I Can Haz Baby

Woah, that story was really some seriously depressing shit! But, you know, it was some depressing shit to go through, so there you go.

Like plenty of others faced with infertility before us, we were left asking, what do we do now?  Over the last two years, we have explored every option.  I do not judge any other person for any choices they make in their reproductive journey.  It is quite possibly the most personal decision you can make – and should you ever face this decision, you will be AMAZED at how many people have an opinion about the decision you SHOULD make.  After a lot and lot and lot of exploration of options, self-analysis, and heart-searching, we have decided to foster children and we hope to adopt one or more in the future.

I cannot tell you – AND YET I AM GOING TO IN THIS BLOG! – the sheer everything this decision brings.  Excitement for our future, sadness for the sheer number of children going through the foster care system and the experiences that have brought them there, joy that we can help some, depression that we cannot do more, failure that we are unable to simply have children, anger at the completely undeserving people who produce children (yes some people are really, truly, undeserving), exhaustion at explaining our choices, gratefulness for the unconditional support from our family and friends, hope that someday our family will grow permanently, anticipation of the heartbreak of all the times we will say goodbye before that happens.  This blog is an emotional and informational outlet for the endless circles of second-guessing, hope, stress, and excitement, as we move in a non-linear fashion towards a goal I never wanted and is now something just slightly less than all-consuming.

Over the next few years I did not magically fall pregnant.  Which, frankly, pissed me off.

After a little more attention to detail, I did.  And had a miscarriage at approximately 6 weeks.  Followed by a D & C, that was totally painless and easy and a fucking fantastic follow-up intrauterine infection that was NOT.  All in all, it was a memorable birthday.

And then I did it again.  And again.

As described, my partner has always wanted children, and had, prior to our reproductive agreement, thought to produce one or more biologically and then adopt one or more.  He was always fine with simply adopting and not producing any biologically – it was building a family that was important to him.

I don’t do anything by halves – despite our pre-set all-contingency plan.  When I committed to having a child, I went all in on that plan. And after three (or four, but who’s counting?) pregnancies and miscarriages, three plus years of planning, and waiting, and expecting, and making career decisions, and household decisions, and studying the changes of my body, and the growth of fetuses, and the brain development of small children, and reading parenting guides, and holding other people’s babies, and the inexpressible feeling of “this time” followed by the crushing “nope, still not and you fail!”, I really wanted my fucking baby.

Not just because my partner wanted one and I could be fine with it.  But because this was the life I had now built – and because the reality of parenting was now very different for me than the concepts with which I grew up.  I don’t OOH JUST LOVE BABIES! But I sure do love some! I don’t want to spend my life working in early childhood development, I don’t want to be a stay-at-home-mom, and I still find children exhausting, but I have a lot of love to give, and a lot of joy that I think will be experienced in parenting.  We are ready to build our family – not as an accident, not to fill a hole, but because we have a full and lovely life and it is a life that has room and love for a child, a child that we do very much want.  Ugh, what sappy bullshit.  And also true.

My now life-partner and I began dating a few years after my dramatic heartbreak – long enough to move on, not quite long enough to “get over it already”.  My partner was my first date from an on-line dating website; he’d only moved to town two weeks earlier and I snatched him off the market immediately!  We were two damaged souls that were both looking for a new adventure, growth, and healing; that’s far from ALL we were, but it was a point of essential connection in addition to the general necessities of shared interest and attraction.  Plus, meeting on the internet is a great way to ensure that you do not spend years falling in love and building a life with someone with entirely incompatible long-term goals, like for example, one of you wants kids with the passion of a thousand suns and the other one is pretty “eh, whatever, but leaning no”.   Whoops!

He wanted children by any means necessary.  I think it’s easy for men to generally “want kids” because the majority of baby-work still falls to women, so I’m skeptical of men who “want kids”. In fact, he wanted both biological and adopted babies, and the whole family thing and he wasn’t kidding about it.  I wanted a life of adventure and passion and growth and like…if a baby happened I would work with that and obviously get excited about it.

By the time we were married three years later, we had negotiated the contractual reproduction agreement – we would attempt to produce one child naturally.  If that did not work out, due to age or otherwise, we would simply not have a child and would continue in our fulfilling lives without children. As an artist and a lawyer, we had plenty of professional and personal accomplishments and goals without children.  We also have amazing nieces and nephews, and plenty of children of close friends to share in our lives. I love certainty and here we had it – a happy story for all involved, with a plan for every possible outcome! He could work sporadically and/or from home, and would be the “primary caregiver” (whatever that means) so that What could possibly go wrong?

Somewhere, right around 30, something changed.  I still did not want a child, but I realized that if I was unexpectedly pregnant I would probably NOT run right on over for an abortion.  My feelings about abortion had not changed – every woman needs to do what is right for her and her life.  But my life circumstances and mental health had changed.  I had been financially and otherwise secure – notably, secure in my familial relationships – for a number of years. Somehow, the concept of an accidental baby was suddenly something you fit into your life, instead of something that snatched your life away.

And, right around this time, I fell in love.  Crazy, outrageously, stupidly in love for the first time (I’m an emotional late-bloomer and don’t trust people). And I wondered, if we had a child, what sort of crazy and exciting experiment would that child be?

He didn’t want children.  At all.  And that was totes fine! My life was good, and it was full of growth and new experiences, and I was going to graduate and get a fulfilling and financially secure job.  We went to Burning Man, we went to the cabin, we went to parties, we had friends, we played games, and considered dramatic cross-country moves without any consequence to anyone but ourselves.  We planned to get him a vasectomy and just continue to live our lives – and I was all in on that plan!

If that life had been sustainable with that partner, I would be living child-free perfectly happily and without regret.  I did not and do not need a child to complete me. Unfortunately, like so many dramatic and passionate love affairs before, when the new passion was gone, the cold reality of shared responsibilities, paying bills, making sacrifices, and planning a joint life was too much; he left the house, the girl, and our life together.  I was emotionally broken again – with the reinforcement that the old unloving me was entirely correct to never let a partner get close.

I never wanted children. Not the way so many people do.  I did not grow up wanting or expecting to have children, I never dreamed of the family I would create and I never pictured myself as a parent. I was not only a burden (as all children are) but the disaster that permanently derailed my mother’s life from each and every could-have-been (as no child should ever be). A friend at the age of … 12?… once told me that she couldn’t wait to have a baby because it would be something that loved her unconditionally.  This was not an unusual sentiment in the poor, at best beningly neglectful and at worst something much less benign, world of single parents, accidental children, and general poverty, in which I grew up.  My friend’s sentiment was purely crazy to me.  I knew perfectly well that children resent their parents and that growing up to emancipation from the family home is 50% a battle for freedom by the child and the rest rejection and abandonment by the parent.  Plus, having a child basically ruins your life – there is literally no more to life except that child.  I always, always, wanted more.

My teenage years were spent with the sure knowledge that pregnancy was the end of the world – and a sure thing if you ever had unsafe sex.  My mother became pregnant in a one and done scenario.  In my mother’s family of 7 siblings (3 female and 4 male), all raised in a (thoroughly abusive) catholic household, none of the women made it out of high school without producing a child. No guarantee all four boys did either – but it’s a lot easier to hide those secrets if you are male.  Graduating from high school without a child were steps 1 and 2 on the “survive and get to something more” road.

My mom had a second child when I was 11; we were never close. I didn’t like sharing my mother’s already unpredictable attention, sharing my room with an infant, or taking care of a baby.  My mom was excellent at encouraging that separation and reminding me I was too selfish to love. She has spent my youngest biological brother’s entire life explaining to him that I do not love him or her – regardless of any light I may have to shed on the subject.

I was decently employed in my 20s, leaving me with the confidence-inspiring knowledge that any pregnancy could be met with an immediate (unfortunately expensive but doable) trip to the nearest location to obtain an abortion.  Despite the usual recklessness and scares, this eventuality never came for me the way it did for so many of my friends.  I finished college. I travelled.  I got married and divorced.  I went back to school.  And although I flirted briefly with the idea of reproduction during a time of severe depression and lack of focus while (also briefly) married – the truth was, I did not want a baby.  And when my husband moved out and I took the LSAT six days later, I was so, so, relieved to be moving forward with my life without that ultimate accessory.