So the other morning I was out walking the dog, and I passed an acquaintance from church on the street. Until recently, I had always know her as “K’s mom”, as her oldest boy was in one of my Sunday School classes several years back. But last fall, I ran into B at a local bakery, and we had a very short, but very meaningful, conversation in the parking lot. When I ran into her back then, the first thing I noticed was the beautiful dark-skinned baby wrapped close to her chest, a stark contrast to her white skin and flaming red hair. Having seen her husband, I knew that her baby was adopted. When she mentioned the phrase “…when we brought him home”, I used it as an open door to ask about the adoption. What agency did she use, how did you like them, etc. etc. As it so happens, she was instrumental in pointing us towards the agency that we were planning to work with before I got knocked up. I had mentioned to her that we were deciding between pursuing IVF or adoption, that we were leaning towards adoption, but that we felt a little lost. She offered to talk to us about it, and we parted ways. I never reached out to her after that encounter almost a year ago, and this morning as we passed on the street, her with that now-toddler in the stroller and me with my giant belly waddle, I felt guilty. I had to fight very hard not to ignore our barking dogs, rush across the street, and explain that I was not a traitor. I felt so guilty as she shouted “congratulations!” across the street, and all I could muster was a weak “thanks!”.

For a while, I thought I was going to be a member of the adoption club. It’s a pretty exclusive club, one that requires money, stamina, faith, and due to it’s relatively small size, it’s members are pretty close. But instead, now I am a part of the regular-moms club. The one that everyone belongs to. The one that begins with pregnancy and ends with a horrific 48-hour labor. For most, admittance is easy and free. Members spend lots of time sharing symptoms, stories, complaints, weight-loss tips, and clothes. With my now-prominent belly, people think that’s the club I belong to. The truth is that sometimes I feel like I’m stuck in a bad scene from Maid in Manhattan, where JLo is somehow passing as, well, not the maid. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes it’s a relief to just play along, agree that pregnancy is physically taxing, and listen to another gory I-was-in-labor-for-48-hours story.

But that morning, since B doesn’t know our story, I can only imagine that she probably thinks we chose IVF over adoption. And that made me feel guilty. Like I had somehow abandoned the difficult path she had chosen. I felt guilty that I had what I knew at some point she had wanted. But I know these are only projected feelings, that they belong to me and not her. After all, wasn’t she pushing a miracle in that stroller?

We recently got some very sad news about someone we love going through a very hard time. It’s not my story to tell, but the heartbreak of the situation has been colored by a past of infertility. Last night as Matt and I shed a few tears together, I was struck by how our infertility chapter never really goes away. Perhaps we’ve closed the book, or written the next chapter, but it will always be part of our story. It changes us in ways that we may not see for 20 years. When we look back on ours, what will we say? Of course we pray that we are 5-10 weeks away from our happy ending, but will it really be that, an ending?

Somebody thinks the toys are for her!
Also, I am getting a kick out of that little ticker on my sidebar that currently reads “sleeping most of the time”, because little boy does everything BUT sleep these days! I can now distinguish little limbs poking through and it is SO STRANGE and COOL.

Ladies and gentlemen, that’s what 30 pounds looks like. We made some serious progress on the nursery this weekend, hope to have some photos of that soon!