Infertility can do a lot of things to you. It can damage your self-esteem, your self-image, and your self-confidence; it can cause problems in your marriage, and make you feel less of a woman. Ultimately, it can make you question your faith in your body, doctors, and even God. All this can lead to an unhealthy cocktail of depression, anger, and bitterness! But, I want to encourage you today that infertility does NOT have to steal your motherhood, and why adoption should be an option after facing infertility!
If you have faced an infertility journey like myself we have all had those thoughts of strangling the next person who dared to say, “you should just adopt!” We all tackle this journey differently. When I was told the sun and moon and stars would have to aline before we could get pregnant; I was devastated! I couldn’t imagine my life without kids. I began to dig deeper and research all of my options. Again and again adoption kept coming up. I finally asked myself: Did I want to be pregnant, or did I want to be a mother? The only answer I had was that I desperately wanted to be a mother! To teach my children about an amazing God, to show them the world, and to love and be loved on such an innocent level. Could there possibly be children in the world that need a mother as desperately as I needed a child?
An estimated 140 million children worldwide are orphans. (UNICEF) The Children’s Bureau released statistics in 2017 that the United States alone has an estimated 437,000 children placed in foster care. Of that number, 118,000 are waiting for adoption while only 57,200 were adopted. My husband and I did not choose infertility any more than these children chose their situation in life. We decided that life is hard for everyone and we could keep asking ourselves “Why us?” or we could start asking “why NOT us!” I was not about to let infertility control my life, and we began to build our family through adoption!
I still laugh when I hear the words “just adopt” like it’s so quick and easy! Adoption is not as easy or as smooth as those people think, but it is totally worth it. Adoption is hard, costly, and sometimes messy, but so is pregnancy! As I look back on my own motherhood story (14 years of marriage, 12 years and counting of infertility, and 2 absolutely beautiful children later), I have to remind myself daily that, even though I loathe the journey of infertility, I am very thankful that it opened the door of adoption. Without infertility we may have never considered adoption, and to think I would be missing out on my children today, is a much sadder story than missing out on the pregnancy!
