I just want to know who you are

                          I just want to know who you are. 

I’m ready to know you. I’m desperate to know you. I think about you all the time. I call you by different names, different genders (the boy’s room, the girl’s room, when we bring the twins home…). I try and guess you. Your age. Your hair colour. Your eye colour. What do you like? Will I be decorating rooms with superheroes or princesses? Cars or animals?  What makes you happy? Do you even know that? Where are you? How far away are you from me right now?  What are you doing? Are you safe? Are you warm? Are you content? Are you in someone’s arms right now who is loving you and preparing you for me to take over? Or are you scared, cold, hungry, lost, alone, waiting for someone to help you. Perhaps you are happy. Perhaps you don’t really understand that where you are isn’t safe for you. You must be so confused little one.

Oh but!

I’m going to be a mum.

 I’m going to be your mum. I can’t deny I’m stupidly, selfishly excited about that! I feel you in my arms…… (I know it sounds romantic and naff but I do, I feel you). Or at least I feel your absence. I know one day you will lay there and fill that gap. I understand I am talking from my deep rooted longing to be a mother. I wouldn’t be here doing all this if I didn’t feel that! The fact that you won’t have come from my body doesn’t bother me one bit. You are my child. My children. I know that already. I love you already (I know, I know, I’m being romantic, naff and idealistic but I do, I love you).

But……

I do not know you. Yet. I look forward, with such joy, to getting to know you. To figure you out. To understand what makes you happy or sad and how to make you feel better.  To learn your bedtime routine and how to calm you. Which stories you enjoy and you favourite foods. To learn to spot the triggers, if necessary, and help you deal with them. To find what makes you laugh and which songs you love to sing.

I do not love you. Yet. I am in love with the idea of you, but how can I love you when I don’t know you? Yet! 

Oh but!

My darlings, I will love you fiercely and forever. Because you will be mine and I will be yours. We will travel this road together, wherever it takes us, tied together forever. 

I just want to know who you are.

Adoption should not be a last resort!

Over the last few months I have been asked the same question quite a few times and it's really niggled at me.

The question is this...

"Why did you give up so easily?"

This question is in reference to the fact that we 'only' had 2 goes at IVF. Several things irritate me about this. Firstly 

Secondly, to be brutally honest, IVF is f*cking horrible. It is invasive, traumatic and nearly destroyed my mental health. It rocked my relationship more than I ever thought possible. The grief we felt tested us. Luckily, we found strength in each other too, and this overcame everything else. When you are in the IVF bubble nothing else matters. You think about nothing else. The constant push and pull of hope and devastation is exhausting and overwhelming. Ultimately, I decided that I did not want to put myself through it anymore and my husband did not want to watch me go through it. And, we are both sooooo much happier to be out of that world. Don't get me wrong, I completely admire people who keep going through the process again and again but stopping treatment was the right decision for us. 

Thirdly, and very importantly, I do not see this as 'giving up'. I am not giving up on my dream to be a mother, for my husband to be a father, for us to have children and be a family.  I will still have all of these things, we have just taken a different path. The adoption process is also pretty tough. It's been a lot longer than I anticipated and the scrutiny, at times, has been unbearable. The questions, the repetition, the pulling apart of our relationship, the paperwork, our finances, our home and our family and friends have been intense. 

This makes me giggle every time!

We are lucky to have an extremely lovely and skilled social worker, whom we trust, guiding us through the process as well as all the lovely twitter tweeps providing advice, support and pearls of wisdom. I hassle them almost daily! 

Fourthly, and most crucially, my husband and I never wanted to see adoption as a last resort. It didn't sit right with us that we should try everything, and then, only then, when we have no other choice and have exhausted all other options, adopt a child. Adoption is not to be undertaken lightly. Parenting traumatised children is not, by all accounts, a walk in the park, to put it mildly! Yes,we wanted to see if it was possible to have our own children. I think had we not tried that would always have been a question I asked myself.....what if? At least now I know we gave it a shot. IVF is addictive in some ways and it sucks you in, but I think deep down I knew this wasn't our path. 

 So perhaps I feel this way because I have always thought it would end in adoption for us ,which made it easier to stop treatment.  The Adoption and Fostering building in my town was opposite a pub. When I first began 'going up town' drinking I would often look at it and think.... "I will be there one day". We always said that even if IVF was successful we would have looked at adoption for our 2nd child. Indeed, if you have read this blog from the beginning then you will see that it is a thread running all the way through. I do not like the thought that my children, if they were ever to ask, would find out that they were considered the last chance on our list of having children. We want them to know we always wanted them. Ultimately, we want to help, to give children who deserve it a home, a family, however challenging that maybe. After all, what better thing can you do in this life? 

So here we are. Happy, excited, terrified, following our own path and full of hope and love for our children, whoever they will be. 

*All thought and opinions, are, as always, my own.