“Why Don’t You ‘Just’ Go Adopt?”

For years, we’ve gotten the flippant and sometimes exasperated “why don’t you just go adopt?!” question from those who learn of our fertility struggles. As if it’s just that simple.

There are a million reasons why we don’t just go adopt…

…it’s expensive (private adoption – with all of the legal fees, adoption agency fees, home study fees, etc. – starts at $30,000 or higher; expenses that are totally out of pocket)

…it’s a VERY exhausting, invasive process (interviews, extensive background checks, job checks/income verifications, obtaining letters of recommendation from various friends and family, having every nook and cranny of our house inspected – and reinspected – and verified for adequate (somewhat over-the-top?) safety measures and cleanliness)

…long wait lists (average wait is 18 months-5 years for a match in some places)

…no guarantees (we could get through all of the above-referenced hurdles, be matched, and the biological mom could change her mind at the last minute, leaving us devastated, having to start all over again. After already dealing with multiple miscarriages and chemical pregnancies, I’m not sure we could handle another loss of that magnitude)

Fostering comes with a whole host of issues all its own (including and in addition to the above reasons, many kiddos in foster homes require extensive therapy and damage control measures from years of neglect and abuse, issues which we aren’t qualified/trained to adequately handle. Most kiddos in the foster system are bounced from foster home to foster home, often without warning, and many times are eventually returned to their abusive or neglectful biological parents, even if they are doing so much better with a stable set of foster parents, as was – SPOILER ALERT – recently depicted in an episode of my favorite show, This Is Us).

Even with all of these reasons, I could never figure out what it was that’s always made me flat out angry when that question is posed, regardless of the intention behind it. Until tonight, when it finally just clicked. I’ve realized that it’s because it hit on a nerve I’ve struggled with my whole life.

A huge part of the adoption process is putting one’s life under a governmental microscope of sorts, wherein ultimately, a social worker and then a judge have the final say in whether or not one is approved to move forward with the adoption process.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been the overachieving uber-perfectionist, with an insatiable drive to please everyone else around me, even at the expense of my own happiness. I’ve never been one to handle criticism gracefully; it always feels like a personal attack (hence why it took several years before I even started this blog, for fear of critics). I’m constantly in a battle with myself to have it all together, to prove that I can handle anything that’s thrown at me (or at least appear that I do), and go above and beyond to prove my worthiness and value in every situation. I don’t like feeling out of control, and the unknown and utter lack of control over something as seemingly simple as becoming a parent has left me feeling defenseless and off-balance. It has shattered my carefully constructed facade of self-preservation and fortitude. The thought of some government entity literally judging our life and deciding whether I’m good enough to be a mom – and the fear (rational or not) of a determination that I’m somehow not – is at the very core of my anger. In retrospect, it is likely this same fear- and self-doubt-fueled anger at the core of all of our pregnancy losses too; on some level, it’s utterly sabotaged our attempts to create life.

All I’ve ever wanted for as long as I can remember is to be a wife and a mom. My biggest fear is that the latter won’t ever happen; that for whatever reason, God or the Universe or whatever is out there has somehow decided that I’m not good enough to raise children – whether biologically related to me or not. That I didn’t pray hard enough, that my house isn’t clean enough, that I haven’t done enough (treatments, therapy, self-actualization, meditation, acupuncture, Reiki, IUIs, IVFs), that I don’t self-sacrifice enough to be worthy of the title of Mom. How else can I rationalize why we’ve been stumbling down such a long and painful road, littered with seemingly endless loss and heartbreak for the better part of a decade now? If I’m truly not good enough, how is it that women who don’t want, don’t value, or can’t handle their kids get to have them anyway?

I don’t know how to let go of the feelings of unworthiness, to finally break free from the albatross of self-doubt, and liberate myself from the burden of feeling that I don’t deserve to be a mom. I wish I could shake the demons of inadequacy that have haunted me for decades, stealing my life away, bit by bit. What if we finally cross the finish line to parenthood – one way or another – and I suck at it? What if we finally get there and I screw it all up somehow? I don’t know if these fears are rational or normal…I just wish I could LET IT GO. Instead, for now, I’m living in Lady Gaga’s world, because this fear is giving me a million reasons to want to just walk away from it all.