LADDventure

Five Minute Friday - Close

They say it's supposed to tear you apart, that it often does. Infertility can divide, then conquer couples in a sea of doctor's appointments and finger pointing. It can reduce ultimate intimacy to schedules, charts, and graphs. But, for us it's been the opposite. Infertility has brought us closer as a couple more than anything else in our relationship. It was like the boat we were on was obliterated, and instead of each clinging to our own piece, we clung desparately to each other, taking turns kicking and treading water when the other one was too tired.

We knew from the beginning we didn't want to go down the invasive fertility treatment route, and our options were extremely limited anyway. So for us, we had no choice but to hang on tight and swim toward another solution, adoption. Now there's no room for blame, and nobody's shortcomings are highlighted. We're just swimming and staying together, knowing that there are more storms on the horizon, and we'll need to kick in unison. We're close to parenthood and each other, and both feel great.

This post is part of a link-up over on Five Minute Friday, where we sometimes put down our red pens, just write for 5 minutes, unedited, and see what happens. Join us!

 photo credit: RobW_ via photopin cc

If Becoming When

When I was a teenager, I swore up and down I wouldn't have kids.  Pregnancy and labor freaked me out, to be honest, and I couldn't imagine actually going through either.  Into early adulthood and early marriage, I still didn't feel the deep desire to be a mom or have baby fever, but something was glimmering on the horizon.  I could see the potential to want it someday.  I knew one or both of us may change our minds at some point down the line, so my 'never' turned into an 'if'.  "Well, if we ever have kids..." I would say, like a long shot - a distant, abstract idea in the future.

In the last few years, Mr. Ladd and I still never really caught the baby bug, but something deeper was brewing.  Many of our friends and family started having kids, and we started having some serious talks about the future.  We still didn't necessarily long for a baby or all the changes one would bring, but we realized we wanted a family.  We wanted to be parents and have family around the table during the holidays.  We wanted family vacations and grandkids, and all the good, hard, meaningful stuff of family.  So we started casually trying to start one, and then more intentionally, and things weren't happening like we thought they would, so 'if' became kind of an ominous cloud of doubt.  "What if we can't get pregnant?" "What if something's wrong." "If we have kids..." we said cautiously, not wanting to jinx it.

Our doubts were confirmed, and we were diagnosed with infertility last summer.  We sat with that for a bit, aching with the constant knowledge that a door we were so hesitant to even open was suddenly slammed shut.  We were told that going straight to In Vetro Fertilization would be our best and really only viable option given the circumstances.  We'd always said the fertility treatment route was not for us.  We knew we didn't want to go through any invasive procedures before even getting tested, but now what?

Adoption had always been an option.  But it had all been hypothetical up to that point; if we had already been trying for a while, if we were diagnosed with infertility, if we were letting go of the possibility of biological children.  But those ifs had become whens, and those things were actually happening to us.  Now it was time to grieve the biological children we would most likely never have, and actually step nervously, but with a flutter of anticipation and excitement, into adoption. 

As we start meetings, classes, and have tangible paperwork in our hands to adopt hopefully two siblings from state care, if has become when.  I'm catching myself still saying, "If we have kids,..." and quickly changing it to "When we have kids..."  If has become when in really difficult but beautiful ways, and while there are so many unknowns in adoption, we do know we will have kids, it's just a matter of when.  That feels good, and it's something to hang on to.  It's a vast improvement over the uncertainty of if.

Things Worth Noting

I want to start by thanking you all for your kinds words after my post earlier this week about our starting a family.  It is so nice to be able to open up about it, and we really appreciate your support!  We're feeling very loved.

We are looking forward to sharing our story with you and exploring emotions, thoughts, and choices along the way from our perspective.  Infertility and adoption can be difficult, emotionally charged topics.  We know there are many paths to a family, and we want to be honest about ours, while being respectful and sensitive to the paths of others.  Any opinions are just our own, and our hope is that we can connect with others who have been there or are there right now, as well as to enlighten people who may not have gone through something similar to make our little corner of the world a more understanding place.

I want you to know that we're open to questions and conversations about this journey we're on.  I think there's lots of wondering about the right thing to say when someone is going through something like this, but simply asking how it's going and listening is a huge help.

I also want you to know that Mr. Ladd reads and approves the things I share here on this topic before I post.  Since he doesn't blog, and I speak for the both of us quite often, I am always respectful of sensitively sharing stories that belong to him too.  I understand that he and I may even be in different places about certain things, and that is ok. 

Overall, I want this to be a place of honesty.  I am probably an over-sharer, but I think it's important to tell the truth about hard things.  It makes people feel less alone, and helps us to put down our masks, and love and respect each other more fully. 

Have a great weekend, and thanks for reading our story.

The Bridge Between

This space has been pretty quiet lately.  Part of that is because much of my creative effort  has been going into the book project.  But also, it's because I feel like this blog, and our lives are in transition. I started a second blog, The Candid Teacher, as a space to try out content for the book, and build a community around the topic of raising and educating kids.  It's been awesome, and that has freed this blog up for more creativity and personal stories.

So speaking of personal stories, there are things I've been processing, and words I've been searching for to describe recent events in our life.  I want to share with you here as a way to continue to think out loud, reach out to others who might be going through the same thing, and share a perspective, while documenting our journey.

We got some hard news a couple months ago, the kind that knocks the wind out of you and has you gasping for air and answers in the following weeks.  We've been trying to start a family for the past year and a half or so, with no luck.  I had previously written a little about it in this post.  We finally decided to get some testing done to determine if there were any issues.  There is an issue, a major, unexplained one, which nothing really can be done about, and it sucks.  We are both completely fine from a health standpoint, but we found out it will be nearly impossible for us to get pregnant on our own.  Basically, the best chance we'd have would be to go straight to IVF (In Vetro Fertilization), which is something we had already decided at the very beginning wasn't for us.

It is one of those heart wrenching cases of not really knowing how much you wanted something until you can't have it.  There have been lots of tears and hugging.  We've gone to some counseling to process things out loud, and grown closer to each other in these past couple months than I think we've ever been.  And after much thinking, praying, and discussing, we will most likely adopt, and are looking at getting the process started after the holidays.

I realize this is the very short version of the story, and I'm planning on openly discussing more about infertility and adoption on this blog in the near future.  But, this is just a quick rundown of where we are right now.  We're kind of on the bridge between two worlds.  We're taking some time to research, process emotions, and make decisions.  It's also a great time to enjoy our carefree kidless-ness, and focus on some things we already have going on.  Even the timing of this book project is really kind of neat to me when I think about it.  I have this window of time to write a book about bridging the gap between the classroom and parenthood, while I'm quite literally transitioning from being a teacher to being a mom, hopefully.  So our next adventure is going to be a big one, and I'm looking forward to sharing the story of our path to a family in an authentic way in this space.