This post has been simmering just beneath the surface for me over the last 2 weeks.  Well over the last 10 years really.  There was a post on a forum I follow asking will you ever forget your infertility when becoming a parent through adoption?.

Yes I am a mom, twice through adoption! My husband and I became parents for the first time almost 9 years ago when our first daughter was entrusted to us and two years later when our second daughter was entrusted to us.  There are times, however, that the infertility that we experienced still raises itself as a reminder of what life had been.  Some holidays are also still a reminder for me as well.  Mother’s Day is a day I proudly share with each of my daughter’s birth mothers, but sometimes the day is tinged by my sense of loss.

You would think that now that I will be 52 years old and past my child-bearing years that I still wouldn’t be affected by infertility.  Others think it disappeared when we became parents, well it didn’t, not necessarily.  We worked through our feelings and dreams not happening at that time in our past and worked on our new dreams of becoming parents along a different path and journey.

The things that still tweak me are not necessarily ever going to go away.  I will never be able to share with my husband that we became pregnant and have that experience.  I will not be able to share birthing stories, stories of what pregnancy was/is like or any of that which comes with the experience. When I learn a friend or acquaintance is pregnant I am happy for them, but then I think I’ve never been able to feel or share that news and never be a part of that club.  Conversations with friends that turn to talking about their bodies and what pregnancy did to it is something I have to pull myself away from.  You may see me get up and walk away even to get a drink, but it is the conversation that I am getting away from.

Don’t get me wrong, I am beyond thrilled to have been chosen to be Mom for each of our daughters.  My love for them is non-ending and I am full of love for them everyday!  My husband and I see there could not have been any other way our family was meant to be now growing not by just our daughters but by their families as well.

Now that my girls are nearing adolescence our conversations have turned to sharing with them what puberty is like and why and when this happens. In turn it brings on the conversation led by them about their birth stories, and the what ifs? of someday when they are older, will they be able to have babies through their own bodies?.  It is these conversations that tweak me. That I will not be the one to share with them what the feelings of pregnancy and giving birth will be like.  I will not be the one to share my experience having not had one to share with them.  There it is that feeling of loss hitting me again just a reminder of how things came to be.

I think it’s fair to say that infertility does not disappear it will always be a part of who I am.  What has made the difference for me is the understanding that it was not what was meant to be for me and my family.  That we had to relook at what our dreams for a family were and what we wanted them to be.

I know the infertility memories are not part of my everyday life, they only perk up now and again and far and few between the times they do.  But there are times I am reminded about the infertile ground I am part of.