upon choosing over and over again. But it’s simply a fact that pregnancy is biological and that includes swollen ankles, aching back and the hormonal changes that made me at least a tad more self-centered than I was before.
It doesn’t take away from the pain, I know. I certainly didn’t think to myself, “Well, her hormones are racing and that’s why she’s just said something blatantly hurtful to infertile me over here.” And there’s no excuse for rudeness, it’s just that, well, we can choose not to take it personally, I guess.
Adopting a child will never be like making one in your own uterus and giving birth to it yourself but that’s ok. It’s its own thing entirely and it’s easier to see all of the good things about adopting if we don’t over-lay it on top of our pregnancy expectations. Or if we do compare things (and really, let’s be realistic, we will) then we can notice all the things that pregnancy is not. Personally when I think about my bio baby and my not-bio baby, I can say that Madison feels much more remarkable to me. Her appearance here in our family seems like a full-blown miracle while Noah seems, frankly, a bit ordinary although in the nicest way possible.
It’s true that there are people outside of our household who will never get that and I could be hurt by it but you know, that’s their problem. I’ve said it before but I feel a bit bad for people who never get to adopt. Adoption is so damn amazing and the opportunities it gave us to find out more about ourselves and our expectations is pretty wonderful, too.
It’s not that I’m against venting — vent away! it’s good for the blood pressure! — but you know, we adopters get so mad at pregnant women for complaining about the varicose veins and heartburn but is that any different than when we complain about homestudies and fees? Getting babies is hard whatever way you do it. But worth it all the same.
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Tags: Infertility, Madison, Noah, Shelter
Oh my lord, it’s GORGEOUS out
Nov 9, 2005 Adoption, Infertility, Writing
It was sunny and windy — warm, too — earlier and now it’s getting overcast and windy. It’s exciting weather! I love fall.
Madison fell asleep while I was combing her hair today. This is the second time she’s done that so I’m filing it away in my “useful information” file.
Nathalie asked, “to me it is always coming down to the split between the public and the private. I think we create stories but I haven’t thought of these as truths. Can you say more about that?”
I over use this phrase (you may have noticed) but I’m obsessed with the social constructs that we take for granted. During our infertility, I was interested in the way infertility exists both in our bodies (whatever it is that makes us infertile) and in our heads (if you don’t want a baby then are you still infertile?). With adoption, I’m interested in the way it highlights our assumptions about parenthood and family.
When I wanted to write a book about secondary infertility what I wanted was to explore the dichotomy in being both a mother and infertile. For example, I wanted to look at the assumptions we have about only children and then use that to illuminate what we believe about motherhood. Sometimes what’s missing (another baby) high-lights ideas we didn’t know we had. I’d still like to write that, I think. Typing up this paragraph got me kinda interested in that again. See, secondary infertility makes you a walking oxymoron and that’s interesting.
Back to what I meant in the paragraph below. So like you’re infertile and it sucks. WHY does it suck? Is it the pure biology of it? Is it our ingrained ideas about what we need to be a woman? What is our truth about infertility? What is the outside truth about infertility? How does this create and sustain our struggle? How do we create a new truth? If you’ve decided to live child-free, are you still infertile? Babble babble.
Hey, can someone tell me how to get the (invisible to me) blogad over in my sidebar? Thanks muchly.
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Tags: Infertility, Madison
Heh heh heh
Sep 8, 2005 Infertility
I’m the second entry in google for this search term. Click to see.
(Subtitle: Sometimes misspelling works for you)
