Seeking God Knows What

I have never really written about adopting Widget and being an adoptive mother. Bits and pieces while we were in the process, mostly on the adoption forums I visit, but never from beginning to present in a cohesive whole.

I think first, though, I need to write about what led us to adoption…

So here goes nothing

I’ve known most of my life that biological children were not going to be in my future. The radiation treatment I received at the age of 5 1/2 for Wilms’ tumor caused permanent damage to my ovaries and uterus. I started on hormone replacement therapy at the age of 12. Yup, I went right to menopause. Initially, I was not bothered by the infertility aspect of my life. I felt weird having to take hormones to make myself “normal”, but it was a part of my life.

Then I grew up and began dating my future husband, T (well, I thought I was grown up, I was 17). After dating for just over a year, we got engaged. Suddenly, the infertility meant so much more. Here was this guy I had fallen in love with and I realized down the road I wanted children. The loss of being able to have children with him, a combination of us, began to hurt.

Two years later, we were married. Two years after that, we began talking about becoming parents. T already knew about the cancer, the treatment, the resulting infertility because I was open with him from the beginning of our relationship. We talked about adoption and we talked about infertility treatments. My very last visit with my pediatric endocrinologist right before I turned 18, she mentioned that in vitro fertilization with donor eggs might work but it would depend on my uterus and its flexibility. We had an appointment with PH, who is both my doctor and T’s doctor. He referred us to a reproductive endocrinologist.

So that was the next step and all I feel like writing tonight…