Nurturing Hope or Courting Disaster

Ever since we "officially" signed up with Bethany I have been brimming with baby madness. (Well, that and impatience since their process is incredibly slow.) I find myself rather surprised. For eight years of treatments I have never really allowed myself to get caught up beyond that "If it works *this* time, then I'll be due in whatever-month." There was never an urge to start making plans for a nursery or purchasing the generic items that would be good for any kind of baby, because I didn't want to end up with a tub full of might-have-beens tucked under my bed.
I'm not sure what changed. Perhaps it's to do with the fact that adoption is gauranteed. Not that any kind of what I would consider reasonable timeframe is guaranteed, mind you. But, unless you withdraw your application, you will, at some point, adopt. Even if it means you've been waiting so long that your name bubbles to the top of the list of people who are called when babies are dropped off at hospitals. Medical treatments don't have that kind of guarantee - in fact, we never even qualified for the refund guarantee, because my problems are so severe they knew it wasn't a good risk on their part. Maybe that was part of it as well. Maybe it's the fact that 8 years ago I was 24 and felt like, reproductively speaking, I had my whole life ahead of me and now I realize that, again reproductively speaking, I'm reaching the point that even if everything did work right I'd be almost to the point where adoption is the only realistic option. And maybe it's the fact that I'm finally at a place where I know we're persuing the right option.

I was never really comfortable with infertility treatment. I don't mean from the standpoint of having a parade of doctors, nurses, and sonogram technicians in and out - I doubt there are many women who are totally comfortable with that. It's humiliating. I mean from the standpoint of thinking that this was the right thing to do, that it was the ethical thing to do, that it was the avenue we were supposed to persue. I think, in some ways, it's good that I felt that way though because while I was disappointed, even crushed, when it never worked, I wasn't crushed with the soul-crushing crush that so many go through month after month after month.

Why did I do it if I wasn't comfortable with it? So many reasons. In some ways I felt a little pressure - that I'd be letting people down if I didn't. In other ways it was the hope that it would be easy and I wouldn't have to deal with all the messiness involved with adoption (I mean come on - I have to move all of my cleaning products out from under my sink. I just can't have them there. After 32 years of having cleaning supplies under the sink, I have to a) figure out where they should go and b) try to remember where I put them - all because some bureaucrat somewhere decided that while parents who are biologically able to have children can responsibly store cleaning supplies wherever they choose, people who are at the mercy of the state to be deemed "qualified" to raise children have to be reminded that this is not a good idea and then forced into different behavior.) Adoption is messy and invasive. And I rebelled against it because it wasn't fair.

Let me tell you, once you've had a parade of nurses in training at your RE's office parade in with no knock, no warning, and no by your leave to view the "most unresponsive ovaries I've ever seen in my 15+ years of practice", unfair takes on a whole new meaning.

So now that that's behind me and the prospect of actually being a parent is in front - I'm impatient. I want our "check the block" seminars to be over so we can move on to waiting to be matched, rather than waiting to wait to be matched. And I want to start decorating my nursery.

It's the last sentence that terrifies me. I want to buy something for a baby that I don't have, that I really have no guarantee I'm going to have any time soon. And my rational, logical brain is calling the other parts of my brain idiotic. The other parts fire back that it's not idiotic, it's optimistic. And the response is that I'm setting myself up for heartache.

But I think for once in my life I'm going to muzzle the negative nellie that lives in my head and let myself do a little bit of dreaming - even if it means I make a few frivolous purchases. Even if it means I'm courting disaster - I prefer to think of it as nurturing hope.