Originally posted March 20, 2008

Holy buckets, it has been a long time since I updated this! Part of the reason is that I was away on vacation in Arizona for a week being completely distracted from TTC. Another part of the reason is that I don’t feel like I need to blog as an outlet as much as I did before. I’m not sure what’s changing, but something’s different. In fact, not a single tear was shed when I realized that last cycle was a bust. That says a lot about me.

Perhaps it’s the new support group that I’m a part of. We’re just a group or women who are struggling with infertility who get together every couple of weeks to talk. It is very unstructured, and we just discuss whatever is on our minds. Most of the women there have been at this a lot longer than I have (2 to 3 years), but there is one woman who was at the same time period of trying to conceive as me. Happily for her, she is now 10 weeks pregnant, so she gives me hope that it will happen for me too.

Our last meeting was largely focused on adoption, since it seems a few of the women are turning towards that now. A special guest was invited to share her experience with her adoption process so far. It is amazing to hear all of the details and heartaches of adopting. For certain it is no easier than struggling with trying to conceive, in fact in many ways it seems so much more frustrating.

While I am certainly open to adoption, I don’t think that Mark is at this point, and quite honestly, it’s something that scares me to death. It’s not the fact that I would be giving up on the dream of having my own biological children; I think I can accept that. As one woman in my support group said “It doesn’t matter where your children come from. What matters is that you’re a family.” And that I can handle. What I can’t handle is the uncertainty of it all. The paperwork, the red tape, the waiting, the hoping, the disappointment, the not knowing when your dream might come true. Many of those same feelings are true to trying to conceive, but at least you are somewhat in control of what happens. Trying to conceive is all up to my husband and I, and if things don’t work out, it’s easy to just blame our bodies. In adoption, things that go wrong are all controlled by someone or something. I myself would have no control whatsoever of the process and that would leave me feeling helpless.

So while we as a couple are not even ready to seriously think about adoption, it was still so great to hear from someone who’s been there, in case it’s something that we need to consider in the future. And it helped me to think of things a little differently, from a new perspective.

Perhaps the change is because deep down inside I really feel like we’re going to be able to conceive our own biological child. Again, I can’t say why I feel this way, or what happened to make me feel this way, but as I was sitting at the support group meeting last week, I realized that I do, in fact, believe that it will happen for us. I’m baffled as to why I’m so convinced that it will happen, especially considering that I’m less than 7 weeks removed from finding out that I have a diminished ovarian reserve. But I won’t question this feeling. It’s a good feeling to have, so I’m going to cling to it until I have a very good reason to stop believing it. I believe that positive thoughts are paramount in dealing with this, and at this point my thoughts are all that I can control, so that’s what I’m going to do.