Adoption Cures Infertility???

Right, so since we got on the roller coaster ride of emotions called International Adoption we have had a lot of comments.

For the most part, the comments have been positive. Friends and family are supportive and for that we are very thankful!

However, we still get the occasional comment that - well - just makes a girl (and a boy) wanna cry!

It is no secret that we have decided to build our family thru adoption because of "unexplained" infertility. Basically this means that after HSG testing, Laparoscopic surgery, fertility drugs etc. we have not been able to conceive a biological child and there is no medical reason as to why we can't . It just didn't happen! It was hard to understand - the gynecologist said "well, we just don't know why, sometimes we can tell from the testing but everything looks normal and seems to be operating as it should." We looked at each other dumbfounded because this is not what we expected to hear.

So, there it is! We did lots of soul searching and after sitting in the gyno office for fertility treatments and ultrasounds one too many times with extremely pregnant women surrounding me and always leaving the appointments in tears we decided to look at other ways to have a family. We made the conscious decision not to pursue IVF because it wasn't right for us.

After careful consideration and much research we decided to take the route of international adoption because that is where our hearts led us. We are happy with our decision even though at times it has been a wee bit emotional. We made peace with the fact that we will not have biological children but that we would and could still have children and a family of our own.

There are the odd occurrences when we tell people about our adoption and we get answers such as these:

1. "What an honourable thing you are doing."
2. "That child will be so lucky"
3. "You better watch out, now that you are adopting you going to get pregnant"
4. "I have friends who as soon as they decided to adopt they got pregnant and then didn't have to adopt anymore."

I have to bite my tongue lots of times. I know that people don't understand that adoption was our choice. They don't understand that we could have decided that if we can't have biological kids we won't have any kids.

It is not a decision we came to lightly one night over beer and wings. We dug deep into our hearts and asked a lot of questions, the answer that came back to us time and time again was - we want a family, period. It was not how our family was built that mattered to us - what mattered to us was that we had wee ones running around our home, filling the house with laughter, tears, spit up, poop, toys and the patter of little feet.

1. We do not feel we are being honourable by adopting a child - we feel we will be honoured by our unknown child's presence in our lives.

2. We are the lucky ones!

3. At this point we don't want to get pregnant - we are 'pregnant' - 10 months, 3 weeks, 3 days worth of pregnant and believe me my ankles are swollen - I should be on bed rest at this point.

4. I can't even answer this one - I just walk away - this is not a game to us - we didn't decide to adopt because it might be the trick that gets us pregnant. We are committed to our wee boy or girl in E and are taking precautions just in case.

Adoption is not a way to cure infertility. Adoption is a way to create a family.