the road to motherhood: thoughts on adoption and fertility treatment

I can’t even count the number of times we have been told, “you should just go adopt a baby.” And if any of you reading this have ever struggled with infertility than I know you have heard it too.  Adoption, to many outsiders, can appear to be the quickest fix for not being able to get pregnant. I am here today to shed some light on this subject and tell you why that might not be the case for everyone. And how not everything is as simple as it may seem.

Let me start off by saying, I believe that without a doubt, adoption is a beautiful thing. I know many wonderful families that have been blessed through adoption. But I also know what a long, hard, and expensive road it took them to get there. I would be lying if I said my husband and I haven’t thought hard about it. But we have always thought about adoption as an addition to wanting to have our own biological children, but never as a replacement. For as long as I could remember, I wanted so badly to experience motherhood. And that does not just mean the end result of getting a baby. I wanted to feel what it feels like to be pregnant, to feel a baby growing and kicking inside of me, to experience what breast feeding feels like, to see what a baby would look like that is half me and half the man I feel in love with, and to have that one very brief moment in time immediately after delivery when the baby is placed into your arms and looks up at you. And you realize that your face was the very first face he ever saw and you will never forget that moment for the rest of your life.

It may seem like a list of selfish demands. Yet every single day couples get pregnant naturally and do those exact same things. And no one ever blinks an eye at them. This might be the couple that you see on Facebook who are newly married and happily returned from their honeymoon. They never get told “you should just go adopt.” They instead get to hear: “So when are you going to start trying,”  “How many children do you want,” or  “You two will make great parents!”  These couples are allowed to live out their dreams. And women going through infertility should be able to as well.

You might be reading this and nodding your head in agreement. Or you might be 5+ years into fertility treatments and now at this point your desire for a baby in your arms has become greater than your desire for a baby in your belly. And that’s okay! And maybe you are a friend to someone who is going through reproductive fertility treatments and you want to be supportive. You may never fully understand the pain and grief that someone is going through in their quest for motherhood. But they are doing the best they can. Motherhood is the craziest, most beautiful, stressful, yet fulfilling ‘hood you can ever walk through. And every woman should be given that chance, if it’s what they want; no matter what road they have to take to get there.

 DRESS: Gal Meets Glam “Hillary Dress” // Sandals: Old Navy // Location: Hampton Park, Charleston, SC

This post was first seen here as a contributing post to skirt! magazine blog. Check out skirt! blog for more super cool blog posts from yours truly and other fabulous ladies here in the lowcountry.