Raining on a Sunny Day – Part 2

The next twenty years after being “officially diagnosed with infertility, really are a bit of a blur.  Have you ever wanted to prepare in advance for something so much, that you took an anything goes approach?  I did. I was preparing myself to be completely healed. There was no point in pursuing any infertility treatment as I was not married.  I wasn’t prepared for the cost it would involve and for being a single Mom, if it worked.

I knew I wasn’t capable of conceiving and now I had to deal with the issues of Hormone Replacement Therapy, just to have a normal life.  Not a real pill taker by inborn nature, I bucked at the thought of having to deal with this forever…  The problem was:  I wasn’t married until six months after my 39th birthday. It felt like the ultimate rejection.  For anyone wanting a husband and to be married for many years, it is a long time to wait twenty years.  For me I knew, just knew that  if I could just be married I would have all my yearnings met.  Surely I would conceive, just cause.  I felt like I had paid my dues for waiting…  I had no idea what waiting really was.

During the years of 1983 to 2003, I basically had assumed that I would receive a healing somehow.  I went to every healing line I could for prayer, and I waited.

“Dear God, please, fix what is broken in me.”  This was a continual plea.  My plan was that I wanted to be perfectly well before I was married.  I was so hopeful that I was convinced I would conceive on our wedding night in 2006.  When that didn’t happen, I assumed that I would need medical help.  If you have read any of my previous posts you would know that I was devastated when I couldn’t qualify for that.  Age and high risk, added to cost were not in my favor.

The idea of adoption was a possibility my husband and I discussed, but never really seemed to be an appropriate time to begin.  Finally though in 2007, we began what would become a seven-year process of paperwork, medical, vulnerable sector police checks.  I was excited when that spring we had our first meeting with Children’s Aid.

We did what most couples do.  We cleaned our house from top to bottom to bring forward the best impression possible.  I was beyond thrilled when it seemed that our dream of having a child could possibly happen.  Sure it wasn’t our own biological child, but it was certainly a child.  Could we love someone else’s child?  We surely believed we could.

That meeting that had so much hope and so much future and so filled with dreams was not to bring the forward movement we had hoped for.  In our interview is was determined that our lives were on too shaky ground to be considered candidates for adoption.  We had gone through a lot in our first three years of marriage and in our lives, I had become emotionally fragile.  There were many things that were revealed to us in that meeting of how we would have to heal and stabilize in order to move forward.  I sobbed, and sobbed in sorrow and anger and disbelief.  Our file was put on hold and we waited.  This crushed us.

I continued to grieve through the years that followed.  We set ourselves to a reinvention process whereby I received recommended counselling, we further prepared our home by establishing a summer day camp for children and had set up a playroom and a fully prepped bedroom, and we waited.  I in turn would heal.  Finally in 2011, we received a letter that invited us to upcoming PRIDE (Parent Resources for Information, Development and Education) classes.  My husband and I were thrilled.  Now could we have what our hearts had yearned for?  Now are we ready?  Now, do we qualify?  Our thirteen week classes were a joy to be a part of and we felt that things were completely progressing in a rapid forward motion.  For us, the rain had stopped and the sun was shining again.

Following this process, we had an opportunity to begin our home study and were very nervous.  Once again we cleaned our house from top to bottom in order to achieve the best possible impression.  We completed once again, all the required paperwork to update our file.  We met with the original case worker that had met with us four years previous and began a series of  meetings.  During this process of meetings we had everything completely ready in our home.  One of the final goals in our reinvention process was to eliminate some debt that we carried.  We had to sell our home.  This did achieve our goal.  Even the sadness of moving out of our beloved home could not squelch that final announcement from Children’s Aid.  We’d made it.  We were:  Adopt Ready!  …to be continued.

Name(required)

Email(required)

Website

Comment(required)

Submit

Δ