Doors

They say that when one door shuts, another one opens. In our case, one door opened, and another will now shut. I recently accepted an expat assignment with my employer in Kazakhstan with my departure set for mid-September. Unfortunately, in the province of Alberta (and in most provinces in Canada), you can not be on the adoption wait list if you are not a resident.

We officially landed on the private adoption wait list in September 2019. Between then and the end of June when we closed our file we had four consult calls. The consults were all situations slightly outside of the boxes we checked, and in three of those instances we said no. In one of those instances, we said yes, but were not selected. We also had at least one other viewing of our file by a birth mom or parents who were a perfect match to our files, but who ultimately chose another family to place their child with.

This journey started for us in 2007 with my first miscarriage. 14 years of heartbreak, hope, grief, and coming to terms with it all. There are multiple conflicting feelings about finally closing this door - sadness and relief, some anger and resentment, and maybe a bit of guilty excitement. But I won’t regret one minute of it because it’s made us who we are individually and as a couple, and brought us to this next stage of our life. 

So this is my last post and I will be officially closing this blog. I hope those that land here find some of the historical posts informative (I describe the process for a lot of fertility treatments, and touch a lot on the feelings associated with infertility), and I’ll probably come back to look at it from time to time. All the best as you walk your path to whichever door you ultimately cross through.

The Wait

For us, when it comes to the adoption process, the anxiety of the wait feels different. I can compartmentalize better, because I’m not focused on the physical aspects of my body, like I would if we were pregnant. Our wait has been about two years, most of which was the process of getting paperwork, training, and records checks done in order to be placed on ‘the list’. We admittedly undertook that exercise a bit slower than most, as we were still unsure of if this was our next step. But ultimately, we checked the last of the boxes in September.

The adoption process and timeline itself is lengthy and expensive. After a potential adoptive parent or couple is placed on the list, the wait in Alberta for private placement is two to three years. The timeline varies based on your matching criteria, and over the last few years the number of children placed for adoption has decreased for a variety or reasons. Some provinces in Canada have a wait list of up to ten years, so we count ourselves lucky. Costs range from $15,000 to $25,000 for private domestic adoption, while international adoption is closer to $100,000 depending on the country. As you can understand, this is why ‘just adopt’, which I’ve heard more than a few times in our 12+ years of infertility, isn’t really as easy at it sounds (stop saying that!).

So for us, we buckled in for a multi-year wait. However, a few weeks ago we received a call asking if we were interested in showing our file to a potential birth family. We had one hour to decide. You can imagine the stress of that hour given our current COVID-19 situation across the globe (I am working from home, Derek is a first responder, so out working with the public), and the fact that I just received a promotion at work. We were not prepared for this, and wouldn’t have been for at least a year and a half. We had one of the most critical conversations of our marriage in the same amount of time it takes to watch an episode of your favourite Netflix series, and said yes.

This doesn’t mean we’re matched. It means we are in a different type of wait. The type where you think about those birth parents daily, knowing that they are making one of the most difficult and loving decisions of their lives. You hope it’s you, and you reassure yourself you will be ok if it’s not. You think about what if’s and restrain yourself from daydreaming too much. It’s a different wait, but difficult in it’s own way. We hope this phase of wait is over soon, and that however it turns out, it’s the best decision for the child and birth parents.

You are not alone

Over the nine years I've had this blog - which sadly I don't update near as often as I used to - I've had friends and acquaintances (almost all women) reach out to me to share their stories. They share bits and pieces of their own personal journeys and I'm sad for the fact that they too have to feel the grief and despair of all the pain that is infertility. I am also always so impressed at the strength and resiliency of these women, how they can carry on with their daily lives with sorrow coursing through their bodies, as if everything is normal. They are always holding themselves together while their grief is churning within their core.


I want you to know you are not alone. There are many of us - way too many - and we are here for you. I am here for you. Reach out if you need support and feel comfortable talking about it. I'm so sorry you are going through this, it's not fair, and it's not your fault.


It's been eight months since I lost my ability to naturally conceive and I still haven't really processed it yet. If I think about it too hard I tear up and my thoughts start screaming so I think of something else. One day soon I'll face it (it really is important to face your pain and work through it so you can come out stronger on the other side), but in the meantime we continue to wait. We were officially 'on the list' in September 2019, however 'the list' is about two or three years long. Maybe one day we will get a call, and we will be able to say yes. Or maybe not. I try not to think too hard about it right now.


So in the meantime I think about all of you and how you might feel sad and grief-stricken, and a bit alone like me. But you're not. I'm here, thinking of you and hoping you find peace on the other side of this journey.

The end of a difficult era

It’s been just over a year since I last updated this blog. I thought about making an update post a number of times, but felt I didn’t have much to say yet. We started the private adoption process in the spring of 2018 - life events slowed us down but we continued to walk through each step and will soon be on “the list”, hopefully kicking off the beginning of a new adventure. But this post isn’t about beginnings, it’s about endings.

On June 14 our beloved dog Khuno crossed the rainbow bridge peacefully at home. It was a very difficult decision but it was the right one. We planned to spend the weekend grieving the loss, however on Sunday, June 16 - Fathers Day - I had a very positive pregnancy test. Over the years I have had five natural pregnancies, however all were early losses and each time my tests were light and didn’t progress. This was different, and we were incredibly hopeful.

The next day I saw my family doctor who confirmed the pregnancy and ordered blood work. The complicating factor was that we had a month-long trip to Africa planned and would be leaving in less than two weeks. Given my history, and the fact that we had an ectopic pregnancy in 2011 (when I lost my left fallopian tube), we insisted on an ultrasound before we left on our trip to confirm an intrauterine pregnancy.

Over the last week and a half, we grew increasingly excited as my tests continued to progress and I had perfectly doubling betas. Two days after my positive test, my beta was 212; five days later and a week after the first positive pregnancy test, my beta was at 1321, a 45-hour doubling time. We have NEVER had such perfect numbers. I now know that on Wednesday, June 26, my beta was 2681, again a near perfect doubling time. If we relied only on bloodwork, everything was perfect.

On Wednesday afternoon we went in for our ultrasound. I lay on the table unable to see the screen while Derek stared intently at what the tech was marking off on each image. Once done, she made no indication of results one way or another and just said she needed to confirm her interpretation with the doctor and would return in a few minutes. Once she left, I asked Derek what he saw on the screen; he saw her mark ‘fetus’. For the first time in a decade of infertility they could see something on the ultrasound. This was it, our miracle.

Less than five minutes later the doctor briskly walked in and introduced himself. After he shook our hands, he said “I’m so sorry, but the pregnancy is ectopic and it’s in your right tube. You need to go to emergency immediately. I have called ahead and they are expecting you.” I thought he must be joking, but quickly realized no one would joke about this. Everything came crashing down hard. This was it, the end.

Wednesday night I went in for surgery to remove the perfectly developing ectopic pregnancy along with my remaining fallopian tube. While it is difficult to come to terms with the fact that I will never again have the possibility of a miracle natural pregnancy, it is admittedly a weight off my shoulders that we will never go through this again. We will never have the stress of poorly progressing pregnancy tests and the inevitable loss, nor will we need to worry about an ectopic pregnancy and risks to my health. The ups and downs of infertility are soul crushing, and my soul is at its limit.

We have other options under way and perhaps one day it will happen for us. I am incredibly thankful we were able to catch this before we left - a ruptured ectopic in an African country could have killed me. For now, we are focusing on healing together emotionally; luckily I am recovering well physically and we have travel insurance. Although we have had to postpone our departure date by almost a week (we were meant to leave today), we will still have three weeks of healing time in Africa. When we get back, we can start moving forward once again.

Don’t give up on me

I started this blog on March 9, 2011, 10 days after our second IUI, and two years in to our infertility journey. It’s interesting to see how the number of posts increase and decrease over the years, in line with our treatments and failures. My last post was on August 5, 2017, when we were still trying to decide what our next steps are.

We have decided. We are pursuing private adoption. This has been a work in progress since the beginning of the year, and honestly, I have had limited energy to update this blog while we sorted out the nuts and bolts. We are finally here though, and next weekend we do our two day mandatory $1,200 information session as the first step. Our hopes are high - placement in our province usually happens within two years - but tempered due to all the failures we’ve had over the years.  We’ll take it as it comes, as we’ve learned to do over time.

Much more to come, but we’re still here, and we haven’t given up just yet.

The Importance of Being Honest

We are still in a holding pattern, which is why I've been slow with blog posts. My posts here always happen after I've given some good thought to what I'm going to say, and to be honest, I've not been giving a lot of thought to our fertility journey the last few months. However, we are coming up on a year since our 2016 IVF, and I've come to the unfortunate realization that I'm coming up on 40 (what?!).

Throughout this process we have had times where we are not on the same page. In fact, we are usually on different pages, if not completely different chapters. It's a re-occurring theme requiring some honest conversations to find ourselves somewhere in the middle. Generally our conversations relate to timing, though recently it's been focused on next steps. But the key is that we have those horribly painful honest conversations, and communicate our individual expectations and boundaries. I also want to point out that expectations and boundaries can change over time for each partner, which is why it's important to keep talking.

Another point I wanted to make was that sometimes it's ok to say you no longer want ownership over driving your fertility journey. Typically, in a heterosexual relationship, it's the woman's job to do the research, make the appointments, handle the finances, find the surrogate, and so on. That is a huge burden, especially over time, and especially when you also need to continue to work on being aligned. Sometimes you need to step back and say you need help. If you're both in this together, maybe sharing the workload is a reasonable approach in your relationship. Work together for your shared outcome: a baby. Of course, I recognize that every relationship is different, so do what works for you. But make sure it's a joint decision. You're in this together, for the long run.

The Tipping Point

At some point earlier this year, as I wrote '2017' as part of a date in my notebook, I realized that we have entered year ten of trying to conceive. It was a bit of a shock; we are in the double digits, can ascribe the term 'decade' to our journey now. To say it and think it, it seems like forever, but to experience it is different. It doesn't seem quite that long (I was also a teenager just a few years ago, I swear!).


I think I've mentioned before that our first recorded pregnancy was discovered as we were losing it. It was right around the time Derek was finishing Fire Training school, and we weren't yet prepared to be parents. Despite that, the hope and short term joy that had been triggered in that small span of time before it was a confirmed loss was enough to push us towards wanting to actually try.


You all know most of the story that follows. The years of heartbreak, sorrow, and grief. But what I wanted to write about was my tipping point. The point where I was finally ok with being a parent, or not. The point where I could talk about our sad journey without dissolving in to tears. Where I could talk about a life without kids, and be ok with it. I started reflecting on this after I had a conversation with a friend last week about our infertility and she said 'How do you talk about this without crying?' as she teared up on our behalf.


That tipping point for me came about two and a half years ago. It started as a question from our therapist (whom we've been with for almost a decade as well, and which I strongly recommend for anyone). She asked me if I would "be happy with just Derek for the rest of your life?" She was asking me what makes me whole. Would I be whole and happy only if we had children? Or could I be whole and happy if it was just Derek and I?


I spent some time reflecting on this, and ultimately came to the decision that yes, I could be happy if it was just the two of us. He makes me whole already. Kids would be a bonus. In fact, I've surprisingly started to swing in the other direction, where I am enjoying life child free, able to spend money on myself and be spontaneous. We're going to give it one last big push with donor eggs in 2018, but ultimately we're doing that so we make sure we have no regrets.


So now, when I tear up, it's when I talk about already being whole. I'll be ok if it's just us. Just us is also a great outcome.