Artificially Sweetened

I was going to write a chin-up, hanging in there, positive post. About going back to weight watchers and seizing the moment and maybe influencing a future endocrinologist in the process. Maybe post some really silly photos. Then I started reading my bloglines and I just lost that loving feeling.

I have a confession to make:

I don’t want to adopt.

Or rather, I don’t want to go through the adoption process.

If you dropped a baby in my lap and said, here, here is your baby. Love him. Love her. I would. Immediately. But the process. So much work. So much waiting. And as Karen has so eloquently described, so little to show for it. Perhaps I should make bumper stickers that say: I am nine months pregnant with a homestudy. Please lavish love and attention and societal approval on me. Or: “someone in another country has morning sickness for me RIGHT NOW.”

The other part that takes the joy out of the adoption business for me and that I should probably write more about, is that, to a certain extent, I don’t matter in this process. For some very good reasons, we’ve chosen international adoption and so one of us has to adopt as a “single” woman. Pili has the steady job with the dependable salary and the health insurance. Oh, and the absence of chronic illness. Honestly, when I think about it I’m amazed they even let me adopt a cat. Oh, I remember. Back then I had a real job.

So I don’t have to write a detailed biography and answer ten thousand questions about my childhood. And I don’t have to obtain certified copies of my birth certificate in triplicate, witnessed by a blind nun from Brazil. And oddly enough, that makes me sad. Because we don’t get to do this as a family, talking about both of our strengths and weaknesses and making lemonade out of lemons celebrating the fact that because I have two part time jobs I will be able to quit one and be home with the kid. Instead the homestudy will have to talk about how great the day care is at Pili’s work, even though we probably won’t be using it. Being so irrelevant to the process also makes me into (even more of) a total evil controlling wench, second-guessing Pili’s every move.

It’s funny, because before we failed fertility 101 and 202 and 606, I didn’t care all that much about genetic connections. I am, after all, the person who falls passionately in love with all babies and spends far too much time at faculty parties talking to the children of Pili’s esteemed collegues, rather than the esteemed collegues themselves.

But now that we’ve gone down that road, and I’ve allowed myself to dream soft gauzy dreams of pregnant Pili and babies with my eyes and her mannerisms, I’m finding them damn hard to give up. As I type this I see my about to burst pregnant neighbor (yes, Gourmet, they are mandatory) pulling down her garage door and I feel a fierce shove of anger and resentment. I don’t want to have to go through all of this. I want the dream, and I can’t put it down. I picture a younger me, crying bitterly over a broken toy but unwilling to let it go so that my mom could try to fix it. Before the transcript of our medical charts read failure and bitter disappointment, I was excited about adopting. Now? It’s like having a book you really wanted to read assigned by a teacher you dislike.

I compare the bitter and painful arguments that Pili and I had last night about what questions to ask the adoption agencies and who should do the asking with the cotton candy sweet joy we felt during the brief few weeks of the pregnancy.

And I find myself thinking: maybe one more cycle? Maybe these eggs weren’t so good because I was overstimulated and then had to coast and produced so many. Quantity over quality. Dr. Short-but just raises his eyebrows quizzically when I ask that question. As if, what’s done is done, honey. Crying over $6000 of spilt milk? But I bet if I mentioned that we were thinking about cycling again, he’d change his tune.

The thought even flickers through my mind like heat lightening. Pump. Continuous Glucose Monitoring. I could like, maybe try, maybe.

Then the depression kicks in and I think yeah, right. Remember, nothing works art, this is you we’re talking about. And I start wondering what’s wrong with me that things never seem to work out for me. And poor Pili that her good karma gets pulled down into the gutter with along with my crap. And part of me knows it’s the heavy sunglasses of depression I’m seeing through while an equal part of me is convinced it’s real.

While I’m venting, I also have a little bit of a bloggity pet peeve with someone whose site I’ve commented on lots of times. She’s on my blogroll. And she has not, to the best of my knowledge, ever ventured over here. I don’t think she’s homophobic. She comments on other people’s blogs. She comments on other people’s comments on her blog. We’ve both been through a lot of the same shit recently. So why not me? Do I smell? (Lifting an arm and sniffing, discreetly)

I guess blogging and seventh grade really aren’t that different, huh?

* Before various people start sending me frantic emails: I don’t hate my friends in real life and in the computer who have been through hell and then some to get where they are. I don’t even resent them. Wistful, envious, yes. Resentful, no. I don’t want to avoid them, although sometimes it is hard to see what I want so badly and don’t have.