How Can I? How Can I Not?
That is the question on my mind these days.
Ever keep some of your thoughts and emotions tucked away to deal with another day?
Since our third round of IVF that’s exactly what I have done. I have thought about the big decisions that awaited us now and again but it just wasn’t the time to unbox it yet.
Well, this time when it came to mind the box was opened and I just couldn’t close it. I have been a little consumed lately and now as I am putting my thoughts and feelings down in writing I am realizing because now is the time. The time to start to wrap my mind around the path that lies ahead and all the emotions I will have to deal with along the way. I have been all over the place but in my heart, I know our family feels complete. We are ready to move to the next stage as a family of five.
Knowing our family is complete, it is time to begin the next chapter of our journey. Just like with anything you have no clue what all something intel’s until you are going through it. So, I dive in to research and I go down the rabbit hole with my emotions in full swing. Are we ready? How should we go about this? An agency, private matching, or matching site? Closed, open or semi open adoption? What or rather who are we looking for and so many other questions come up……but more about that later.
All along the way I ask myself How can I?
Years of infertility made me strong but also very tired. Years of heartache, tears, procedures and a failed round of IVF led me to a new way of living and in that a passion ignited. Read a tiny bit about my journey here.
We did our second round, and we were blessed with our son even though we only had a couple of mature eggs. When we were ready to continue to grow our family, we embarked on round three of IVF and by that time we had lived several years with our lifestyle changes and that proved to be extremely beneficial. We were abundantly blessed to have all fourteen mature eggs fertilized and of those eleven made it to freeze. We had never had any make to freeze, and I was so excited knowing it is all about numbers but at the same time I knew that might come with some hard decisions.
We transferred 2 snowflakes and were blessed with our twins but boxed away neatly in the back of my mind…. Yet always present in my heart were the nine precious souls that were frozen in time. Because, for us life begins at conception, and we think of them as babies.
My mind is swirling with thoughts and questions and my heart aches at what is to come but at the same time my heart rejoices. I feel we have a chance to do something profound. Something that affects so many lives. More lives than we will ever know because these little people will grow with another family, they will grow into big people that start their own families and they will make their way and their mark on the world.
How can I? How can I give these little people away that God and science created with our DNA? I watch my kids play and I wonder what they will be like. They were created with love and they were created to be loved. They were not created to forever be frozen in time, to be disposed of, or to be researched. They were created to have a chance to live and as hard as it is I know they were created to have life with someone else. I have known that all along I just haven’t let it come to the surface. Our struggle led us here and led us to be able to bless another family or families through our blessings. It is and is part of the path God put us on.
Am I strong enough for this? God must think I am. He is going to have to give me strength. Infertility made me strong, motherhood made me stronger and motherhood with twins made me level up for sure but how am I to do this? Give away the babies I already love so that someone else can love them as their own.
Will they know…
How much we loved them?
How much we wanted them?
How much we are blessed just to know they exist?
How giving them a chance at life with someone else is an act of love?
Here we are…
We have this chance to do something profound.
To give them a chance at life.
To give another family who has struggled like us a chance to carry.
A chance to grow them.
A chance to birth them.
A chance to love them.
A chance to give them a life of their own.
HOW CAN I NOT?
I pray God gives us the strength and direction for the journey that lies ahead.
More to come as we journey through this process. Writing helps me process my emotions and if you’ve known me long you know God called me to share my heart openly. I’ve shared my entire infertility journey, my journey to cleaner living, my pregnancies, birth stories and I feel this is a very big part of our journey, so it needs to be shared too.
So here we are as we journey on to the next chapter.
