Letters to the Editor
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You've decided not to adopt
And volunteer work doesn't fill the ache in the two of you to give of yourselves.
Please consider fostering. You might make a huge difference in a small life. You don't know what you'd be bringing into your family--but you don't know that when you roll the genetic dice, either.
You just know you'd be embracing a larger family than the two of you. And since you describe a family built on love, that seems like it would be a good thing. Good for someone who may never have known family, good for you. A lot of us would make crappy foster families. Some of us--and you sound like that subset--have both love and strength to give. You're fortunate to have that. You could reap incalculable returns on that fortune.
Grieve as long as it takes. But think about it.
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Creating something together
LW, I don't know what I can say to you in the face of your pain in this situation that won't sound like a Hallmark card, other than this. You have a dream of creating something with your husband, a legacy for the world of your love, hopes, dreams, genes & good & bad points.
I get the feeling that it's the creation of this legacy between you and your husband that is the key here, which is why adoption doesn't appeal right now. You have a dream of seeing your grandmother's face on a baby you hold in your arms.
That's a beautiful dream. But it's only one possibility in a wide spectrum of possibilities that come with pregnancy and birth and children. Not every pregnancy is perfect, nor is every child. I'm sure you would cherish any child that came to you, but I'm saying that there is a difference between dreams and what might happen when and if they became reality.
I don't know if this will help you, but I hope it might. A
friend of mine had a baby girl many years ago. Being a single teenaged mom in a backwater town in the early 70's wasn't all it was cracked up to be, and she gave the baby up for adoption. Years later, we met, we clicked, and after a while, she shyly asked me if I'd been adopted, as I am roughly the age her daughter would be. I hadn't, but we had that kind of connection. She has that kind of connection with other people, too. She mothers everyone. She's a damned good mom, too, to me and her other friends and her biological kids from her marriage. And I love and cherish her in ways I can't cherish my own biological mother, who is a difficult person to love.
In other words, you do leave a legacy, you do make connections, leave an impact, make a difference. You can't focus on the negatives in this. Being a successful person who has a loving partner, you won't. You'll both get through. And at the end of it, you'll see that you maybe have had "kids" all around you the whole time anyway.
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Too much pressure...
LW, I know you really wanted to have a child, but that wouldn't necessarily have been a simple outcome either. You say that "We planned for and dreamed of a certain kind of life, knowing it would make us profoundly, contentedly happy." I'm sorry, but you just can't know that. No matter how good and conscientious you and your husband are as people, there are so many different factors that could mar this very idyllic future with baby and grandchildren you've hoped for. Birth defects, chemical imbalances, infidelity, teenage pregnancy, cancer, bad attitudes that last for decades... All of these things can and do happen even in the most well intentioned families.
I say this not to bust your balls, but just because it seems like you've got this dream baby and dream future family up on a pedestal. It's just not an absolute formula where you + your husband + baby = eternal happiness, you know? With that said, I'm sorry you've had so much pain over this and wish you the best of luck moving forward.
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The odyssey of childlessness
My wife and I went through this exact story - blithe assumption that we would have children, then the dawning realization that it would be medically impossible. After one last and very dehumanizing bout with fertility technology, we moved to adopt, and over the course of a six year period of renewed effort, disappointments, heartbreak, and more, we adopted three children.
Adoption became its own odyssey, with its own rules and culture and difficulties and surprises. Foster parenting would have undoubtedly been the same. Cross-racial adoption has its own. Entering each of these involves crossing a threshold into a specialized world, just as experience with autism or hearing impairment or blindness means entering into a sub-part of society with its own code of honor, its own ethics, its own relationships. Perhaps that's what inspires LW to say that she and her husband have decided not to adopt -- the awareness that they are not equipped, for whatever reasons, to immerse themselves in a subculture.
But of all this, the thing I was MOST unequipped for was the subculture of raising children. The financial tension; the entering into society in a proscribed way; the role of school, public and private; the new meaning in holidays; the everyday needs that get greater, not smaller, as children get older; and the relationships. That's the part I've found most unexpectedly difficult of all, so much so that I sometimes wonder why I stay. Especially because I know how poor a parent I can be, compared to my ideal of what a parent should be.
If it makes any difference (and other adopting parents and adopted children whom I know would agree), there is no difference in the relationship between a biological and an adoptive bond. There are differences, but it's not in the relationship between parent and child. It turns out, for me at least, that raising a child is a matter of raising a child. I'm not sure, if I had it to do all over again, that I would make the same choice, would cross the same threshold. Or that anyone should. But I know, having crossed the threshold, how significant it was. And that the adoption distinction is the least of it. That will take a few years, at most, to deal with. The raising of children will be center stage for the rest of your lives, even after they're grown.