Just another bump in the road

Well we tried again this month to get pregnant and it didn't work--we're both pretty sad this time around. We keep trying to keep our heads up and know that it will all work out when it's supposed to, but it just seems to get harder each time.  This was our eighth attempt. We're going to take 5-6 months off from trying because we already have weddings booked for next wedding season, so that will give us some time to make some appointments and make sure nothing major is going on with Jennie. We know that our donor's sperm is excellent and we know that we're getting our timing just right (she starts her period exactly 14 days after we try--other than one month when we were totally off with our timing) so we're worried it might be something more. We also know that it could be nothing, just that we're having a hard time conceiving. A lot of couples take a really long time to get pregnant.

It's hard to explain what all of this feels like--trying not to get excited each month when we try and trying again to not be so disappointed when it doesn't work. It's a bit torturous. It's also hard to explain why I want this so bad.  It's not that I feel something is missing from our relationship or that having children will make us happier (in fact research shows exactly the opposite!), it's just that I know that this is what I should be doing.  Being a parent is something I'm called to do--it's an identity that I feel like is a part of the fabric of who I am. So although I feel like something is missing from my life, I don't feel like something is missing from our relationship.  I don't know if that makes any rational sense, but there it is.

We are still pursuing a foster care placement, although Jennie has some reservations. As a planner/logical minded person she want's to know the future and with foster/adopt that is one thing you just can't know. We're confident though that we'll figure out what is best for us. Now that there's not so much pressure from the agency to be ready for a placement we're able to get through these next few months that are crazy busy and have told the agency we'd be willing to be considered for a placement October 24th. This gives us a bit more time to focus on ourselves and not focus so much on foster care requirements. Although we do have our infant care classes on September 8th and 15th.

So we kind of have these dual processes playing out and we're open to both means of creating a family, it's just sort of a wait and see at this point.

I do have to say I'm excited to have a little while to not think too much about baby stuff and just focus on us. We even have a little getaway planned for ourselves the second weekend of October to celebrate 4 years of marriage and what we're jokingly calling a baby moon before we potentially get a foster care placement.

The Journey to Become Parents

Well we're continuing on this wild ride to become parents--we're sure it will happen somehow.  The foster care placement that we were preparing for/hoping to happen this month didn't work out. We were possibly going to take a sibling pair of two kiddos, but when we visited with them for a weekend we realized they were just too much for us to handle.  I'm glad that we had the opportunity to do a few visits before the kids moved in so that we could better understand what we were capable of.  Originally we had told the agency we'd be willing to take up to two children age infant to 5 years old and we've since edited that to one child age infant to 2 years old.  We went into the process a bit more confident in our ability to just jump in and parent two kids and now we know that we're better off starting with one. It was a great learning experience, although hard to let go of a placement that we were preparing for and wrapping our heads around.

We are fully certified by the agency pending our Virginia background checks. We've heard that in other cases Virginia has taken 3 months to send them back. Hopefully that's not the case for us. Once those are back we'll be able to accept placements as they become available, or really when the right fit comes along for us.

So we'll continue working on making a Baby Crate and we'll also work with the County to hopefully find a placement that is right for us.

EDIT: Just got news a few minutes ago that our Virginia background checks have been received! Now all we have to do is take an infant care class.