Adopting, but still grieving infertility

[DynamiteA]

Hello everyone. This is something I cannot talk with anyone IRL about, including my therapist. I am just too ashamed.

My husband and I TTC for just over 2 1/2 years, including 3 IUI and 1 IVF. Never got pregnant. I had always planned to adopt after bio kids so for me it was a pretty easy choice to move to adoption. My husband required just a little bit of convincing.

We are going to be adoptive parents within the next 6 months and I go through phases when I cannot stop thinking about how excited I am. But recently, the past 2 months or so, I cannot get out of being VERY VERY depressed about infertility and the fact I didn't, and might not ever get pregnant.

Everyone I know is pregnant so that doesn't help. People treat us exactly as they would if we were pregnant and have been very nice about our adoption. They are so excited for us. The past 2-3 months I have had so much trouble being excited in these conversations. I am grieving so badly.

I do not know what to do. I feel angry at myself for being unfair to my child who will soon join our family by still being so sad about the bio child I wanted and still want. I am scared about raising a child of another race and worry I will not do a good job. Some days (this is the worst part to admit) when we have been waiting for the adoption process and I feel impatient, I think "I have to do all this waiting and it isn't even my first choice child." I know. It is terrible. As I said I feel so ashamed. And then many days I also imagine this baby and feel very happy and excited.

Is there anything I should do about this? I never hear any adoptive parents talking about this. They all say when we adopt we will feel exactly the same as we would for a bio kid. But what if they are wrong? What if I am doing the wrong thing???

Any ideas appreciated. I feel better just writing this out.

[mmpmelmack]

I understand your feelings. I can even expand them slightly in my case. We are just begining to explore adoption. We have one 3.5 year old bio child. Will I be able to love my adopted children in the same way as him? We have always wanted a large family, and have accepted that it will not happen with only bio children. I just worry and wonder, will I be able to be enough for them? Will I have the same kind of love, even when they are not bio children?
I think the feelings you have are normal part of grieving. I do truely believe when that beautiful child is placed in your arms that you will forget all of it. My best advice is to focus on the child that is coming. I have to believe that when your child arrives, you will be so in love you will forget you even worried about it. Be strong, giving up on having bio children is so tough, and it will effect you for awhile. Be strong.

[Whistler]

Missing DS's pregnancy and birth was only painful to me before I held him in my arms. After he came to us, he is just as much MINE as the bios, just came a little different way and I no longer grieve the fact that I didn't carry him.

I'm not trying to make light of infertility grief. Just saying that meeting your child really, really helps a lot toward healing. I didn't believe people who told me that before Baby Bear came. I do now.

[queencarr]

I think that what you are feeling is perfectly normal, especially after a long haul with infertility. In my case I *could* get pregnant (although we had infertility an had to figure out how to do so things so I could) but I developed very severe, early preeclampsia. My biological children were born at 30 weeks and stillborn at 29 weeks. Adoption was also something that we wanted to explore after bio children, when we felt we could afford it better. So, that is the perspective I am coming from.

Something that I realized somewhere along the way was that the problems with pg had nothing to do with me adopting. Removing the pg problems mentally as a *cause* of me adopting made a huge perspective change. It was already something we wanted to do, we were just doing things out of order from how we had planned.

Another thing that made a mental difference for me is that I chose not to do anything permanent as far as birth control, despite recommendations from my ob/gyn and the perinatal specialist (pg is AMA due to health risks for me, and there is a 15% chance that a pg would have to be terminated prior to viability, and about 50-80% chance of delivery required by 32w, not odds that I can live with). I have the option of pursuing pg in the future (I won't, but it remains my choice this way). In your situation, do you have to close the door to IF evaluations/treatment just because you are adopting a child? What if you leave the option open for X number of years and then reevaluate at that point? I just don't see them as mutually exclusive and permanently revoking one another. Perhaps that is a mental compromise that will work for you.

Finally, your concerns about loving an adopted child, etc. are very, very normal. But you will. TBH, it may not happen instantly. Or you may feel in love the with referral photo and any information you have, and then reality closes in when the child is placed with you. I felt like I was babysitting my adopted children for a while. But there's the thing--it doesn't happen for a lot of bio kids, too. My bio so was in the NICU for 6 weeks--I felt like I was babysitting him, too, at first. It took me a while to find my own way with him, and it took me a while to learn the already ingrained and establshed likes and dislikes of my adopted kids.

One other thing that I wanted to address, since I get a hint of it from your post, although you didn't say it. Many women coming to adoption after IF or a loss, have an incredible fear that the baby will not come. This actually affected our decision to adopt internationally vs. domestic--the idea that no matter what, there would eventually be a baby at the end of the wait. I encourage you to explore if this is playing into your fears and upset right now. For me, I spent those last months reading voraciously, working hard to learn everything I could to help my babies have better transition processes. This in turn relieved a lot of the fears you mentioned that I talked about earlier as well as this part--it grounded me that this was real.

Hang in there, come and talk with us here on this board. We would love to support you in this part of your process and beyond. And we love to wait vicariously with other mamas with babies coming home

[Masel]

Is here a hormonal component to you infertility or are you attempting to induce lactation? I ask because both of these were huge factors for the depression I've experienced. I don't say this to dismiss your feelings as "just hormones" but to say that they are real and treatable though you might have to press a doctor to take you seriously.

All the adoption books say you have to be over your feeling about infertility but I just don't see how that is possible. I really really thought I was past my fertiliy issues but even after I adopted and found out I might still be fertile after all I jumped at the chance. Am I a hypocrite? Nope, just a mom to two wonderful girls.

Finally, grief is normal. It gets glossed over in modern culture or only is applied when someone dies. Don't be ashamed of grief for the bio child. I think your therapist can help you with the idea of shame.

[Tigerchild]

I don't believe that one has to be "over" their grief to adopt, that's quite a silly idea not to mention a bit offensive (if someone has a child after a sibling dies, does that mean they're "over" the child that died? No!). But if someone refuses to deal with their grief (in any situation really) does/can that cause significant problems later? Without exception, I'd say yes.

However, I do think that you owe it to yourself, your DH, and your child to decide that yes, you WILL talk about this with your therapist. Stuffing it isn't good, and won't make it go away. I wouldn't assume that a baby in your arms will heal the grief. I'm sure that it helps almost everyone, and might indeed do that for some--but I don't think that most people lose their feelings of grief. It's just that when you have a baby in your life you're so wrapped up in caring for them it's easy to excuse shoving those feelings aside to deal with later.

Now is the time to talk to your therapist about this. Your feelings are not bad or wrong or weird! They are normal and healthy and to be expected, okay? So don't stuff them. You're going to rip yourself up with grief and guilt and shame if you do that, and you don't deserve to have that happen to you!

[kme]

Hugs to you. I think your fears about adoption are normal. I cannot comment on the grief of infertility b/c I had bio children before we adopted. However, the fear of not feeling the same about an adopted child was very real for me. I will be honest here when I say I did not love my adopted child instantly. She was 14 months when we adopted her and had her own personality already. It was different than being handed a newborn that I had 9 months to bond with. At first I felt like I was babysitting someone else's child as I did not know her.
Here's the thing...4 years later I do love her as much and in the same way as my bio kids. The way I try to describe it to people is the difference between falling in love with someone (romantically) in a passionate way from the very beginning versus falling in love with someone who was a friend first. Both ways lead to the same outcome. It's just a different path. As I got to know and cared for my daughter, I came to love her but I would be lying if I said I fell instantly in love from a picture or the minute she was handed to me. Some people do feel this instant love, I have no doubt of that. I just want to assure you that even if you don't it doesn't mean you WON'T. Adoption IS different from giving birth but it doesn't mean it is not as good or the bond is not as deep. It's just a different path.
Good luck to you!

[RedOakMomma]

Big, big s.

I think you're very brave to talk about this openly. Not because you should fear responses here...it's not that kind of forum...but because it takes a lot of guts to face up to these feelings. I think it's good that you're willing to address them.

I agree with what others have said, and with Kitty. Please address these things with a therapist in these (easy) months before your child comes home to you. Once you're dealing with sleep issues, attachment issues, possibly severe, you will be overloaded with feelings and might not have time to process this stuff.

When our dd came home (9 months old, from South Korea), I was shocked at how long it took to fall in love. Totally bowled over. I had done a lot of reading about attachment, but still assumed that things would go well. Wrong! I didn't bond with dd, she didn't really bond with us, and for a long time we were in "fake it til you make it" limbo. Sucked. (I should mention, I've talked with friends about this, and this can happen with bio kids, too...to me it just seemed more disturbing because we didn't have a biological bond, and I felt like getting through that phase was not assured.). We did get through it, though. I guess this is a long-winded way of agreeing with Carrie...this would be an excellent time for you to read up on attachment (Attaching in Adoption is an excellent book, as is www.a4everfamily.org.

With all the emotional work you're going through (again, ), I just want to put it out there that once your child is home, the REALLY heavy work might just be starting. Prepare yourself for that, if you can, by taking care of the you-centered stuff now.

I wish you all the best. Again, bravo to you for facing this head-on. Whether you fall in love with your child instantly or six months down the road, I hope that the love you feel for him or her is everything you ever expected.

[RedOakMomma]

FYI, we did talk about our rough adoption "landing" (including the "babysitting" feeling someone mentioned, and feelings of regret) with our therapist and it went really well. And, like you, we had to deal with some very heavy grief in the months before our daughter came home. 10 months before our daughter came home our son, who was 5 1/2, died unexpectedly. I cannot tell you how much it meant to us to work with a therapist to work through some of that grief before dd came home. Again, facing up to it and talking about it with a professional was the right choice.

No matter how embarrasing it is, no matter how ashamed you feel, you know the right thing to do is to get help...to talk about it. You're the mom, your child is the baby. The only one who can make you a healthier, better mom is yourself. You owe it to the child and to yourself (for what you envision as motherhood, or your role as a mother) to take care of these things, yk?

It'll be okay. I always think "there's no way this is going to shock our therapist! SURELY she's heard worse!"

[SundayCrepes]

My friend had two biological children and adopted 3 that were her foster kids. I think I was pregnant when she said, "You never stop wishing you could get pregnant again, you just get to the point that you don't want any more kids."

I was very fortunate to get pregnant at 42. When it came time to discuss baby 2 I was 44. It seemed highly unlikely I'd get pregnant again so we decided on adoption. We decided to do domestic newborn because I wanted to breastfeed. We also decided on a deadline. If we didn't get a baby by our son's 3rd birthday we would stop the process.

While we were doing the waiting to adopt thing, a friend got pregnant. I was happy for her, but I don't have to tell you how devastated I was. I was terrified I wouldn't get to adopt and she had the good fortune of being pregnant, again. The only thing that made it easier was I got a lead on a possible baby. That didn't work out because a few months later we got a call on a baby born situation. I nursed our daughter at 6 hours of age.

We now have 2 little ones and I am just now occasionally not feeling overwhelmed. I have no desire for another child. But to get pregnant again...sigh...Nope. Can't do it. No matter how delicious it seems.

Recently a whole bunch of mamas I met through an mdc playgroup had babies (or soon will.) I was shocked that I wasn't devastated by their pregnancies and births. A bit envious, but nothing more than that. I don't know, but I'm guessing I'd have that a bit of envy even if I had given birth to my daughter.

As far as loving my kids. When my son was born they placed this little guy with a folded over ear and big toes on my belly. It was one of the most surreal moments of my life. I wondered who this baby was and where he'd come from. Twentyfour hours later I was in love as I'd never been in love before. When we were planning on adopting, I didn't know if I could love an adopted baby that much.

When my daughter came into our lives, it was all unexpected. We were sitting on a park bench watching our son ride his balance bike. I got a phone call and 4 1/2 hours later I was nursing a baby I'd never heard of. I just watched the video of us meeting her. I was nursing her and said, "This is as surreal as when our son was born."

24 hours later I did not have the hormone inspired love. I was more concerned about if the mom would change her mind and take her back. Then there was the dad search that lasted 70 days. But before it was over I loved her as much as I loved my son.

The baby just turned 17 months old. I am a bit sad that I didn't get to be pregnant with her. That I missed out on that whole experience. Yet for her to be in my life, I had to not give birth to her. I sometimes wonder, "What if we had done egg donation, then I could have had a second pregnancy." And I would not have THIS baby. There is no way I would give her back to get to be pregnant a second time.

As far as getting past your grief about infertility. Do talk to your counselor. You want to make sure that you are not expecting this baby to cure those feelings. It can't. All it can do is let you be a mom. It's up to you if you enjoy the mom thing to the depths of your soul or if your priority is pregnancy. Although pregnancy is fun, it is short lived. Its only purpose is to get you a baby. Are you okay that your baby will come from a different source? It's kind of like getting a puppy. Puppies, like pregnancy, are cute, but the whole purpose of getting a puppy is to get a dog. Do you want a dog? Do you want to be a mom? You will always wonder what it would have been like to be pregnant. You have to decide which is your priority, pregnancy or being a mom. If it's being a mom, your counselor can help you grieve the loss of making a baby. If your priority is to experience pregnancy, that's a different story.

[DynamiteA]

I cannot say how much your replies mean to me. I am actually sitting here crying reading them. Thank you for not telling me I shouldn't adopt because of my feelings or that I should be ashamed.

It is true that recently part of my feelings are that it is taking longer than I expected to adopt and I have started to protect myself against the idea it might not happen (I am pretty sure it will, it's just an automatic response).

I can accept that I might not fall in love immediately with my new baby and that it could take some time. I just stay awake nights worrying that I am not enough for this baby or not the right mom. I would hate to make a bad choice for myself but it would be about 1 million times worse to choose badly for the child, to raise a child to feel bad because her/his mom didn't feel the way she should have about him/her.

I have been on birth control because I did not want to have any chance of not being able to follow through with this adoption by getting pregnant, that is how much I wanted to adopt. I do feel now that I am going to start checking in to how I can take care of myself so for our second child I might be able to get pregnant so I will be going off BC soon.

Thanks again for all your nice words and for your time. I will read these again and again and they will give me comfort.

P.S. RedOak Momma I am so sorry for your loss. I can't imagine what that must have been like.

[Marimami]

So much of what you said resonates with me also. I had always planned on adopting--since I was about 9 years old and read about Vietnam adoption (Kim: A Gift from Vietnam). It stuck with me forever. There were times in my life that I didn't want to have a bio child for many reasons, but I always wanted to adopt.

We never used birth control, but we just assumed we'd be able to get pregnant "one day". Back in 2001 we found ourselves with a very surprising and welcome pregnancy. If you can believe it, we even had confirmation of it at the OB/GYN on Sept. 11. Yes, *that* Sept. 11. We ended up telling everyone even because it felt like everyone needed some hope.

It's a long story, but I ended up losing that baby just as I was about to enter my 2nd trimester. That sent us on a whirlwind of fertility testing with nothing but dead ends. Simple hormonal options like Clomid were not effective and sent me further into a hormonal tailspin. DH was laid off. I was the only source of income. The country was devastated with Sept. 11. It was, for sure, the absolutely worst time of our lives.

But, 2 years later we had moved across country and were finally at a point to make a decision. We finally had paid off some debt and had to decide a few key things--do we pursue more invasive fertility options, do we adopt, or do we give up and just buy a house. We made the decision to adopt over Christmas 2003. I still have an email I sent to my husband in the middle of the night on New Year's Eve. I awoke from a vivid dream telling me that my daughter's name would be Marisol.

So, we started our adoption process. We chose Guatemala for many reasons, we found an agency we loved, and we were matched with a newborn girl in early March. Everything seemed like it would finally work out for us!

In June 2004, we traveled to meet her, and upon our return, we learned that there were some problems. We spent the entire summer on eggshells, not knowing what/what was happening. At some point in all this, we decided that perhaps we would start a second adoption too so we had something more positive to focus on. Our agency even found another match for us, but we decided to hold off a little longer to see.

In mid September 2004, we received the best and worst phone call of our lives. In that single instance we were told that our first adoption was definitely not possible, and we were offered another girl, named Wendy Marisol. We visited her in December 2004, just 1 year almost to the date of starting our journey.

She finally came home at 7 months, and I was scared to death during her entire adoption. I was sure it would never work out. I was sure I would never be a mother. It actually hurt our relationship initially but we both have come so far from those early days. We are undoubtedly mama and girly now.

Mari, as we call her, is now 5 years old and is the most amazing person. I won't bore you with my long list of her accolades but she completes our family. We are all where we should be now.

I think about so many things about the signs surrounding her joining our family. It's likely that her birthmother became pregnant right about when we first decided to move forward with adoption. She came home in the first week in May 2005; I was due originally in May 2002. There are so many other little "signs" that give me such peace now that we have passed through this all. Marisol is Spanish for -- sea and sun, or as I like to think of it--sunny sea. Without a doubt, she is our sunny sea that appeared over the horizon of a very painful and turbulent path to parenthood.

Good, warm, loving thoughts on your journey!

Holli

[sbrinton]

One thing that has helped me work through grief at not being able to get pregnant again is realizing that the child we adopt will also go through grief. In so many ways, adoption begins with the birth parent, the child and the adoptive parent dealing with loss.

In some ways, we will all be working through grief as we begin to attach to one another.

We have three biological sons and plan to adopt a daughter, most likely from Ethiopia. We'll begin the process this spring. As we look forward to adopting - which is a very hopeful, joyful feeling - I am aware of my grief. It is hard to know I'll never be pregnant again as we watch friends with big bellies. Hard to know we won't enjoy our fourth child as a newborn as she'll probably come home around 6-10 months. My husband and I are finding it very difficult to do something permanent about birth control, even though we need to. Our oldest son is sad about the baby we lost due to miscarriage four years ago. He's decided this baby was a girl and when we talk about adopting, he often tells people he had a sister and she died. Pretty deep thoughts for a five year old. He is excited about adopting, but grieving too.

And I have to cut this short because my youngest is crying...but the birth family and the child will grieve too.

[wallabi]

hi -

we adopted our dd after infertility (during infertility? its not like it went away!), and I have to agree that infertility is not something you get over and never look at with sadness. The best you can do is to get to a point where it does not overwhelm the other things in your life. I hope you will be able to talk with your therapist and get some good suggestions about dealing with the feelings you have.

The fear and uncertainty at the waiting point of the process, when you sort of theoretically know there is probably a child out there, but really, you don`t truly know that there IS a child out there that will be joining your family, is very very hard to cope with. I can remember longing for the due date, regular check-up system that goes along with pregnancy, and any sort of reassurance that the whole process was really going to end in my becoming a mother, because I really didn`t know, in my heart of hearts, that adoption was going to work out for us, and this triggered another round of infertility-related feelings (we wouldn`t be in this aweful place of doubt if I could just get pregnant!). This phase of uncertainty is hard - please don`t be ashamed of how you are feeling, and let your therepist help you. It is all worth it - the beautiful little girl still sleeping in my bed this morning could only have come to me in this way.

One thought - separating my feelings about infertility and my feelings about being childless (including the feeling that I might be childless forever) helped me quite a bit. My feelings about infertility have to do with only me, and may not ever go completely away. My old, painful feelings about the possibility of remaining childlessness were feelings that I came to know would disappear when our child entered our lives. Taking these feelings out of the equation has not made the pain of infertility go away completely (especially now, when are ready to have more children and don`t know if we will be able to adopt again, and changes to my health have reopened the question of pregnancy), but has taken out a lot of the sting. I would love to have more children by birth or adoption (or both!), and the possible closing of one avenue toward that end is difficult still.

I don`t want to join the group that says that your feelings of grief will vanish when you meet your new child, but I do think, if you don`t hide them away now, they will become somewhat irrelevant to your feelings for your new child.

thinking thoughts of healing and hope that you will soon hear news of your child!

[Mamacitac]

aww mama. I'm so sorry you're feeling this way..
There's no reason to be embarrassed IRL to admit your true feelings <3

Good luck with your adoption. I bet you'll do great!