The year we were engaged flew by. There was a lot going on in our lives and in that of my extended family. Before I knew it, it was October 30, 2004, and we were walking down the aisle.
We enjoyed our first few months of being married. We owned and lived in a condo near downtown Milwaukee, we went out a lot, we enjoyed restful weekends (I vaguely remember those), and I was furiously pounding out my dissertation. Though we didn't have kids, I felt like I did: that dissertation took up all of my time when I wasn't teaching. I loved what I was doing, so I didn't really feel like anything needed to change.
Then one day I started watching the Discovery Health channel during my lunch break. Though I worked mostly from home, I did set up regular work hours for myself. On days I wasn't teaching, I was writing by 9AM with a break at about 10:30, another for lunch at noon until 1, and then more writing from 1 until about 5pm. Having that structure and routine worked well.
So, during my downtime at lunch I would watch "Birth Stories" (or whatever it's called) and "Adoption Stories" on Discovery Health. "Birth Stories" fascinated me. It followed a woman and her partner through delivery. The show talked with family, presented any physical and emotional challenges the woman was having, and then followed up with her after the baby was born. I learned a lot about different pregnancy ailments (placenta previa, gestational diabetes, for example), and I was totally fascinated with the process.
During those shows, I also realized that I didn't really care about becoming or being pregnant. I just really wanted a newborn. How we got one didn't matter (other than it had to happen legally. HA HA).
In June 2005, my mom and I went to London for about 10 days together. Shannon and I had been married almost a year, and I knew that we would be starting a family soon. When I returned from London, Shannon and I talked about starting right then even though it hadn't been a year. His theory, and rightly so, was that we weren't getting any younger, and that we were in a good spot, had gotten in to a good routine, so why not?
I agreed, and so started the process of a biological family.
By March of 2006, so about 9 months in to trying naturally, nothing had happened. I had read online that for people our age (I was 31 and Shannon was almost 36), couples should give themselves 6-12 months to conceive. Since it had been 9 months, I decided it was time to call our doctors.
Between March 2006 and April 2006, Shannon and I had several tests done. **When all was said and done, my OBGYN's nurse practitioner told me, in a not-so-gentle way, "Based on what we see, your chances of conceiving a biological child on your own are slim to none. Your options now are either IVF or adoption."
Needless to say, I fired that OBGYN, wrote her a letter explaining why, and suggested that her NP take some communication classes.
And this is where our journey to adoption began.
**For personal reasons, I am leaving out a lot of the fertility details. If you would like to know more, you may contact me one-on-one via my Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/KathleenWhitworthWellness.
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