Having God in my life is the only thing that got me through what I’ve been through, and this is why I chose to share my story with others.  I will no longer post on this board if my “religious” beliefs are going to offend someone.  I do apologize if my miscarriage story was painful for others to read but I had noticed others discussing this topic so I felt it was acceptable to discuss.

Amymelissa1974, please don’t feel the need to leave the boards here. Some boards do have a ‘ments’ policy as Babydreams mentioned, but this policy does not seem to be in practice here, so your post was perfectly standard and acceptable.

Once my husband and I decided to adopt instead of continuing to pursue IVF, it was like a huge weight was lifted off of our shoulders.  The constant failure was really taking a toll on me.  All I could think about was what I was doing wrong or what I could do differently to get pregnant.  There are people who just don’t understand what infertility is like and they never will.  There are the people who can come close to understanding (very close friends and family), but I have now come to the conclusion that no one knows what it is like unless they have been through it. 

The feelings of resentment do sometimes creep in.  The hardest part of infertility for me before was seeing my husband’s baby pictures at his mom and dad’s house and feeling like I had failed everyone.  I was supposed to have a baby that looked like him.  After many long discussions and going to our adoption seminars, we decided that what was important wasn’t whether the baby looked like us.  We just wanted a baby to love.  Our daughter is due in less than two weeks.  We are doing a transracial adoption.  She is full African American. 

I still see my fertility doctor for other reproductive issues….  Now my appointments don’t involve crying moments at the end.  I give him adoption updates and he couldn’t be happier.  He was the one that gave us the recommendation for our agency.  Decidng to move on was the BEST decision.

Wow!  Everything you said is how I feel.  I am currently at home from work recovering from a rupturd ectopic that cost me my right fallopian tube.  This was my third miscarriage and I hope my last.  My husband and I have decided that not only my physical health but our emotional health is more important.  My sister just welcomed her second baby into this world, and as much as I am happy, I am sad as well.  I also have a bicornuate uterus which doesn’t help.  I am tired of feeling like “why me” and I am ready to start thinking “why not me”.  Why not me when it comes to raising a child.  It doesn’t matter if it is a biological child or not.  My husband and I are ready to love any child.  I agree with you that at first you feel like you let everyone down.  The one thing that should come so naturally is the hardest to achieve.  My husband has talked about having babies from day one and I feel that I have let him down.  I know he would never say that even if he was thinking it (which I don’t think he is) but I do feel like I couldn’t provide him with a baby. 
I am literally at step one when it comes to adoption.  That is why I am here and I am hoping to learn as much as I can.  I wish you the best of luck with your new family and I hope we are as fortunate as you with adoption.  Good Luck and you will be a great mommy!!

Having a sibling who had little difficulty conceiving was also a touchy subject, too.  Just weeks after our last failed IVF attempt, my sister and brother-in-law discovered they were unexpectedly pregnant.  They hadn’t been trying.  I am very close with my sister and she was very upset when she told me.  She knew I would be devastated.  I tried very hard to be “happy” during her pregnancy and all of the things that go along with that.  It was very hard.  Knowing that she was due at the same time that I “should have been” was very hard.  It even made it hard for me to form an attachment with my niece at first.

I did find it hard to enjoy my niece at first and I found it even harder to act happy and over joyed at her baby shower.  I honestly felt like throwing back a cold one instead of sitting in the middle of all these moms and talking about diaper rash and teething.  It is a physical pain than others cannot understand.  It also didn’t help that my mom and other sister came out to visit and while I was not trying to steal my sister’s thunder, my mom was trying to help me get through yet another miscarriage. 
My due date from my first pregnancy should be Apr 11.  It is a date that only I will know the significace of.  I had 3 miscariages all within the last 9 months.  My problem is not getting pregnant, my problem is staying pregnant.  Now that I have lost a tube I am wondering ho successful I will be at future attempts.  My husband deployed the day I started bleeding with this pregnancy so any attempts to get pregnant will have to wait until the end of the year.  That gives me some time to research adoption and let my body heal.
We have agreed that we want to pursue adoption no matter what and if we are able to have our own child it will just be an added bonus.  We are really considering a sibling set but we won’t be greedy.  I just want a healthy child and of course for my hubby to come home safely.  One thing at a time….

I am sorry for your losses and I am sorry your husband is not with you.  I’ve never been pregnant.  My fertility doctor thought he would have to take one of my tubes during one of my previous surgeries (I have severe endometriosis.)  From what he explained before, it is still possible to conceive with one tube instead of two.

The last baby shower I attended was for one of my cousins.  It was the weekend that my husband and I decided that we no longer wanted to pursue the IVF treatments and that we wanted to look into adoption.  That was the only thing that made that bearable.  I have made every excuse world to get out of baby showers unless they are for very close relatives. 

That was the day I asked my mom what she thought about adoption.  She cried like a baby in the parking lot.  Like I said before, there are some people who come close to understanding.  My mom is one of mine.  Then there are the others that say things like, “your life is going to change so much” or “you do know you are not going to get any sleep.”  Well….I have been waiting on this for YEARS.  My family is being formed through adoption, so I sit here waiting for a phone call from an adoption agency social worker waiting to tell me that our birthmom has went into labor so I can start changing “horrible diapers” and getting “absolutely no sleep.”  That might be how some look at it.  I see it as I am waiting for my little miracle.

For those who are undecided about adoption or are waiting….our adoption agency says that “you will get the child you were meant to raise.”  My husband and I truly do believe that.