The Perfection Of It
January 7, 2009 | By: Elizabeth
I have frequently told this story — and heard others tell it as well (and perhaps better than I do) — about how the journey through infertility and adoption “perfects” itself. I must talk to at least one client each week and share this story. Someone suggested a long time ago that I should blog about it. I haven’t been able to because it seems like such an emotional and private story. I share it with people who are going through trying times; my way of giving them a pep-talk. One that I know has worked from the letters people have sent me after they finally got their baby and realized the perfection story isn’t just a pep talk. But I seriously have been blocked about writing this blog. Maybe I am afraid I can’t do it justice in print? There is something intangible in the story that needs to be adapted to each person’s own journey which I can do when I know what YOU are going through; and I hope that as you read this that you can find that piece that resonates for you, as I do not know what each of you are going through or what your friends or family members may be experiencing.
I am a spiritual person. Of that I am certain, and I have always believed that everything happens in the perfect time and the perfect way. I didn’t like the time and the way my motherhood came to be, at first. But then things started happening that made me realize it all really does have meaning, and that the process of going through infertility treatment or adoption does “perfect itself.” That is, at the end of the day when you are pacing the floor of your home holding your beautiful, screaming baby, you realize in a moment of complete and utter clarity, that everything you went through . . . every needle, every sonogram, every miscarriage, every failed donor cycle, every failed donor or surrogate or birth mother match, needed to happen for you to be holding
THIS child in YOUR arms in THIS moment.
And you realize that you wouldn’t change one needle, one miscarriage, or one failed match if it meant that you wouldn’t be holding
THIS child in YOUR arms in THIS moment.
The process isn’t fun. Understatement of the century. It is often frought with too many setbacks, financial hardships, lengthy and unwanted delays. And for each and every one of you wrestling with the process of trying to become a parent you have my heart and soul there with you. I KNOW. I really know. 7 attempted IVF cycles, 5 IVF miscarriages, 3 miscarriages on my own, two failed adoption placements (one of which occurred several days after we brought our son home). But I also wouldn’t trade any of that, or re-do a single moment or a single injection (and I am beyond horrified of needles) because without everyone of those awful moments I wouldn’t have my two beautiful babies. I wouldn’t have my daughter if my second son hadn’t gone back to his birth mother. A day without my daughter in it . . . is NOT what the Universe intended for me. I don’t understand why it had to be so hard. I know I have an amazing new career (from which I am gradually digging my family out of the debt we incurred from all those attempts at becoming a family) and I get to help people have babies and build families every day. That is perfection at work too.
But what really shows me that everything that happens in the perfect time and the perfect way and that the journey is truly perfect . . . is that my husband and I were blessed with the unexpected gift of knowledge that our oldest child, whom we adopted, was conceived on THE day that I chose to become an adoptive mother. I am not kidding or exaggerating. There are details I cannot share because they are private pieces of my son’s life (and I think we’ll all agree that I have “outed” my family in my books, so you’ll understand that I want to preserve sacred pieces of his adoption story for my son), but there was a very specific day in time that I chose to adopt. The world shifted on its axis that day and I realized I wanted to be a mother more than I needed to be pregnant and so when my husband came home that night, I told him I would follow him on his desired path, to become an adoptive father. The following day I submitted our application to an adoption agency.
A little over a year later, we learned rather coincidentally (thank god for science) that our son was conceived on the day I agreed to become an adoptive mother. That information showed me, with scientific proof, that everything does happen for a reason and that everything that comes before isn’t meaningless. It is perfect.
You may not have your baby yet (you may choose not to have a baby), and I can’t promise you what will happen today or tomorrow. I can’t promise you that you’re donor is going to pass her screening, or your carrier will get pregnant, that your birth mother will sign her relinquishment forms, or that you will make peace and move on to something different. But I can promise you that when you get there, you too will know in your heart that “but for” everything that came before, you wouldn’t be in this wonderful place now.
And you wouldn’t change a thing.
Filed under: Thinking Out Loud
Tags: hope
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