To Anonymous--Yes! Exactly! (edited)

Ok so there were several anonymous comments but a couple of them were particularly spot on.

I should have chosen different words when I say biology isn't better.

Yes, in terms of adoption, biology is better. And I realize that sentence makes no sense at face value.

No one should ever have to be adopted. Adoption starts with loss. I get that completely. Not in the sense that I have been through it, but I understand the concept.

Please, please, please refer to my previous post where I talked about how the mister and I are the fourth choice for parenting our children. Biological parents are always the choice if that is possible.

But that "if" is a great big IF.

Second choice is other family members, again, IF that is possible.

Third choice is domestic adoption in ones own country and culture.

And then there's the fourth choice: us.

We get it that we weren't first, or second, or even third. But damnit we're doing the best we can and working every day to educate ourselves more on the ways we can help our children cope with their enormous, ENORMOUS losses.

I am not an adoptee so obviously I cannot speak from that position. All I can say--with great, great confidence--is that I know the opposite of losing your genetic past because I lost my genetic future.

I will never share details of my childrens' stories here but suffice it to say that they were in an orphanage and their options were to be adopted or to grow up in an orphanage, and then as tender teenagers, be on their own.

Then there was the anonymous commenter who talked about the guilt argument.

OK.

I suffer tremendously. Maybe it's just my personality but here's what swirls through my heart and head on many--most--days.

When you know better, you do better.

I have seen some horrors up close and personal. Horrors that no child should endure. Horrors that exist all the time all around us and it is so, so easy to simply just not think about them.

All of us--fertiles and infertiles alike--as human beings shouldn't tolerate the inequities that abound. But we do.

Because I have seen firsthand children suffering, going hungry, desperate to be held and loved, with little hope of a chance at a family--I can't help but contrast that to my own quest for a family.

It's like Schindler's List, at the end, when he kept thinking about how many more people he could have spared...I think about the money spent on fertility treatments. Yes, it's natural to desire a biological child. But--and let me say very clearly here that I speak only for myself and from my own heart--why did I think I had to have one so badly? There are lots of things I'd like that I don't get, simply because I'm not capable of them. I wish I could have accepted my fate sooner and simply moved on. And I don't get all squishy touchy feely and think that it is because H&H were the only children meant for me. While I cannot imagine any other children because they are the children I am entrusted to raise, I could have parented other children as well.

But really, if there was a way to have given that money and it would have somehow prevented H&H from needing to be adopted I would have, in a heartbeat. Which means I wouldn't have been able to be a parent, which then means I would still have been sad.

But maybe I just should have resolved to be childfree and moved on.

I don't know.

It's all complicated.

But reading the anonymous commenters from adoptees just breaks my heart, because I know how much my children will suffer and I can't spare them that. I know that love is not enough.

EDITED TO ADD: I almost hate having to add something BUT, let me be clear that I'm not condemning IVF, or anyone doing IVF. My God, I did it five times! I'm just saying that in perfect 20/20 hindsight I wish I hadn't done it so much. Everyone has their own path, but for what feels right to me, in my heart, now that I know what I know, I feel differently than I used to. Which is fairly normal for lots and lots of people and processes so it's not really surprising at all. OK, done.