Similar reasons are why Ed and I decided to stop trying to adopt. We're already on the cusp of "too old." It can take years to get matched, and in the meantime we could be spending our retirement savings going through home studies, medical tests, adoption agency hoops and fees, and so on. Neither of us wants to be a 50-year-old first-time parent to an infant. It can take years to be matched, and there comes a point where you just have to say, "Enough."
The emotional toll was excruciating. I am not being hyperbolic. It was painful and neither of us has it in us to go through that again. Adoption was, for us, extremely unpleasant and painful from the moment we decided to try until the moment we decided to just move on - which, conveniently, was on Mother's Day this year. I have no idea why we weren't chosen, and really, those reasons are unimportant; we are who we are. I am not willing to bankrupt ourselves, emotionally or financially, to have a child.
When I hear parents say they've never experienced love until they've had a child - although I've only ever heard mothers say this - I wonder if their lives were that empty to begin with. I understand that the love a parent has for his or her child is of a different variety altogether, but despite what I've heard other mothers say, our lives are not empty or without meaning, and we know exactly what love is, even without having a child.
This is why I avoid talk about pregnancy experiences, doctors' visits, and pictures of newborns. I don't want platitudes, I don't want sympathy, and I really don't want to discuss our experience; I want to move on.
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