My Pre-Midlife Crisis

How Did I End Up Here?

When I was little, I dreamed about what my family would be like. There were always kids in the picture. Always two - a boy and a girl. The boy was always older. I would cut out pictures from magazines of my little dream family - little brunette kids that looked like me. From time to time I'd cut out pictures of adults that I thought I would look like, and pictures of what I thought my prince charming would look like. That fairy tale lasted into adulthood.

Graduate school changed me. I stared working on my MA in 1991. I was 20. A mentor told me that marriage and children would ruin my career and ruin my life. She was divorced and childless, and a miserable monster of a woman. I should not have listened. I looked to other female mentors. One had adopted a child from Korea when she found she could not conceive. Others had children and husbands, or were the forever-single-and-childless-by-choice rebel women whom I also admired for needing nothing outside of their careers and their few hobbies.

I got married for the first time in 1993. I had just turned 22. The guy I married had no college degree, no career, and even less ambition. He held 10 jobs in the time we were legally married. He watched us sink deeper and deeper in debt and did nothing to help make it better. It did not take long for me to realize that having children was out of the picture. I figured it would never happen. In 2001 when I talked to a lawyer, something changed. He was a friend, and he and his wife had just had their first child. I felt something. I thought I was sick. I went home and cried. Not for my dead marriage, but for the dreams I had given up. Here I was close to finishing a PhD, 30 years old, with a great job and students who loved me. I had just won Educator of the Year. I had friends and an active involvement in theatre. Life should have been pretty good. But all I had paled in comparison to what I knew I had turned my back on.

In 2002, I fell in love with Michael. I was single again, and the world was mine. I returned to church, I reconnected with friends and made new ones. I saved money and paid off debt. I wanted the family I never had. One major problem - Michael did not want children. He didn't just not want them, he went out of his way to say negative things about them, and about women and couples who chose to have children. When talking about male and female colleagues who were becoming first-time parents, he talked about them as though he was mystified. He talked about the men as though they had somehow lost all reason and sanity and about the women as though they were less evolved. In the Spring of 2003, Michael broke up with me. I had failed to get hired as a professor at Ohio U. where he was at. He made no attempt to be with me because his career was (at that time) what came first. Once again, I felt life was over.

Immediately, I started dating again. I would not date someone who didn't want marriage and children as part of life. I didn't just feel like I was running out of time. I KNEW I was running out of time. At home over the summer of 2003, I made an announcement to my parents. I said that I was going to date again. I also said that if I turned 35 - in May of 2006 - and I was not married and trying to conceive, that I would adopt a child as a single mother. I announced that I was going to start saving for this now, as my prospects were slim in the town of Columbus, GA. Keep that declaration in mind as you read on.

Readers can review my on-line dating experiences in the archives a few months back. It was October of 2003 when I flew to Ohio to see Michael again. It had been 6 months. I realize this is not a long time, but it felt like forever. I still loved him so much, and nothing I did made those feelings lessen over time. The trip did not go well. We talked about marriage, but he could not say he wanted children. In December of 2003, we managed to do Christmas at his parents home in Mississippi. He said he wanted to marry me, and that we could have as many children as I wanted. He said we could start trying as soon as we got married. The following Spring Break in 2004 he drove down to GA from OH, and together we drove to MS and got married. Afterwards, we went to our respective states to finish out the semester. In June I moved to Lexington and Michael moved down in August to begin his appointment at UK. Shortly thereafter, I went off the pill. My cycles didn't come. In January of 2005, I went to a new doctor who sent me for bloodwork and an ovarian ultrasound, and quickly put the pieces together. I had Polycystic Ovary Syndrome. I started on Metformin to get my testosterone down. Through no suggestion of anyone, I asked Michael to go for fertility testing himself - it came back "subfertile". That was a nice way of putting it. He had such low motility and high morphology that conception between the two of us would be virtually impossible on our own. Still, we tried. But we were not getting younger, and didn't have all the time in the world to "just see" if we could make it happen. Michael went on Clomiphene to boost his testosterone. It worked - he had higher testosterone and tons of swimmers - they were just mostly non-moving and funky shaped - even worse than before.

I'll spare readers the stories of the many nights I cried and felt worthless and punished by God for all of the bad things I had done in my life. Readers who have followed me for a while have read about the toll it took on our marriage. We ended up in marriage counseling, our enjoyment of each other down to a bare minimum, our arguments more heated, and our intimate life together almost non-existent. One night after hours of battling each other, Michael said he didn't want to be married anymore. The next day, I contacted our pastor. I did not know what else to do. I was ashamed and desperate. When he met with us, he was strangely upbeat. He asked simple questions, and then the shocker was this: He said he saw a great deal of hope. He said he didn't think the marriage was failing, but that we were just struggling like many couples do. Hope. He said he saw hope. In my mind, I cussed our pastor out. I sure did not see hope.

I needed a change. Out pastor told us to stop going to our marriage counselor - that it was doing more harm than good. He was right - within weeks we were more calm, talking, hugging, and even enjoying more intimacy. We worked on forgiveness instead of rehashing our hurts and frustrations.

Desperate for sunshine, I decided to become a foster mother to a batch of kittens. They were orange tiger kittens. Three bursts of sunshine with loud motors who needed love as much as they wanted to give it.

When they were gone, I got another batch of kittens - this time 5 kittens - 4 weeks old. Again, I loved being a caretaker and watching the little ones grow and jump and climb. I watched this batch of ferrel kittens learn to be held and cuddled. I watched them learn to not be afraid of me.

In talking to my mom one day (who knew about the PCOS and infertility), she asked why we didn't just foster human children instead of just kittens. It was an off-handed remark, but mom has been more in-tune to my feelings and needs than most people - despite our differences, geographic distance, and infrequent visits. I had to wonder where that comment came from. We talked about it a while, and then dropped the topic.

At work the next day, I googled "how to become a foster parent", and then looked up Kentucky. I picked up the phone and called for information. It was easy. They sent us information in the mail and an invitation to the next orientation meeting. It was incredibly fast.

The night of the orientation meeting was June 29th, and to be honest we were not sure what we were doing there. The place was in a very poor neighborhood (the projects?) with a police station nearby. I was physically shaking from nerves. There were about 22 people there. We were asked to go around the room and introduce ourselves and whether we were interested in fostering or adopting. When it got to us, I could barely speak (and I teach Public Speaking). I said we had no idea what we wanted, and I was not lying. At the meeting, we set the schedule for our training classes - whoever showed up would be in the class for the next 5 weeks. Our classes began on July 7th. We met Tuesday and Thursday nights from 6-9. By the end of 5 weeks, there were only 8 of us remaining. Michael and I were the only married couple - the other 6 women were single, unattached women ranging from the age of 25 to 50-something. We felt like the survivors of a very tough process. The leaders had surely chased away anyone who was just looking for a way to earn some extra money (who the heck would do such a thing, anyway?) or the faint of heart or those who just weren't ready. There were many nights that I cried and said I wasn't going back to the rest of the classes. The problems and issues were overwhelming. The "partnership formation" with workers and agencies and birth parents seemed daunting and quite unpleasant, and a huge amount of work.

Our first home visit was July 22nd, and it went very well. Our teacher asked us mainly about the kind of children we would like to have placed with us, and about our plans to adopt. She asked about infertility, but didn't press much. All in all, that visit went pretty well.

Every week we had "roadwork" to do (a nice way of saying homework). We had to answer questions as a couple about what we could and couldn't handle. Many time we just stared at each other. How is it possible to know what you could handle until it's there and you're trying to deal with it? There was so much guess-work. There was so little actual training. I am no more prepared now to care for an infant than I am to say - care for an iguana. (Tank? Water? Bugs to eat? Change the cage? Pet it?) Everything I know about the baby that will one day end up in our care I have learned on my own - by asking others, by observing, and by reading books.

August 11th was our last foster parenting 101 class (or whatever it was called). I miss the other women and having folks who were glad to see each other 2 nights a week. August 19th was our second home study. It was dreadful because all of our psychological and emotional past had to be talked about - divorce, past debt, depression, suicide attempts, my mom's breast cancer, infertility. And I cried and cried right in the middle of it - so hard that I had to get up and go to the bathroom to get some water and calm down. Still, but for the grace of God, we were approved.

One woman who survived the classes with us is Janet - now my friend. She's 27 and having her second home study today. She put it off due to nerves and her fears that something would go wrong and she would get her hopes up. Janet's single, and wanting to foster girls who are school-aged. She has no plans to adopt any time soon. She will make a great foster mom. She already has bunk-beds with the bedding all set for girls to come into her home. We try to check in on each other and keep each other sane. We'll probably be each other's respite care as well. I know without a doubt she will get her final approval. She's a good woman - girls will be lucky to be in her care.

So, when looking back at how I ended up here, I'm astonished. It's God, it's "life circumstances", it's the gentle suggestions of loved ones and mentors. Michael has become a much better partner and plays a more active role in looking forward to being a father. His excitement doesn't always show in outward ways, but he tells me on occasion when I'm upset - "I want this too." That is miraculous. To have been through those classes and the invasive home studies and still want this is the miracle. I think they must set it up that way for a reason. I guess they figure that in the end if you can handle the mounds of paperwork, the topics in class and the gut-wrenching inspection of all aspects of your life - you are fit to parent. Funny though, they never asked if I could change a diaper, give a bath, take a temperature, or if I liked to read books to a child or rock a child to sleep at night. They didn't ask about what I'd do when Baby MIA woke up 8 times a night screaming and crying. No, instead they ask about my infertility. Now that's brilliant.

How did I get here? God only knows.

posted by No Longer In Crisis @ 9/19/2005 11:05:00 AM