The series of unf*rtunate events comes to the end.

It all started last week, when my husband was cleaning out the basement. He gets rid of toys and baby things when I’m not looking. Which is fine, because I told him that I couldn’t do it myself and it was up to him to do it. He brought up a toddler sized Adirondack chair that my stepmother had given to my son before he was born. We all thought it would be years before he could use it, but as soon as he could walk he used it all the time. He loved his chair. It was just his size and he could have his very own place. It became his special TV/movie watching chair and he used it daily until he was about five years old, when he started to outgrow it. I decided a long time ago, that if I kept nothing else from my son’s childhood (besides kid art, of course) I would keep this chair. It’s very sentimental for me.

So, last weekend, my husband came up from the basement holding the chair and said “Maybe we should give this to the next door neighbors (who have a one-year old.)” I know I overreacted. I looked at him like as if he had just suggested we hang one of cats from the window. “No,” I said very slowly and obstinately, “I am never getting rid of that chair, ever.” My husband is not sentimental like I am. He’s more of a pragmatic kind of guy. But when he suggests things like this, I realize there is nowhere, not in any corner of his brain, that he is considering the possibility of adding another child to our family.

Of course, this is what my husband said almost two years ago. He said he was tired of trying to grow our family. He was exhausted, he couldn’t take it any more. The idea of another pregnancy made him want to throw up. As I have discussed here before, I agreed to stop trying and to spend time healing; giving our relationship and our family some much-needed recovery time. Internally, I told myself I would try to come to peace with my miscarriage losses and the even bigger loss of the second child. But at that point I couldn’t give up completely on having another child. It was just not within the realm of my abilities at that point – just as much as it was not within the realm of my husband’s abilities to go through another pregnancy. I don’t think I was ever dishonest about the fact that I hoped that he would change his mind.

It took over a year for me to give up and put away my dream of having another biological child. Something I wrote about in this (post). Emotions are never completely clear cut, but there came a day when I could say to myself with complete honesty, “I am okay with never giving birth again. With all the horseshit that we went through, I am lucky that I have one beautiful child.” It didn’t mean I was happy about it, but the emotional roller coaster of my pregnancies became almost as unappealing to me as they had become to my husband. Not to mention my odds at the age of forty two were pretty crap, even before my miserable history factored in.

But I realized I still wanted to be a mother again. I used to say that I didn’t want my son to be an only child,I wanted him to have a sibling relationship. I wanted him to not be alone when my husband and I were gone. I realize now that none of that truly matters, only children do fine – at least there is nobody to fight with when the parents die and the estate is settled. Only children are statistically high achievers and usually have great self esteem (all that parental attention.) My son didn’t NEED a sibling. Frankly, sometimes I wish I had been an only child and didn’t have to deal with my brother. In the end, the desire to have another child is about me. Nothing has ever given me more unadulterated joy than my son. Nothing has better healed the injuries that the absence of mothering created in my own childhood. As I told my husband at one point, nothing makes me happier than making my son feel safe on a daily basis – something that was deficient in my early childhood and certainly totally lacking from mother during the entire time that I knew her.

With the death of my mother-in-law and my father, these feelings, which have never gone away, have become all the more acute. It’s not surprising that the loss of loved one makes you want more loved ones in your life. I’m sure it’s some kind of primal human instinct (for some of us anyway.) In my own experience, I have seen many people have a child, or one more child, after losing a loved one. And if there is one thing I realized, as I watched my father’s breath fade away in those last few weeks, it is that love is all that matters. Respect, affection, camaraderie – they all mix together to create love. I know it sounds corny. But in the end it doesn’t matter if you were a multi-millionaire entrepreneur or a journeyman plumber. What matters is the love that you gave – and the love that’s given back to you. What matters is holding a dying person’s hand and both of you deriving comfort from that simple action. Kahlil Gibran has said this shit much better than I, but observing and participating in a loved one’s death brought the lesson to me in a new and more sophisticated way.

So, getting back to the Adirondack chair incident. A few days after my husband had quietly tiptoed back to the basement with the chair, it came up again. I don’t remember exactly how. But as we talked my husband said “I don’t really understand, we are never going to have any more kids, so I figure getting rid of things that remind you of your miscarriages is the best thing to do, instead of having to look at them all the time.”

I realized then and there that any mention my husband had made of adoption in the last year, any cracking of the door on the issue, had been purely hypothetical. In my anger I accused him of being dishonest. Which he denied. And it’s true, he wasn’t being dishonest. When he mentioned the possibility of adopting, he was just talking. Like when you wonder what you would do if you won the lottery, or when you discuss the possibility of traveling around the world for a year. In the latter case it’s not like it’s without the realm of possibility that we would take a year off and travel, but mentioning it as a possibility is a far cry from actually quitting your jobs, subletting your house, and pulling your kid out of school for a year.

We talked/argued/debated for a couple of hours that night. He told me that he wants to make his life simpler, not more complicated. I told him that if I had one dream for the next decade it would be to raise another child. He told me that he would rather leave the marriage than do that – that if it really was such a big dream, he could move down the street and I could do it on my own.

Let’s just clarify my dream here. Following my dream does not entail destroying my marriage, creating a broken family for my son, and becoming a single mom. No. My dream is to adopt as a Family, mother, father and brother. My dream does not require that my husband have the same enthusiasm for having another child. My husband would never have gotten married and had kids if someone on the other side had not been pushing him to do so. He doesn’t like to commit to such big decisions. He had much more enthusiasm when children, our child, became a reality. And, while I can’t speak to his feelings about the marriage (particularly at the moment) I know that my son is a great, great joy in his life, and that my husband is a superb, loving and thoughtful father.

I’m pretty sure my husband knows that I will not leave him to become a single mother. Not only is it deeply unappealing to me on almost every level, but I’d love trying to explain that to my son later on. “You see honey, you weren’t enough for me, so I left your father.” Huh.

But here’s my problem, which I’m sure is self-evident: How do I deal with the emotions that are left behind? How do I reconcile that someone else is making the decision for me to give up my dream?

Several years ago my therapist said something to me that has always stayed with me. “You always need to ask yourself, ‘Do you really want to be the person who stands in the way of someone else’s dream?’” It doesn’t matter what the dream is – climbing Mount Everest, changing careers or - having another child.

One could argue that to fulfill my dream my husband must give up his dream. It just seems to me that it is not his “dream” to never have another child. It is his preference. And depending on the day, sometimes it is a very strong preference, other times not so strong. I may be perceiving it all very selfishly. I honestly don’t have any perspective on the issue.

The recent deaths in my family have made me realize that I have half my life left, at the very best. They have made me think “What do I really want to do with this time.” Adopting a child, with my husband, is what I wanted to do, and he does not want to do it.

Why does he not want to adopt? Let me count the ways :

1)It’s expensive – and not half as expensive as raising the damn thing.
2)It changes a pretty simple and nice family dynamic.
3)It takes us back to babyhood (even if we adopted a one year old) which was my husband’s (and mine) least favorite part of parenthood. Diapers, spitting up, sleep issues, food issues – nothing is simple. With an adopted child you can add attachment issues to the list.
4)Adoption is not a guarantee that there will be a healthy child at the end of it. And sometimes adoptions fall through altogether.
5)Stress for my son, and for our marriage.

And do I have a retort to any of this? No. It’s all true. And I think there is an even more complicated reason to add to the list. He has felt like he was manipulated into the decisions we have made to have children. I forced him into having the first child. I forced him into the second. Then I forced him two or three more times into having a second. And look where it got us. I have a big fat broken heart, and while I know my husband doesn’t feel the same way, I know he carries a lot of sadness about it. Sometimes I feel like he is determined to NOT GIVE INTO ME ANY MORE. He gave in to me so many times. This time he is not going to be duped into doing something so hard and fraught with pitfalls.

And there is even one more thing. My husband questions whether adopting a child will actually fill the “black hole” of my emotions. He feels that there will be something else I am lacking, something else I will convince him that I need. He worries that that my dissatisfaction and sense of loss will never end. He has to stop the buck here.

It gets very complicated doesn’t it? And it’s not really worth debating him on any of these points, because it’s his opinion, and none of it is black and white.

But I do have a list of reasons for wanting to adopt:

1) Love.
2) An emotionally (and probably culturally) educational experience for our family.
3) The possibility of my son having a sibling that he can be friends with at some point and share life experience with.
4) Giving a child that is alive a good and loving home. Of course that should never be THE reason to adopt, but there is no denying that there are children that are living in orphanages, without parents, that need parents.

If you didn’t notice – his list is longer than mine. But having children these days, in this country, is never a rational decision. For most of us we are not looking for cheap labor to run the farm, and we’re not looking to create enough offspring to out-survive the smallpox and cholera outbreaks. We are making families as a way to connect with each other, we are looking for some kind of normalcy and security and, at the expense of being redundant, we are looking for love.

So.

I feel stuck between a rock and a hard place. I feel jaded and a little bitter. I have a goal that, due to the complications and commitments in my life, I will not be able to attain. When did life get so many limits? It remains to be seen whether my husband’s decision will lie there like a poison in our marriage that ten years down the road will put us on divergent paths. Can I forgive him? Would he forgive me for making him agree to adopt? I think it will be very difficult. I love my husband. I love my family. But I feel a little dead inside.

This will be my last post here. I will not be visiting other blogs much. It’s too much like hanging out with a bunch of drinkers when you just joined AA. It is too painful for me. I need to quit cold turkey and figure out what I am going to do next.

Comments

[Lala]

You will be missed but it's understandable to want to move on. Good luck.

[Casey]

Dear Patricia,

You have written a beautiful and moving post about very painful issues.

The first thing I want to say, actually recommend, is a book. It's called "Passionate Marriage" and I've read it probably five times in seven years of marriage and it never fails to instill me with courage to face myself and my marriage with integrity. You are dealing with very deep issues that will resonate maybe forever with you. Because I can't urge you strongly enough to hold on to yourself, I know that reading this book might be able to. (Be forewarned, it's a very radical--yet compassionate--approach to marriage/sex therapy and can be graphic in places. However, I have recommended it to anyone I know who's married or in a serious relationship or simply fed up with their lives.)

Second, you have touched me (in so many ways...) with your thoughts about families and death and love. I know that one of the reasons that I was given a child is that she is the only thing that will get me through losing my own mother (to whom I am very close). It's a natural and beautiful dance we do. Even though your list is not as long, perhaps it is deeper in meaning.

I wish you much luck on your journey and understand why you must stop posting. My heart is breaking for you, which I hope doesn't sound false or cliche. Let's face it, how much can we know each other through the computer? But your honesty and pain are tangible to me and I wish there were easier answers. However, life and marriage rarely give us easy answers. When we do get an easy way out, it never really feels right anyway.

So, I'll say goodbye and hope you read the book, but most of all wish that you are journeying toward a better place, a happier existence, whatever that may be.

Casey

[Julie]

Oh, my dear. That last paragraph hit me hard.

I will miss you, and I thank you for your honesty here.

[Leggy]

Oh crap- I'm sorry to see you going through this. This battle of wills, this "who will win" was our experience with primary IF and it was horrible. That "who's going to give in first" stuff was just agonizing- it almost broke up our marriage.
I'm more sorry that you are dealing with this than I am to see you stop blogging (eg, I'd rather have you be more pain free and not blog than blog with pain)- but I will miss you. You have such an incredible way with words- you articulate much of what I'm thinking, much of what I've felt in the past.

[Liz]

Thank you so much for sharing not only this post, but your whole journey with us. I can so relate to the things you say, and the honesty you bring. Thank you and you will be missed.

[millie]

I will miss you so very much. You've always been honest and supportive, here and in our blogs. There aren't many of us left, which I suppose is a good thing, but it makes me all the sadder to see you go. I know it's totally selfish of me so I will wish now just you all the very best.

If you find yourself in the Bay Area and in need of a bitter fix, well, please let me know.

[Ashley]

OMG, Patricia. Your post was so deep, and shocking at times, then to read your last paragraph? :(

I do understand though. Hopefully getting away from the "AA" group will have you step away from the IF pain of others, which inevitably makes one think of their own IF issues.

Thank you for your blog. You are an eloquent and thought-provoking writer, and more importantly, a friend.

BUT, just because you are gone from your blog does not mean you will be off my list of friends to email when I need someone who understands.

I give you all my best, Patricia. I hope you find the peace and healing you are searching for.

[susie]

Good luck, Patricia. Thank you for all you've shared, here and elsewhere. I'll miss you.

[Anna H.]

Oh, Patricia, I'm crying. I understand so much of what you're describing here and I'm sad that you are in such place right now. And I'm also sad -- with the selfishness of a fellow traveler -- that I won't be able to read your words any more.

I have learned so much from you and always come away from your blog thinking about the ideas or emotions that you talk about here. I have always admired your honesty, your courage, your strength.

I'm wishing you the very best. I will miss you.

[chris]

I'm so sorry. Whenever you write about this subject it breaks my heart for you and your family. Your feelings about adding to your family are very close to mine, as you probably know. Ultimatums seem unfair, for either side. I don't know how I would get over it--I'm too stubborn and mean. I admire that you are trying.

Take care. I wish you all the luck in the world.

[thalia]

Your line about how you would justify leaving your husband, to you son later on, really hit home.

I'm so sorry that this goes on being so bloody painful and difficult. I admire tremendously your strength and courage in dealing with it as an adult, and putting such an emphasis on the importance of your marriage, and the compromises and changes required to make that your priority. Have you laid it out to your husband as clearly as you lay it out here, do you think?

I am very sad to lose the option of continuing to understand your journey, as I think it's a very important one. I do hope that even though you aren't writing, you will know that many of us in this community will still be thinking of you and hoping that the actions you're taking will end up in the best possible place for the three current members of your family.

[carosgram]

My best wishes go out to you as you come to terms with your future. I hope you find other dreams that will not replace the one you have about a family but will bring you happiness and satisfaction even if your family remains as it is today. Never easy to say goodbye to a dream, but unfair to hold your whole family hostage to it also. I don't know what the future holds for you but I can only hope you find something to fill that empty hole.

[J]

Tears here as well. I completely understand your need to pull away from the blogospere. Just as I wouldn't sit in a room with a bunch of pregnant women by choice right now, I shouldn't be doing that to myself virtually.

It is especially difficult because it seems that so many people did finally succeed and are even working on their second now - as happy as I am for all of them, I am sad for me.

I have always felt a kinship with you and your relationship with your husband. It is so very difficult when one partner really doesn't want to go the distance for a child. My husband is still taking teeny, tiny baby steps and I am doubtful that he will take it all the way. I am so sick of everything being a big fucking deal. I am sick of his bitching about every little tiny detail. Sometimes, I pull back and wonder if this is right for us. Lately, I am having second thoughts.

How does one carry on when a partner squashed the dream?

How does one not let that affect the relationship?

Sometimes, I want to scream at the people who just assume that it is all so easy - they never, ever stop to think that both parties may not be completely on board. I'm sure my husband will be happy as a father, he just doesn't know that like I do.

He is completely fine and satisfied right now and any hoops he has to jump for other people are making him bitter.

It all sucks.

Why couldn't we just have families like most people? Why must we be cursed so?

I love you and will miss you more than you will ever know.

[Lut C.]

I didn't see that coming. You're lightyears ahead of me, but I have an inkling that similar issues will crop up at my house in the future.

I will miss reading your insightful and nuanced posts.
But I think I understand why you need to go.

I wish you and your family all the best.

[Nat]

I understand but will miss you terribly. You've given all of us such a gift with your writing and your honesty. I remain hopeful that you will realize your dreams - you are stronger and more dazzling than you will ever know. Let me know if your plans ever bring you to NYC. Lots of love to you and your family.

[Emily]

Oh Patricia...

When you see a woman with long, dark hair at Whole Foods whose eyes meet yours and seems a little sad but has an understanding to them, that will be.

I wish you the best. I understand too well as I am still trying to work out the 'next' and it's just so damn sad and angering all compressed into a wholly different emotion that I can't even name.

I'll miss you. Take care.

[Theresa]

Oh Patricia-You have poured your heart out with this post. I wish I could invite you over to my house right now. So many of the feelings you have described re. your husband's views toward adopting was where I was in early August. I think for my dh-our dd is enough for him. He adores her and just does not want to adopt again. But to see his face light up in early Sept. when the early hcg levels looked so good with this pregnancy-I can't tell you what that meant. He has been so supportive through this 3rd pregnancy and miscarriage I told him a couple nights ago if he never changes his mind re. adopting again-as much as my heart goes out to all these little boys on the waiting child lists from China-I don't want to lose the closeness that I have felt renewed between us these past few weeks. I don't want to feel that anger again. I know this may sound weird but it meant alot for me to know this little one did have a heartbeat. I do have a strong spiritual side and I felt as weak as this little embryo obviously was-it seemed to have a very strong soul. I don't know why I had to go through another loss but this one seems to have brought dh and I closer and I am able to treasure our daughter that much more.

Three days after my D&E 2 weeks ago my mom went into the hospital with a compression fracture of the spine. My brother and I spent last week trading off my dad's care and I finally called the VA hospital where they have been monitoring his dementia for the past several years and decided we needed to take advantage of the remaining days of respite care we have for him there this year. That gives us 3 weeks right now to send out more applications for long term care. Clearly it is time. I know he is safe there but Monday night I just bawled myself to sleep because I was so worried he would wake up there confused as he did at his house Saturday AM.
At least my mom can communicate what she needs but the more helpless Dad becomes the more it eats away at me. It has taken my mind off my own loss somewhat.

As I have emailed you recently your blog has meant so much to me because I know so few women my age dealing with IF, pregnancy losses, parents with dementia, and raising a young child at the same time. Somedays it just feels like too much at once. I know you said this is your last post but feel free to email me anytime. I wish I could reach out and give you a big hug.

[Sophie]

Lurker since your brilliant "pain olympics" post who shares more in common with you than I can admit out loud. I, too, am in a similar place with my significant other. The love he and I share is so real, the respect so deeply ingrained -- why can't we figure out a compromise? Why does it feel as though one of us has to end up "losing" when neither of us feels as though we're satisfied? AAAARRRGGGGHHH.

And yet, when things are good, when they're right, the love is just so palpable that I can't imagine not wanting to expand the circle it encompasses just a little wider.

Good luck. I, too, will miss your wisdom, despite my ungrateful and unresponsive lurking. You are a deeply compassionate, thoughtful, honest blogger. Thank you for sharing your journey with us, and explaining why you have to continue it without us from here on out.

However, if you *do* figure a workable compromise out, would you please let us know how you did it?

[Donna]

Stepping away is something I am struggling with as well, I completely understand. Your writing has always been eloquent and thought-provoking. I hope you find peace with your decisions, whatever they end up being. Take care of yourself.

[anotherjen]

I wish i had some illuminating thing i could say that would make everything make sence and throw the whole world into perspective. I'm so sorry that this is so hard.

I'll miss you, too

[Dead Bug]

I cannot stop crying. I wish I had something to offer, but all I can do is cry. I am so sorry, and I will miss you. Your honesty and compassion are so beautiful, and I wish with all my heart that you could have that dream of a second child.

--Bugs

[Sami]

I wish you peace... and know you will be missed and all of us are hoping for the best for you, husband and your son... and heck for your whole family.

[tertia]

I am sending all you my love. I wish I had the magic wand to make it all better.

[Menita]

I am so sorry and I will miss you. I wish you peace - you've had such a long, hard road and it's not over by a long chalk. I hope some day you will come back but most of all, I hope you find your happiness.

[Slim]

I am sniffling and taking deep breaths about your decision. Thank you for your blog. I wish you peace. I cannot imagine how torn and battered you must feel.