The road less travelled?

Neither Melvin or I are great at keeping a journal. It's not that we don't like doing it or don't have anything to say. And for me, anyway, I think that's why I don't keep a regular journal is because there is so much I WANT to say.  Especially about this, but this time this "journal" will be kept. : )

I've been sitting here thinking about how I want to start this, about how I want to start talking about how Melvin and I came to the decision to adopt. It's not at all that I don't want to talk about it, or that I think it is a delicate topic. It is still a personal one, but one that we have both found comfort in. And it may seem strange that we're doing this in an online blog, especially since neither of us have ever been "bloggers," and because blogs put everything out in the open. But, as we're learning, this is very much a learning process that opens up a lot of opportunities to talk with those that have been through the adoption process (either as adoptive parents or birth parents), or with those who are thinking about adopting.

It seems like we have both been working non-stop since the day we met. We were both students; Melvin was finishing his undergrad and applying to vet school, and I had just started my first Masters program. When we got married we were both in school and/or working that when we started trying for a baby there was no reason to think at the time that infertility might be an issue for us. We tried for several years with no results, even with the help of two fertility doctors. Melvin checked out, so it was (is) me, but the doctors can't pin-point the cause for the infertility. This was especially hard to hear (and more than once): "There is a definite infertility issue, but we can't tell you what it is, and because of this we can put you through the whole battery of tests and procedures but there's no guarantee that any of it will work." Emotional roller coasters, it turns out, are not fun, especially when you've been on the same one for a long time.

You hear people talk about the different types of loss, but I had never considered that we would feel feelings of loss over "not being able to have children".  I used to think that infertility was "so rare" and then, when Melvin and I found ourselves down that path, we learned that it isn't! We had talked about domestic adoption through LDS Family Services as an option, but I didn't want to leave out the possibility of still having our own biological children.  I was really torn between going down the difficult and uncertain route of in vitro and/or AI vs. pursuing adoption only because I wasn't sure about what we were "supposed" to do.  Luckily for us, we have wonderful friends and family that we have been able to turn to.  Most especially, we have good friends from church that have adopted twice through LDS Family Services.  They have been absolutely wonderful in answering many questions and in offering a listening ear.  There was something in particular that the adoptive mother said to me a few weeks ago that really drove it home for me. She said: "I really feel like our family wasn't made up by chance and that our family was put together in Heaven."

And she's right!  Melvin and I are only in the middle of our journey towards building our family through the process of adoption.  We've already learned so much about ourselves, have learned to appreciate each other more, and have been reminded that sometimes, after everything you can do, you need to ask for help.  Sometimes I think that as people we have these ideas in our minds about how our lives are going to be, but life is never certain.  And in our case, despite the emotional ups and downs and the countless times we have asked "Why?", our story to finding our little "missing piece" has already started out as a humbling one.