Cycle Breaks, Birthdays and Thoughts on Adoption

Since we are on a cycle break, I am not paying attention to my cycle very much. While cycle breaks suck, I like them for this very reason. They give me the chance to go back to living a "normal" life.

On medicated cycles, I am all consumed with everything ovulatory and pregnancy related. I obsess. I get crazed. I basically drive myself nuts googling and analyzing every single detail of my cycle. Quite frankly, it is exhausting. It takes a lot of work to be a crazy infertile!

On unmedicated cycles, I still take all my supplements, temp and monitor my CM but to much less of a psycho obsessed degree. I like being less crazed, but long for our next medicated cycle as I were a withdrawing addict, craving that next fix.

So, I was happy that my birthday happened to be in the middle of a cycle break. I decided to take the day off yesterday and watch movies with my DH and truly relax. We watched Dallas Buyers Club (loved it), The Hangover III (loved it) and Ender's Game (the book was better). We also went out to dinner with my MIL and had cookie dough ice cream cake! Delicious!

My MIL doesn't know of our struggles. She sometimes gets our mail and I am sure she has seen the return address from our clinic on letters from them. But she has very smartly never asked me (although she did mention something to DH once and he shut her down). She struggled with infertility as well and ended up adopting my husband and his sister (before being one of those women who had children of her own shortly after adopting). I am sure she would be understanding of our plight and the fact that she hasn't asked, lends credence to that, but I just haven't gotten up the nerve to tell her.

The conversation last night swung towards adoption, as a coworker of hers just adopted a child from Ethiopia. My MIL was talking about nature vs. nurture and how hard it was to raise two children who are so completely unlike you. And it made me so sad. For DH, adoption is not an option. I would LOVE to adopt but he is so dead set against it, it's not even open for discussion. It's funny, because you would like that someone who is adopted would happily open their arms to a child that isn't biologically their own. But DH's adoption experience was not a good one. His parents struggled with his nature. They couldn't understand why he couldn't be more like them and were not equipped to deal with a child who behaved in ways they couldn't comprehend. His inquisitive nature and eagerness to learn, coupled with his energy level was too much for them. They medicated him as ADHD (which he is not) and although it was recommended that he skip two grades because he was so bored in school, they did not allow it because they thought it would be unfair to his sister.

DH is a genius (a Mensa Member, actually) and his adoptive parents are honestly only of average intelligence. They seriously could not stand the fact that he knew and understood more than they did and openly admit that now. Last night his mom actually said: "I could never trick him into doing anything! It was infuriating. He always knew what I was trying to do, even at three!" Once they had their own biological children and they saw how different DH was from their own children, they ostracized him. By 15 he was a ward of the court. His dad actually told the judge that they never should have kept him and the judge in turn told his dad that he was a horrible parent who didn't deserve my DH. At 15 my husband started living on his own.

He has said many times that his experience might actually make him a better adoptive parent, because he would have a better understanding of the natural differences and know to adjust his parenting accordingly. But he doesn't want to take that risk. He is also worried that we could still get pregnant with a biological child after adopting, which is what he feels was the biggest obstacle with his parents. Once they had their own kids, that is when they really realized the differences and they treated him and their biological children differently.  He just isn't willing to risk it.

I'll tell you what, during all my early childhood education classes in college, when it came to the nature vs. nurture argument, I put a lot of stock in the nurture argument. I believed that nurture could overcome nature. After having met my DH and heard his story I find that nature is a powerful thing and no amount of nurturing will overcome a person's inherent nature and I am thankful for that. There's no way I would be with my DH if his adoptive parents had won that debate and he had become more like them!

So, here we are! Me at 34 getting close to the AMA mark, without adoption as an option. Fortunately I have approval from my insurance company for IUI #3 so we will be doing that next cycle and keep our fingers crossed that it will work!