Getting Truthful With Myself

After getting the phone call about the donor embryos, we are once again in a holding pattern and are waiting - this time for the results of the blood work to come back to see if I have been exposed to CMV (the virus that will make or break this match).

After the initial shock and excitement have worn off, I have had some time to reflect on the past 9 months.   I recently found myself feeling very frustrated with our "plan".  After all, it had been almost 9 months since our last fertility treatment and, other than picking an agency and agreeing on some basics regarding the adoption, we hadn't really moved forward much.  (Wait, this is a getting truthful with myself post...)  Okay, at all.

I was honestly feeling as if we were spending all of this time trying to get to the location we wanted to be in and NONE focusing on getting to the family that we want to be - which is very difficult when you have spent an entire 5 years focusing on growing the family. 

Now, don't get me wrong.  I fully believe that having this time to focus on things other than our lack of ability to conceive has been very healthy for our marriage.  And Derek's job has been so stressful in the last year that I don't know how much focus on adoption he could have taken before I had to put him in a straight jacket in a padded room. 

But there have also been days and weeks that have been very difficult for me.  I do truly want for us to be in different jobs in a different city, but I want that life to include children.   And there were times that I was beginning to feel as if that moment would never come.  We were stagnant.  We kept SAYING we were going to finish this one last thing and we were going to list the house - but that damned bathroom project seemed to take for.ev.er.

Couple that with a discussion in which Derek pointed out that we were probably never going to be the family of 4 I had always dreamed of - that at 30 grand a pop, we could only afford one child.  I guess I had never thought about it that way prior to that conversation and I felt like my dreams were vanishing right before my eyes.

So, I have pushed this rising panic deeper and deeper inside of me so that it wouldn't spill out all over the place.    I felt like that scene in "She's All That" where Freddie Prince is juggling the hackey sack and can't let it drop.

And now, knowing that in a couple/few short months I could actually be carrying a child, I feel this new found freedom.  And this freedom has allowed me to consider another possibility.

When we made the decision to move forward with adoption, we had a conversation where Derek pointed out to me that I needed to deal with the fact that I wouldn't be carrying a baby.  I spent a good bit of time crying about this - the loss of carrying our child and feeling it grow inside me - and I really thought I had come to terms with this.

I am now considering the possibility that I really had not fully accepted this.  The joy that I felt wasn't just about getting a child or becoming parents - it was that perhaps, this time, I would carry and give birth to our child.

We had always said we wanted to try donor embryos before moving on to adoption, but changed our minds when we found out about the cost of donor embryos when they weren't through our clinic.  And the waiting list just seemed so long and daunting, especially when we weren't moving up that fast.

And I know that if this doesn't work, we have already had the initial discussions about adoption and we can move forward knowing that we gave it everything we had.

But I am hoping believing that this Donor Embryo cycle will work and that adoption will be how we complete our family of 4.  And then I can say "Dreams Do Come True" and really mean it.

All this honesty is making me tired.  I am going to bed.