National Infertility Awareness Week -Myth Busting

This week is National Infertility Awareness Week, and in support of that, Resolve has asked us to bust an infertility myth on our blogs. I have thought a lot about what myth I could talk about. There are lots of misunderstandings in the world of infertility and lots of amazing blogs are tackling them this week. Melissa over at Stirrup Queens has an amazing one about the land in between those who have struggled, but now have children (like us) and those still in the trenches of trying to conceive. It is a great post and absolutely worth reading. But the myth I decided to write about is this:

"Infertile people are selfish. There are lots of kids in need of a good home. They should just adopt."

This is going to be a two part myth bust, but stay with me, The first part is the "just adopt" part of this statement. This is a myth that is always hard for me to hear, and I have heard it a lot. Maybe it's hard for me because there was a day when I know I would have said it. I can hear my 17 year old self, freshly back from a mission trip working in an orphanage in Haiti, feeling exactly this way. Maybe it's because I have two amazing nieces through the wonderful process of adoption. Nieces that I can say with all my heart that I could not love any more if they were my sisters biological children. They are lights of my life. Truly.

Here's the thing about this myth. I am not sure everyone realizes how difficult adoption is. No part of the adoption process, domestic or international, deserves the word "just" in front of it. The emotional draining and incredibly expensive process is just as difficult, and in some ways harder, than going through fertility treatments. The waiting, the paperwork, the home inspections, the money, the courts, if international, the other countries government, THE WAITING. My sister and her husband have been waiting on their daughter to come from from Guatemala for three and a half years. And they are still waiting. They have spent several times more money than we have spent on infertility treatments. Adoption is amazing, but adoption is not easy. It is not something you "just" do.

And now, to the second part of my myth busting. That infertile people are selfish for spending time and money, for injecting our bodies with these hormones, for going to the ends of the earth to carry a child. Sometimes not even always a biological child. We all know how common egg and sperm donation are. And we keep pushing. Keep trying. Keep paying money for one more cycle. Doing anything to become parents.

And I guess a small part of me sees how, from the outside, it may look selfish. And maybe a part of the process is, but not the part that chooses this over adoption. Only the part that chooses this over living child free. It may be selfish to desire a child this much, but nobody on the outside can begin to imagine how that feels. To want something more than anything else in this world, something that is natural and should come easy, something you feel you are meant to do, and for it to be just out of reach. For me, going through infertility treatments has been and continues to be both the most selfish and, at the same time, selfless things I have ever done in my life. I sacrificed my body to bring a child into this world. Poking and prodding, needles and ultrasounds. Blood draws, hopes, dreams, crushing emotions. All to have a child. The most selfless act. Because in reality, I did it all for him. It was my first test of motherhood. What will I do for my child? My child I don't know for sure exists. The answer was absolutely whatever it takes.

How we get to parenthood is a very personal choice. To assume that people are wrong for choosing fertility treatments over adoption is just a lack of knowledge in regards to both categories. Neither road is easy. Actually, both roads are extremely difficult. Both roads cost insane amounts of money. Both roads are full of questions and emotions and heart ache. But both roads are also, hopefully, full of joy. The greatest joy I have ever known. And that's why we do it. Both roads. That's why we travel down them, to end at parenthood.

**Learn more about NIAW here, and about the basics of infertility here.**