I wrote this post back in April, mainly because I needed somewhere to express some thoughts, but I couldn't publish it yet as it contained some things that we weren't quite ready to make public. We're finally at the point where it can be shared, though, so here it is.

TC and I are infertile. We've been trying for more than two years now to have a baby, with no success whatsoever. It's been a hard process, though a learning one. At first we were so ignorant of everything that was involved (besides the obvious), but when it seemed like things weren't happening very quickly, I went out and learned as much as I could about what needs to happen to conceive and what the best ways are to ensure that the necessary stars align. All to no avail.

We went to the doctor and did all the testing only to discover that there's nothing wrong with either of us as far as they can tell. And yet every month I suffer through symptoms that could be caused by either PMS or early pregnancy, only to discover once again that I'm not pregnant.

Once we passed the one year mark, I used to get really down for the first few days after I realized we weren't going to be parents yet. It would hurt to see someone going by with their small children, not that I begrudged anyone their ability to have children. I just couldn't help but watch them and long for one of my own.

People would ask us when we planned on having kids, not realizing the hurt they were causing by reminding us of our infertility, or the choice they were forcing us to make between lying to be polite ("Not yet, maybe later, we're not ready yet, ha ha ha...") and being brutally honest ("We've been trying for a while now, but can't seem to conceive, thanks for bringing up something that's none of your damn business..."). We've always opted to be polite, even if it meant lying, mainly because we realized that everyone who asked meant well - they just didn't know better.

Our close friends and family knew. We'd told them that we were trying, not long after we first started, and most of them are terrific. But not all of them. I think one of the most difficult things I've ever had to do was keep my mouth shut through that seemingly interminable Christmas visit to my in-laws, where no effort was spared to make us aware of the fact that they wanted grandchildren and could we please hurry up and fix whatever we were doing wrong. If we hadn't been able to vent to some of our closest friends, who lived nearby, I don't know what we would have done.

I've come to terms with the fact that we seem to be unable to conceive, though no one can tell us why. I didn't realize this before, but apparently 1/3 of all cases of infertility are unexplainable. Medical science in its current state cannot always diagnose the problem. We are part of that third. Not that that has made it any easier. In fact, it makes it harder, since there is nothing we can pin it on, no scapegoat for our childless existence, nothing we can try to fix.

There are other options, I know. We decided early on in our relationship that if we weren't able to have children, our first choice would be adoption. There are too many children without families in the world for us to justify the expense of all the different fertility treatments that are available. I was ready to start looking into adoption almost a year ago, but TC wasn't.

Many of his favourite books contain themes about family and the intangible connections of blood. In the small community that he comes from, you are judged largely by the family you're a part of. Someone will do something, good or bad, and the general commentary will be along the lines of, "Well, that's what you can expect from a Smith - his uncle/brother/cousin/grandfather/etc. was just the same way." Your blood determines who you are, how you behave, what you become. He worried about not being able to really connect or understand any child that wasn't his own flesh and blood.

I had considered this reality as well, but in a different context. I come from a family replete with adoptions, and my adopted relatives have never been treated any differently, or even talked about as being anything other than family, which is what they are as far as we are all concerned. Which isn't to say that I couldn't understand where my husband was coming from, or that I thought his concern wasn't valid. It was an issue that I'd had to work through as well, it was just taking him longer to do so.

It also took him longer to accept the reality of our infertility. Throughout this whole process, he's been content to let me do all the research. He's just not that interested in learning more about it, and that's okay. Just because I felt the need to understand everything inside and out didn't mean he had to, and it didn't mean he wasn't working through it all in his own way.

After almost two and a half years, though, we're finally on the same page and have started looking into adoption, with plans to start the process in the summer.

Well, summer is now here, and the process has begun. And it's completely over-whelming. We're in the very beginning stages, which means lots and lots of paperwork. That's one of the reasons it's taking me so long to post our France pics :)

We have a stack of forms an inch thick to fill out, plus getting police and child welfare checks done from everywhere we've lived since we were 18, and being finger-printed to make sure we're not connected to any unsolved crimes, and collecting references from people to confirm we're not wackos, and medical reports so they know we won't keel over next month - I could keep going! I'm glad the system takes such care to protect the children it's responsible for, but I wish there was some way we could just tell them that we're healthy, non-crazy people and have them believe us :)

It's going to be a long process, taking anywhere from 6 months to several years before having a child placed with us, but at least we've started. And you can probably expect to see a few more posts about it before we're through!