Options like adoption? Happy Friday!

Most of you who follow my blog regularly know the stuff I’ve gone through to achieve pregnancy. It’s been a lot. We haven't explored every single option available to us fertility-wise, but we are neither drippingly rich people (or even moderately moistly-rich at that--we're more like a dessicated-desert-lizard-corpse rich) with disposable income to hand over to fertility specialists for a shiny new baby. I’ve had to go the conventional road, go with the medical options that come along with remediating my horrific endometriosis and somehow trying to control my raging PCOS. I spend a good part of each month stalking around in a fugue of pain and discomfort and I probably look like this:

Get the !#%*&^ away from me.

The surgery has cleared the way in some cases... but my fallopian tubes have been open and clear all this time, which means something just isn’t working, and it’s suspected to be the endometriosis doing something chemically. My doctor now says I have only one last conventional method left to me. That is to take monthly Lupron injections for six months to ‘dry out’ the endometriosis, and then go back on Clomid to see if I can ovulate & finally acheive the pregnancy thing. At age 40, your chance of getting pregnant in any given month is just 5%. So I confess, I haven’t been feeling too hopeful about the whole thing, but I figured I’d give it a whirl. HOWEVER, Lupron is a drug that will put me into a false menopause. That means I will enjoy all the symptoms of the condition I get to look forward to in ten or fifteen more years; the mood-swings, the brain-short-circuits, the hot flashes... the full gamut for six solid months. Yay?

I WANT SOME GODDAMN CHOCOLATE!

THE PUPPEH COMMERCIAL SO SAD
AND KYUUTE BWWAHHHHH

Do we have to keep the thermostat set at
'Turkish Steambath' for &;^#$!*'s sake?
Owait, now I'm cold!

My poor, poor husband, that’s all I have to say. So, he endures these horrific mood-swings, and everything else with me, and there’s only a 5% chance of my getting pregnant each month that follows treatment that I’m on ovulation medication; chances are pretty slim. I’m not saying I’m giving up hope entirely, but I’m not going to start walking through the baby-clothes section at Old Navy, or make the full circuit of IKEA so I can look at baby furniture like I did when I was on Clomid from June until December. Every month I’d end up bawling on my husband’s shoulder while he lovingly smooched the top of my head and said it was okay. I won’t get myself all worked up only to be crushed with disappointment each month when the evidence arrives that the Clomid wasn’t working.

I’ve decided to focus in another direction. I know I have complained that adoption is too expensive, but there is a woman at my barn who has two adopted daughters, Amy & Jade. She adopted them from the state. She explained the program to me, and I was astonished. I’ve always steered away from fostering because I don’t want to get attached only to have the child ripped away from me so they can go back to meth-mouth mom who is only tenuously clean at the moment. I worked non-profit many years with at-risk kids, diversions kids, troubled kids, and god if it didn’t take everything out of me. It became increasingly difficult to take these kids home each night to abusive and neglectful households, to see them with bruising and old eyes, and to be powerless to do anything about it. I eventually had to quit that job because I would just go home crying every day. I also watched my aunt provide short-term fostering for troubled kids, and that was a whole other ball of wax. I certainly don’t want to deal with a hostile, violent teenager.

So as tempted as I was to set up my little spare bedroom into a kid’s room and to invite a foster child into our home; I couldn’t quite do it. But the state adoption program is completely different. You foster your prospective adoptee before the adoption is complete, and by the time they actually come to your home as a foster child, their parents have already given up parental rights—so chances are, if you fall in love with the kid and they settle in, you won’t lose them. So I’ve signed us up for the required seminars for people who want to foster and adopt from the state of Oregon. I’ve registered us, and we think it’s okay if the kid is a little older. I think 0-4 maybe. I’m not sure about older, honestly. I feel awful saying it, but as a guardian of a developmentally disabled adult, and the overseer for a completely crazy senior demon (aka Satan/Mother), I don’t know if I can handle a really angry, troubled kid on top of all that. I know, it’s selfish... but growing up with my brother taught me a great deal, and I’m not sure if I want to replicate that kind of stress and destruction in my household for the rest of my life. It was enough already taking care of him well into my twenties. And I saw what it did to my parent’s marriage (which already sucked to begin with).

It’s an option, I guess. I know me, I’m completely soft-hearted and I’m going to get all invested in it. I have been excited thinking about it, and there’s no guarantee we’ll even be granted adoption to anyone. But yes, I’m already looking at tiny patterns for pea-coats and dresses... adorable mary-janes and toys... books... I have to stop. But I can’t. I have this idea that I might finally have someone specific to paint all these office specials for. The thought of it makes my eyes burn with tears of anticipation, and we haven’t even gotten to the first step. I guess I selfishly just want to be a mom SO bad. To teach a child to ride on a pony, to sing them songs to sleep, to read them ‘The Velveteen Rabbit’ and to finally have a someone to give all the Beatrix Potter collection, the miniature silverware set, the handmade wooden rattle to that I’ve collected over the years in anticipation of becoming a mom.

We shall see. I’m trying not to get excited about either option. I hear all these stories of women who go through all this, and then they get their adopted baby and find out they’re pregnant... that would be inconvenient, but it wouldn’t suck either, but there’s a possibility neither of those things could happen for us. No pregnancy, no adoption. So if you happen to see me swooning over huge stuffed bugs in the IKEA kids section, smack me upside the head and send me to the kitchen department.