I recently read, on one of the adoptive parent message boards, a post from one family who has decided to give up on adopting. They have been dealing with infertility, then waiting to adopt. All in all, the wait had been many years and they were just giving up (theirs words, not mine.) I just don't get it.
I can't understand giving up. The waiting is hell, I'll agree to that any day. There are times that I feel like my heart is going to just crumble in my chest from the pain of waiting. I guess if we weren't trying to adopt we wouldn't have to wait anxiously for our daughter to come home. I guess if we had never started down this path I'd be blissfully unaware of how horrible the wait can be. But if we never started this, I'd never have met our amazing daughter. We wouldn't get the chance to know her or raise her.
I just don't think that giving up will make anything better. You wait and try for years for a child, and if you give up then you guarantee that you won't ever get one. As long as you are waiting you are still living in hope. When you give up, that hope is gone.
How could it feel "better" to just never have what you so desperately desire? How could it make anyone feel "better" to go from "someday" to "never"?
I find it sad that people would have to wait that long to begin with. But yeah, giving up doesn't really do much. You've already started the process, giving up isn't going to undo it and it isn't going to take away any previously experienced pain. Although, I cannot speak about the emotional and financial cost.
ReplyDeleteI find it sad, too. I think the saddest thing is a bit of a commentary on reproductive medicine. Frankly, I think some docs allow people to continue with expensive, time consuming, and painful fertility treatments when they know the chances are so very slim as to be perhaps not worthwhile. But hey, they get paid for it so why not let you get all the IVF you want? Unfortunately, this robs the couple of time that they could have spent matching with a birth mother or an available child, and the emotional energy to pursue their only true chance at being parents. It's not always the case, but I think it happens more often than it ought to.
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