Family

Waiting to adopt is a bit like being pregnant but without a due date and with no strange cravings. Also I can’t blame my weight gain on “eating for two”. There is all the excitement, all the anticipation and all the fear. Lot’s of fear. I know I want to be a mother, I know I want to parent with Gil. But I know that our lives are going to change in ways I can’t even being to imagine. We have a pretty great thing going on right now, just the two of us. We live on the go, but when we want to hibernate we can do that too. We see our friend’s lots. We eat out at good restaurants on a regular basis. We have a rhythm that feels good. Now we are going to try and incorporate someone else into our merry band and hope like hell that we can find our way. There are things I KNOW we will have to change or give up all together. I am okay. It also dawned on Gil recently too. However there are aspects of our life I want very much to retain. I don’t want to be one of those parents who never sees her friends again. And I don’t just mean play dates. I mean I want to spend time with my girls.

We are not going to have a new born and in some ways I think that could be a good thing. There are aspects of dealing with a new born that don’t thrill me. Maybe they would if I had a baby, maybe I would learn to love the sleep deprivation, but I doubt it. I am a monster without enough sleep. I know I will be missing out on valuable bonding time. I know that there will obstacles for us to overcome with our child because he or she will have emotional baggage from being in care. Maybe if I am not totally exhausted from sleep deprivation I will be able to help our new child with his or her issues. No small part of me wonders if I am cut out for parenting a new born or infant. The total lack of sleep, the teething, crazy schedule, and fear of SIDS, all of those gives me the willies. These were the things about being a parent that scared the shit out of me and it seems like I won’t have to deal with them. But I won’t lie. There are things that still make me feel so sad when I think about not doing them. Smelling my babies hair after I give her a bath, teaching him to walk, hearing her first words, breast feeding *big ache in my heart for that one*

There at so many positives and negative no matter how we become a family but the truth is inescapable, we want to be a family. We are going to be good parents. And I would MUCH rather work through the complexities of adoption than to continue on the assisted fertility path. I am sure there are people for whom assisted fertility is the right option. I have girl friends that went through with it for much longer then I did. Some of them had babies and some of them didn’t. For me it felt wrong from the beginning. I hated the way the meds made me feel. I hated it. No fooling. I hated the way our life came to revolve around what day of my cycle we were on. I felt overwhelmed and instead of feeling closer to Gil I felt a distance creeping in. Adoption we are going through together, infertility felt like a burden I was carrying all on my own despite the fact that he was with me. I wish I could explain my feelings better. I know I didn’t give the clomid as much time as people typically do. I know that getting pregnant takes time. But it shouldn’t be like work. It should never take the fun out of sex, or out of life for that matter. I don’t want a child that badly. I would rather be alone with Gil until the ends of days then to have a baby but have my marriage suffer as a result. I will love what ever child we have no matter how that child comes to us but my first priority is to my husband, to my marriage. That is the commitment I have already made. Gil is real and he is here he needs me more then a hypothetical child. Maybe that will change when the child is real. Gil is my partner and my best friend. He takes care of me all the time and he does it SO well. We are a wonderful team. I will miss some of the alone time we share when our family expands but I know he is always going to be there right beside me. I can’t wait to see him as a father. He is going to Rock My Socks! We are going to be a lucky family to have each other, all of us. Plus we have this amazing extended family. His parents are amazing and are just going to love any “beach bum” we have. His father is going teach her how to clam and take him out on the boat. His mother is going to paint with her and do crafts with him. I am feeling all smushy now. End of story for the moment.