Stop with the stories.
After two years of trying to get pregnant naturally, a miscarriage and seven months of fertility drugs, Peter and I were tired of stories with happy endings.
When we decided to try adoption, the stories seemed to multiply:
“My friend and her husband tried for years to get pregnant and after they adopted, bang! She got pregnant!”
“My sister adopted two kids and then she got pregnant.”
“My boss’s wife was in the process of adopting and she thought she was just getting the flu, so she went to the doctor who told her she was pregnant.”
At first I was polite and listened.
Then my frustration took over. I was infertile.
I started to get mean when I heard anyone beginning one of those stories. I’d interrupt and put my hand up to stop the assault.
“You’re not going to tell me a story about how she got pregnant, are you?”
Yes, the storyteller would sheepishly reply.
“Don’t bother,” I’d say. “I know how it ends.”
People don’t know what to say to the infertile. They try to be comforting. They want you to hope. And that’s fine.
Those stories, though. I had to draw the line.
Peter and I had already started the adoption process.
We still didn’t have one of those endings. I hadn’t magically become pregnant the minute we walked through the adoption agency doors.
Nor did we seem any closer to a baby during the 16 hours of adoption instruction at the Renton office of the World Association for Children and Parents.
We provided reams of paperwork to get into the class: a criminal background check, the doctor’s note verifying our health, the character references and the answers to five pages of personal questions.
Once you’re declared infertile and opt for adoption, your life is scrutinized. Our past lovers, our sex life, our beliefs or lack of them all are open to others.
Peter was candid on the question of previous marriages. He’d never been married but had spent four years living with a woman who had twin boys.
“I never felt like I wanted to get married, but I stayed because it was easy,” he wrote. “We didn’t get married because I couldn’t commit.”
That was certainly the truth, though not exactly a ringing endorsement for parenthood.
It was the first time I’d heard about it, too. I was surprised at the time. But now I think it was a classic case of not talking about everything when we were dating.
One of those everythings we missed turned out to be what kind of baby we wanted.
I thought I knew the kind of child Peter and I wanted to adopt before we arrived at the agency’s first meeting. We wanted an American baby, and we wanted one quickly. It would be an infant boy.
We figured the child would probably be a minority, because with domestic adoptions done through an agency, as opposed to private adoptions, there are far more minority children available than Caucasians.
We knew we had to prepare for the challenge of being two white parents with a child of another race.
We thought we were prepared.
Until they showed the film.
It came at the end of the second day.
The documentary showed a bunch of 20-something black kids talking about how terrible their lives were after being adopted by white parents. I’m still confused about the point the association was trying to make with the film. I guess they wanted to make sure we were going into this with eyes wide open. But I mean, after all, Peter and I were fairly intelligent and we weren’t going to keep our adopted black child away from black culture.
The World Association for Children and Parents had also invited parents who had adopted through the agency to bring in their kids and talk about their experiences.
Several parents participated and brought in adorable toddlers from China and Korea. But the anemic-looking couple who had adopted a black girl from the United States didn’t bring her in. We understood she wasn’t an infant, and that she had been in a couple of foster homes before the couple adopted her. Still, they only brought a framed 8-by-10 glossy, as if their daughter was some kind of missing POW.
Peter and I paid more than $1,000 to get this far in the adoption process.
So even though the film was discouraging and the anemic-looking couple’s missing child was downright worrisome, we chose to endure the home study, in which a professional counselor enters your home and asks even more personal questions for about two hours.
We understood that the counselor needed to test our commitment to adopting a black child and to enter a culture we had little or no connection to.
That discussion brought something home to Peter — something that we probably should have talked about a lot more.
Whose baby was this going to be, anyway? For Peter, it wasn’t going to be his. And that was a problem.
When the counselor left, Peter, a man of few words, declared, “I can’t do this.” Just like that.
He had no interest in raising someone else’s child.
I threw my wedding ring at him. I was yelling. It must have sounded like something from “Cops.” I slept on the sofa.
Hadn’t Peter been totally committed to this whole take-home baby thing we were trying to do? Where the hell had he been this whole time?
Wasn’t he paying attention? Did he think this was some kind of game? I’m sure I got something to drink.
Now it was getting really serious. Now we were getting so close. If everything worked out, we could get a baby in two months or less.
Now Peter was backing out.
What was worse, I realized he wasn’t being totally honest with me.
So, did he want a baby?
I did. Peter did, too. Just not that baby, or someone else’s baby. He wanted me to stick with the hormone treatment.
He also felt we were rushing into adoption. He wanted to go along to accommodate my need to get a take-home baby fast, but he said he also felt railroaded.
I reminded him that even if we continued with hormone treatment, we weren’t guaranteed a take-home baby. In adoption, we were.
We were at a standoff. We couldn’t discuss it.
It was one of those points in a marriage where somebody would have to give in. Or would he?
I was having doubts about our marriage, about Peter. How could we not agree on becoming parents? On me becoming a mother? Would I have to leave Peter after six years to hurry up and find a way to satisfy my biological needs?
A phone call saved our marriage.
Putting it that way isn’t an overstatement.
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