No, I’m not pregnant.
In fact, I’m not even doing treatments anymore. (This blog about infertility treatments was short lived, huh?)
Last weekend, Trever and I had a long discussion about what we were doing. Through tears and sadness, we came to the conclusion that we are basically throwing money away. I know, that may sound harsh; it sounds harsh to me still. But from a logical, financial standpoint we were spending about $1000 a month with no results.
Let me break this down for you (some of you are curious about the cost of things):
Every month when I start a cycle, I go in for an ultrasound. That is $225. I get put on medicine, $5. I come back in a week for another ultrasound, sometimes 2 or 3 more; that’s another $225. Once the ultrasound comes back good, I get the “trigger shot”, which is $150. 1 day later I come back, and $500 for the IUI (a little more). Not to mention I had a $20,000surgery that the insurance only paid $5,000on. That leaves me with a $150 payment. Mind you, these numbers are the medical side of it alone.
Where does that leave me? 1 year deep into actual treatments with no results. Is it a waste? No. But what a lot of people don’t understand is that you can only be on medicines for a certain amount of times, and can only do a certain number of treatments before having to do something else. My next “option” would’ve been IVF. And I don’t want to scare anyone with those numbers.
It’s hard on me coming to terms with that. I’ve invested SO MUCH of my body, time, and money and am having to abandon ship. And for anyone that’s experienced infertility, that’s what it feels like. You are a big ole ship, stranded out at sea, taking on water; I have no control over my body, and it just won’t work like it’s supposed to. We were headed for a shipwreck.
Now, I’m having to come to terms with the death of a pregnancy-of a child I never had. I wanted to experience it so badly; hearing a heartbeat, feeling a kick, getting special attention and fussed over, getting asked the stupid questions. More than anything, I wanted our baby. I wanted to see how different he or she would’ve been from Kaleb-if it would have been a he or a she-whose personality would they take after, who they would’ve looked or talked like…
More than anything, though, I wanted MY family. People often times push Kaleb off on me and tell me to be happy with him, and “I loved my stepkids like they were my own” (these same people that have a biological child). Well, that’s great. I’m glad step parenting and co-parenting with the ex worked for you. However, in my life, Kaleb is a mythical, weekend creature. He comes for the soda and cheetos, stays for the TV and activities, and leaves when he’s good and sugared up and spoiled (lucky kid, I wish I had that arrangement when I was little). What I’m saying is, that doesn’t get any more “step child-ish” than that. I don’t discipline him, we don’t have rules, and I’m probably not going to be the one giving him girl advice. I don’t need to. He has his mother. His mother is a 100% constant in his life. I’m just the cherry on top of ice cream. I didn’t get to feel him kick in the womb, change his diapers, or take his first step, or say his first words. By the time Trever and I got married, the custody agreement was already in place, and I’ve never had large amounts of time to forge a mother-son relationship with him. That’s not the dynamic.
More than being pregnant, I want my own family. I want a schedule, and 24/7 family. Trever wants a child to instill his own ideas and skills into, and to take to some sort of practice; he wants to be able to go anywhere, anytime, without asking permission. I want the normal, day to day stuff. Making and feeding dinner, story time, bed time, play dates, grocery shopping, family pictures, disciplining MY way.
We want our family.
In case you haven’t figured it out, or been clued in to my Facebook, we have decided to focus our funds toward adoption. I always wanted to adopt before I wanted one of my own, or really realized the difference between adoption and natural. We are still going to “try” on our own. If we get pregnant AND adopt, I think that’d be great. However, I don’t want any of my children-adopted or biological-to feel like they were a second choice, or a “last ditch effort”. I would never want an adopted child to feel any less because of it, or a biological child to feel more special because of it.
We’re still trying to figure out where step 1 even is. There are a million different adoption agencies, 10 or 20 different types of adoptions, and 100 different ways to get there. So now, I hope everyone will join me in figuring this out. I really want to document everything-adoption blogs seem to only cover from when the family is matched to the actual journey to pick the child up.
From what we’ve gathered, and with the holidays coming up, I think right now we’re working on getting our first bit of funding available and an agency/adoption type picked out. After the holidays we’ll start fully committing to the paperwork, legalities, searches, full funding (yikes), and everything else. We’ll need all the help, prayers, and advice we can get. This journey is scarier than when I decided to do treatments.
Have enough,
Caitlin
