Adoption.

Just adopt.  Let me first say that while adoption is a beautiful thing, it is not something anyone should go into lightly.  I get really REALLY REEALLLY annoyed and even hurt when people's first response (even 19th response) to our infertility is "Well, have you considered adoption?"  I realize that its a natural response, because people want to offer hope.  But do you not think that adoption doesn't enter my mind every single day?  I just see this question as so irrelevant in a moment of sharing the pain and difficulty of infertility. The reality is that adoption will never, ever change the fact that I am infertile.  Adoption does not save us from pain, hurt, longing.  In fact, it sometimes amplifies these things.  I am broken, and I will always be broken.  So are you.  Why can't we just recognize that and hurt with one another.  Making off the cuff comments or suggestions does nothing but make a person's pain feel dismissed.  And nothing hurts more than feeling unheard or dismissed.  End of Infertility Rant.

Adoption. Wow.  Never thought I would type those words.  Or maybe I did, but I always thought it would be something Craig and I would do electively, maybe after our biological children were older.  Strangely thought, this topic has always been a part of our conversations, but now it just seems to be a little more actively apart of our conversations.   We initially said we were going to give IVF one shot, and if we had frozen embryos we would see all of them all the way through.  I can't believe how fearful I was of that, thinking we might end up with 15 kids or something.  But now that we have only 3 left, we are starting to accept the fact that God's plan for us may not be to have a family of biological children.  I cannot say that we won't make the decision to try again with IVF if none of our other embies result in a pregnancy.  Today, though, it seems we're about ready to move on.

We've begun the process of researching adoption.  You'd think this would be easy for me having worked in adoption for almost 6 years, but I actually think it makes the process more difficult.  I know to some it seems like we are jumping the gun, but that's the way I roll.  I researched IVF at the very beginnings of our infertility journey, because I wanted to know as much as I could before jumping in.  I feel the same way about adoption.  It will most likely be several months before we are even able to do our last IVF attempt, but I want to start preparing and learning on the chance that God closes our "infertility treatment door."  And oddly enough, its kind of exciting...the letting go, I mean.  I know I'll still hurt, still grieve.  But I also don't want to keep pursuing something, when all the while God is trying to direct my attention elsewhere.  So we're just trying to stay open, stay ready, for anything.