The road less traveled: full-term and adoption finalization

There is the parental pathway of having sex and getting spontaneously pregnant.

There is the pathway of years of fertility treatments and getting pregnant.

There is the pathway to parenthood through adoption…

And then there is me (and a few others) who get to experience the trifecta of all three.

Our Sweet P’s adoption finalized on January 5th in a five-minute ceremony where the county judge declared us her parents. I was an emotional wreck as I promised to love her, care for her, comfort her and protect her. In the midst of trying so hard to accomplish my dream of having a child, God guided me unknowingly down a path to parenthood that is not as well-traveled or known. I thank him every single day for unanswered prayers. Had any of my IVF’s worked out or previous pregnancies I would not have my daughter. To get to spend my days with her now makes every painful blistering moment of my journey worth it.

(Moments after the adoption was finalized. It’s also of me looking nice and plump at about 32 weeks pregnant.)

Today I hit full-term at 37 weeks with our sweet baby boy. I have not come around to the fact that this pregnancy is actually going to produce a living, healthy, beautiful baby.  It feels too good to be true. Even with three weeks left I still worry every single day and every single hour about him. My one prayer and one wish is that he is healthy. (There has been nothing to indicate he won’t be). His baby shower has been thrown, his nursery is readied for his arrival, his car seat is loaded and I’ve stocked our freezer and pantry with enough food to last us a month without leaving the house. I’m physically as ready as I can be. Emotionally and mentally it feels a bit surreal to be welcoming my second baby within 6-month of the last. I am a bit awestruck by God’s grace and am having a bit of a “why me” moment. Not the “why me” of years prior, like “why do “I” have to be the one losing my baby or why do “I” have to go through these fertility treatments. It’s more of a how did I get so lucky to be handpicked by life to have an adopted daughter and biological boy this close in age???? People love using the word “epic” to describe pretty much anything these days, but for me personally the day I get to hold both of my children in my arms will be one of the most epic days of my life.

(Below: still getting after it at the gym with three weeks to go!)

Is this your first baby?

“Is this your first baby?” and inquisitive cashier innocently asks while peering at my 8 1/2 month pregnant belly as she rings me up. I pause before I answer as my stomach does a quick somersault in to my throat.

When I smile politely and say yes to try to abruptly end the conversation I feel like a liar.

When I smile politely and say no it’s my second I have a daughter at home I feel like a liar.

When I smile politely and say no this is my second child and try to leave it at that I feel like a liar.

Sometimes it is life’s most simple questions that require us to produce the most difficult answers.

What I really would love to say is that I am currently pregnant for the fourth time and with my second son. The baby in my body will be my second biological child born and my third child in total. My answer really should be : “oh no this is my third child. I have a 5 month old daughter and a son in heaven”, but who has the time to explain that to complete strangers?

I also feel there is so much shock value in that statement that it is almost this “drops mic walks away” kind of moment.

I so desperately want to honor all of my babies, but don’t feel the need to be an open book with every well-intentioned stranger that crosses my path on the daily.

Every time the question gets broached (which is increasing more and more as i get further along) I get more uneasy with how I answer. It is a constant and consistent reminder of the loss of my first child. I also wonder how deeply to delve in to my daughter’s adoption as it will one day be her story to tell and not mine.

Deep breath. Sigh.

Hope For The Diminished

Last year around this time, a fertility doctor told me that I would never conceive on my own. In the same conversation he also told me that IVF would never work for me after he chose a really crappy protocol for my first IVF cycle.

When my son is born in March, shitty fertility doctor will be one of the first people I mail a birth announcement.

Diminished Ovarian Reserve sounds like a death sentence in online chat rooms and blogs. Little hope and big fears of a childless life. I never bought in to the idea that my story was already written. My AMH level was a .60, my antral follicle count always hovered around 12 and I have never had anything but a normal menstrual cycle.

I spent the last year believing that I to could solve this thing with a steady cocktail of CoQ10, Maca, wheatgrass, acupuncture, blah blah blah.

Maybe I just got lucky. Maybe all my holistic approach to health and healing worked. Maybe when I was matched with my daughter through adoption, some magical adoption dust helped me conceive. I personally like to think it was my steady stream of dirty martini’s, an In-N-Out burger and an indifferent attitude about pregnancy at the time. I also think God has a great sense of humor and was giggling about his master plan for me to have two babes under 7 months.

Either way, here I am, almost 6 months pregnant with a baby boy. I am the furthest I have ever been. This past week I actually graduated (I did not know that could happen) from my high risk specialist. The doctor said both myself and baby boy (we call him Ax) are now officially low risk now and she predicts smooth sailing from here on in.

I don’t want to wax poetic about my pregnancy, but I do want to offer hope to those that may find themselves in the same fertility boat that I’ve been in. There IS hope for the diminished. The truth is, part of the reason we Google incessantly is that we all really want to find a story similar to ours where the person did conceive, have a baby or make it out of the fertility trenches in one piece.

So while my sweet son will not be in my arms for a few more months, I have made it this far and so can you!