Fertility treatment discussions / adoption discussions
Once a couple realizes biological children may not happen for them, there is a grieving process that needs to take place. It can look very different for everybody, including husbands and wives married to each other. I am going to speak for us and say that the process for me took longer and was harder than it was for Dennis. Being a female, having maternal instincts and having ALWAYS wanted to become a mother - walking through this journey was extremely difficult.
One of our biggest disagreements in our marriage was whether we felt okay doing in vitro fertilization. My thoughts at the time were that this was a perfectly acceptable way and hurrah to modern medicine to be able to help couples become pregnant this way. Dennis on the other hand felt so strongly that this was against God's plan. He feels that taking follicles from the females bodies and having the sperm and egg meet in a petri dish and then implant those back into the female was wrong. He was upset and probably disappointed that I didn't share his feelings on it. I told him that it is okay that I didn't feel the same as him but because he felt so strongly about this that I would never ask him to consider or do this. (And, this far later into the future, and knowing the little I know about the hormones, shots, etc that accompanies in vitro, I am thankful that we didn't force my body into getting pregnant.
We had received the diagnosis of infertility and that chances were we would not conceive a child naturally. We were told that there was a slight chance we would conceive through insemination or a higher chance through in-vitro fertilization. We were also told that our highest chance for me to become pregnant is to have a donor egg.
We were considering doing one round of insemination and it would be one where I would have to give myself shots. We saw the price tag of this being around $3,500 and thats when we knew we could only do this once. We didn't have a lot of money in savings, since we had just moved into our new home and spent money on fixing it up. When I researched this a little more, I saw that there was about a 17% chance of pregnancy occurring. I wasn't willing to spend that much money on something that was not a guarantee.
Dennis doesn't remember this - but I do. We had been married probably about 3 years and he said that once we had $17,000 saved up we could start the adoption process. Of course, we were going to keep trying, but then we could also think about / plan on adoption. At the time he said that, I was so happy that he was considering having children another way. However, I was not ready to accept that we were not going to have children biologically. And, I could not / would not save money. Like I mentioned earlier, the grieving process is real and different for everyone.
We had talked about adoption a few times, but it seems that we usually ended with Dennis asking me to find a way that was cheaper than $30,000. The way that I knew of that would be cheaper was through foster care, but neither of us felt like we were strong enough to have children taken away from us.
So, we lived a nice life, both of us working and taking nice anniversary vacations. But, the longing to be a mother never left me. It was always there. And, working inside an office building, I just felt like my life was being wasted doing nothing productive, nothing worth while ... It was a really hard place to be in.
Next up: A foster boy we learned about who needed a home
One of our biggest disagreements in our marriage was whether we felt okay doing in vitro fertilization. My thoughts at the time were that this was a perfectly acceptable way and hurrah to modern medicine to be able to help couples become pregnant this way. Dennis on the other hand felt so strongly that this was against God's plan. He feels that taking follicles from the females bodies and having the sperm and egg meet in a petri dish and then implant those back into the female was wrong. He was upset and probably disappointed that I didn't share his feelings on it. I told him that it is okay that I didn't feel the same as him but because he felt so strongly about this that I would never ask him to consider or do this. (And, this far later into the future, and knowing the little I know about the hormones, shots, etc that accompanies in vitro, I am thankful that we didn't force my body into getting pregnant.
We had received the diagnosis of infertility and that chances were we would not conceive a child naturally. We were told that there was a slight chance we would conceive through insemination or a higher chance through in-vitro fertilization. We were also told that our highest chance for me to become pregnant is to have a donor egg.
We were considering doing one round of insemination and it would be one where I would have to give myself shots. We saw the price tag of this being around $3,500 and thats when we knew we could only do this once. We didn't have a lot of money in savings, since we had just moved into our new home and spent money on fixing it up. When I researched this a little more, I saw that there was about a 17% chance of pregnancy occurring. I wasn't willing to spend that much money on something that was not a guarantee.
Dennis doesn't remember this - but I do. We had been married probably about 3 years and he said that once we had $17,000 saved up we could start the adoption process. Of course, we were going to keep trying, but then we could also think about / plan on adoption. At the time he said that, I was so happy that he was considering having children another way. However, I was not ready to accept that we were not going to have children biologically. And, I could not / would not save money. Like I mentioned earlier, the grieving process is real and different for everyone.
We had talked about adoption a few times, but it seems that we usually ended with Dennis asking me to find a way that was cheaper than $30,000. The way that I knew of that would be cheaper was through foster care, but neither of us felt like we were strong enough to have children taken away from us.
So, we lived a nice life, both of us working and taking nice anniversary vacations. But, the longing to be a mother never left me. It was always there. And, working inside an office building, I just felt like my life was being wasted doing nothing productive, nothing worth while ... It was a really hard place to be in.
Next up: A foster boy we learned about who needed a home
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