Our Curveball

Candace-

Originally this post was going to be about our 1st adoption homestudy.  I was going to tell you about how I OCD scrubbed my house to the point where it looked like Mr. Clean made sweet love to it.  I was also going to bring up the fact that I spent way too much time scouring the web for that ‘perfect’ knock-your-socks-off recipe to make so that when the social worker tried that one epic bite she would be so incredibly blown away by my cooking prowess, she would just hand over the next baby to be adopted simply out of sheer gratitude from her taste buds’ experience.  I was even going to tell you although I am not a school teacher, it looked like craft hour had vomited all over my house in a desperate attempt to decorate and give it that “crafty school teacher – man she is going to an awesome mom – vibe.”  Don’t judge me.  Whatever it takes, even if I may have staged our house a bit.  However, that is not how this post is going to go.  You see, infertility or just life in general is all about uncertainty and the unexpected. Tumultuous yes, but otherwise it would be boring right?

Why is it Facebook is a source of announcement anxiety?  For example, boy meets girl.  You go on a few dates with boy, then when you agree to change your status to “in a relationship” on Facebook, that’s a big deal right?  same thing with pregnancy announcements as annoying as they may be for us who are riding the fertility pine.  When that person hits a home run, i.e., positive pregnancy sign, they wait cautiously ’til exactly the right time to make it official on Facebook.  Chris and I had the same sentiment with adoption.  We wanted to make it ‘official.’  We typed it up and finally, after much delaying, hit ‘post.’  Weight lifted, we are out of the closet per se.  We have closed the door on our treatments and opened the new door on adoption so we thought … I got a message.  It was unexpected, out of the blue and conflicting with our plans.  Here is what it said:

WHHHHAAAAAATTTTTTTTT?  Wait a minute, someone pimp slap the crap out of me and tell me this is not a dream or I didn’t just drink a bad batch of wine.  Someone (who I know) is willing to carry for me?  But wait, I am kinda dead smack in the middle of our adoption process, plus how the heck am I going to pay for surrogacy!  Ever stare down two paths and wonder if you will regret the path you may or may not take?

Chris

Head of household, that means whatever I say goes right?  Very chauvinistic of me I know, but there have been times when I was thinking, “Alright Chris, there is a tough decision that needs to be made and it is up to you to steer this boat.”  Easy words to tell yourself but very difficult ones to execute.  When we got this information, at first I thought, OK here is another rabbit hole for us to run down all wide-eyed and ready for the world to embrace us in the ever elusive, good fortune, only to be run over by a dump truck.  I’m not falling for this as a possible path to starting a family!  It’s too expensive right?  So, Candace brought it up again and we started to look into it some more.  After all, we had two frozen embryos left that we had no plans for and could not simply thaw and throw away (pesky morals).  After researching it some more, we thought maybe this was something we would do … at some point.  But, I was not ready to put the brakes on adoption.  For those that know us or who have been reading our blog, you know that we were moving at the speed of sound towards completing our adoption application and home study process.  We can’t stop now right?  So, that was my knee-jerk response.  No!  We are not going to drop our pursuit of adoption to go down yet another unknown road.  Maybe for child #2.  As with so many things though, there are a ton of variables to consider.  What if our surrogate decides that after the 2+ years that it would take for us to have our adopted child and be ready to go again she was no longer interested in being a gestational carrier for us?  What if it takes way longer for birth parents to select us than we expect?  What if the transfer of our embryos does not result in a successful pregnancy and we are even further behind financially for an adoption?  What if there are complications during the pregnancy and it becomes nearly impossible for us to pursue a second child through adoption?

One of my favorite poems is “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost.  To condense it, there are two paths and the author decides to take one path instead of the other and says, “And I, I took the road less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”  Candace and I do not know which road we will take but we are certain that the choice we make will have a profound impact on the future of our family building efforts.  Hopefully, we will be able to decide which path to take soon.  Until then, pray for us that regardless of the decision, there will be a child waiting for us at the end of the path.