From Here To Maternity
The old Chinese proverb tells us that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. That may be the case, but given the choice most of us would like to find a short cut. I am no exception. I anticipated a few minor hurdles in my quest for motherhood, the greatest being my husband's vasectomy, performed five years earlier in the dying stages of his first marriage. As it turned out I was being a little optimistic.
Two painful and unsuccessful vasectomy reversals later my own body went under the microscope, and once again my optimism was ill founded. And so less than a year after beginning our quest we found ourselves in a Perth fertility clinic preparing to climb aboard the rollercoaster of assisted reproduction with - you guessed it - sublime optimism. Many months later, after more injections than I care to remember, more money than was sensible and more tears than I would ever have thought possible, the optimism finally began to fade. Not so the dream. When modern medicine couldn't help us become a family we began to investigate other options. And so we tackled the obstacle course of bureaucracy and red tape that is current adoption legislation. At this stage of our journey my optimism was cautious at best, which was fortunate because our path from this point was no smoother than what had gone before. In the months that followed it became apparent that we had exited the rollercoster only to board a merry-go-round. The ups and downs were undoubtedly smoother, but the route was circuitous and progress was painfully slow.
Luckily Glenn and I are persistent people and after dotting innumerable i's, crossing countless t's and jumping through ever higher hoops we were finally and officially approved as prospective adoptive parents. What has followed is another journey altogether - the often mundane, sometimes miraculous, always magical journey of family. Infertility may have taught me some valuable and extremely difficult life lessons but in doing so it has brought me - via extraordinary sadness - to a life that is immeasurably blessed.
Two painful and unsuccessful vasectomy reversals later my own body went under the microscope, and once again my optimism was ill founded. And so less than a year after beginning our quest we found ourselves in a Perth fertility clinic preparing to climb aboard the rollercoaster of assisted reproduction with - you guessed it - sublime optimism. Many months later, after more injections than I care to remember, more money than was sensible and more tears than I would ever have thought possible, the optimism finally began to fade. Not so the dream. When modern medicine couldn't help us become a family we began to investigate other options. And so we tackled the obstacle course of bureaucracy and red tape that is current adoption legislation. At this stage of our journey my optimism was cautious at best, which was fortunate because our path from this point was no smoother than what had gone before. In the months that followed it became apparent that we had exited the rollercoster only to board a merry-go-round. The ups and downs were undoubtedly smoother, but the route was circuitous and progress was painfully slow.
Luckily Glenn and I are persistent people and after dotting innumerable i's, crossing countless t's and jumping through ever higher hoops we were finally and officially approved as prospective adoptive parents. What has followed is another journey altogether - the often mundane, sometimes miraculous, always magical journey of family. Infertility may have taught me some valuable and extremely difficult life lessons but in doing so it has brought me - via extraordinary sadness - to a life that is immeasurably blessed.