Spring is coming – tra la tra la! I have a bad case of spring fever. Buttercups are blooming all over the yard and some of our flowering shrubs are just starting to show a little color. I have been wandering around making plans to enlarge flower beds and buy roses – lots and lots of roses. We’ve already planted two peach trees (Georgia Belles, the most wonderful tasting peaches you’ll ever slice up and put in a pie!). I even have a very respectable case of poison oak.
Last spring O & I raided the site of long-gone house on the backside of the farm. We brought back piles of 100+year-old bricks and fieldstones from the home’s chimney that had fallen decades ago. We lined the flower beds around our house with the bricks and I made a fieldstone pathway with the larger stones and used the smaller ones to line other beds in the yard. Just beautiful! Except I got what my doctor termed “the worst case of poison oak” he’d seen in years.
So it’s February, spring is just around the corner, and what do I need more than anything? I need more fieldstones and bricks. At least this time I didn’t sit squarely in the middle of the poison-oak-covered brick pile. I did, however, still manage to get some on my arms and around my waist. So I may be itchy scratcherson for a while, but at least I’m itchy scratcherson with some beautiful bricks and fieldstones!
I’m feeling much better about the prospect of not having a biological child (again). I had a rough couple of days last week, though. I think the worst part was that I just felt really alone. My non-IF girlfriends love me and would absolutely have said all the wrong things. My girlfriends who have been through IF treatments would have understood but I really couldn’t formulate much to say other than, “Oh my God I may not have a baby” and “You have got to freakin’ be kidding me” and “No REALLY, I may not have a baby - how is that possible?”. The person I really wanted to talk to was my husband.
If you’ve read this blog for any length of time, you know how much I love my husband. He truly is the most wonderful man I’ve ever met, but as much as he loves me and wants me to be happy, he doesn’t really “get it” either. He wants to. He tries to. But he just doesn’t.
I knew from the moment we met that O would be a fantastic father. He’s great with kids. So yes, he’d be happy for us to have a child and has been supportive as we’ve pursued IF treatments and worked on getting licensed to become adoptive parents. If we have a child (either bio or through adoption), O would do everything within his power to create a wonderful life for our son or daughter. I have no doubt about that. But if, for whatever reason, that doesn’t happen for us, O would be fine with that. He is very content with our life together as it is now. We both know how lucky we are to have found each other and to have the marriage we have.
I don’t think O really ever pictured himself as a dad. In one respect I am so grateful for that. I don’t have the guilt associated with MY infertility shattering HIS lifelong dreams of having a biological child. But on the other hand, it makes it difficult for him to understand just how deeply-felt my desire to be a mom is and what a loss it would be to me if that doesn’t happen.
Most of the time I go through my life with the faith that this is all going to work out – that I will, someday, some way become a mom or will make peace with it if I do not. But on the occasional days when my sprits are low, I want to be able to talk to my husband, my best friend, and feel as if he “gets it”.
What I need to keep in mind, though, is that we come from very different places on this topic and that he can love, support, and even understand my sadness without having to feel the same way himself. Maybe that’s what I’ve been looking for all along and why I’ve felt so “un-heard”. I’ve wanted him to feel the same urgency, frustration, heartache that I feel about this topic.
He simply doesn’t. I can't expect him to.
I am most definitely NOT alone. He listens when I need to talk. He holds me when I need to cry. He tells me how much he wants to make it all better for me. He jumps in with both feet as we prepare to become adoptive parents.
How could I possibly expect more than that?
