flashback: bye-bye babies

In some ways I think we’re lucky because we didn’t have to go through years of miscarriages or infertility treatments before we found out that adoption would be our path to having a family. We knew before we even got married. I can’t imagine how traumatic it would be to try and try with no success, through no fault of your own. The overburdening financial investment, the emotional investment. It’s just so much.
So we found out pretty quick that we wouldn’t have to deal with k...Here’s how it went down, based on some old journal entries I found recently:

4/25/2001:
I will never have babies of my own. At least that’s what the fertility doctor said yesterday. Am I willing to risk my health, thousands of dollars, for a 20% chance that a few frozen embryos might become our child someday? The answer, today, was “no.” Was it a hard decision? Hell yes. Harder after it was made than making it. I keep thinking of this psychic I went to years ago. She told me that one day I would have two children, including a little dark, curly haired girl who’s been waiting awhile for her second chance. She was one of my guardian angels.

So weird right? Like are psychics for real?! I now have TWO kids and our little girl’s hair is coming in dark and a little curly. Insert Twilight Zone song here…

I’ve been thinking about this dream I had years ago where I had a baby in a crib in this total 1970s ranch house with white shag carpet and a big slate stone fireplace that took up the whole wall of the living room. I put the baby in the freezer until this little insistent voice in my head kept telling me ‘mom’s going to be so pissed that you put the baby in the freezer! That’s not how you take care of them.’ So I took the baby out of the freezer (this is a dream, remember!) and her little pink onesie was all slushy like a half-frozen ice pack for the cooler.

I always wonder if that dream meant that I should have gone for it. Should we have tried to harvest some eggs and freeze them and hope that it would have worked out? Should money and fear have been less important in the decision making than hope? Should we have taken the chance and tried at least?

Maybe I’ll continue to be an anomaly and be one of the few to have a child after chemo-radiation. Maybe not. It was hard to sit at Bunco tonight and act normal listening to the three (count ‘em, three!) pregnant women there talk about baby names. We had some picked out too. They talked about ultrasounds. I saw one of my tumor last week and the frighteningly dark lymph nodes nearby. Like most ultrasounds, you can’t really tell what it is but I know it’s not a boy or a girl. Knowing what I know and they don’t is hard too, to accept that this is my reality. I know I can beat the cancer but at what cost? Financial hardship, losing my job, scars, colostomy bag (which let’s face it, is pretty hideous…a close second to dying in my book), change, alienation, no babies.

I remember that party. It was about the most awkward and lonely feeling I’ve ever had. I literally spent the evening looking at ultrasounds of peoples’ babies while I was carrying around an ultrasound of my cancer in my purse. I thought, what if I busted this out right now and showed them but didn’t tell them what it was. Would the ooo’s and aaaah’s have been the same? How much of an awkward TV moment would that have been?! Who ever thought you’d have a profound moment like that at Bunco.

Scott says it’s good that I’ve already accepted victory over the cancer and have moved on to worrying about the problems generated by survival and the treatments. He also says not to worry about the kids thing. “I don’t care if we don’t have kids. I can live the rest of my life without biological kids. I can live the rest of my life without kids at all. I can not live the rest of my life without you.” I’m so lucky.
Positive thoughts, love will guide me on unfamiliar paths and show me the inner strength I have not yet found.

It’s strange to read these musings 10 years later. We have our family and no matter how they came to us, these are our children. We can’t ever thank enough the people who gifted us with our family enough. I feel so damn lucky to have been there in the worst, darkest, saddest, most hopeless place and to be here now with the children I never thought I’d have and the life I always hoped I would have. There are some gifts for which there will never be thanks enough.