Girls help me this is only board I can come too right now.

[BethersinMN]

For those of you who don't know me in the adoption section you will soon. Right now, this is the only board I can come too. My pain is too thick and fresh. Read my story under Second Tri if you hadn't already.

I am focusing on the adoption process. I should have done that all along. I had planned on doing that and was all enrolled in July of 2005 and then I found this dr that said she would get me through it and wasn't there for me at all and I had to terminate last Friday. The only thing that is getting me through is thinking about the adoption process and adopting an angel baby. Where we will go through is www.americanadoptions.com they do only infants and place in 3-18 months. My friends both had their babies between 3-6 months.

My questions have any of you lost or had to terminate due to HG? Did you then decide to adopt? When did you know you just couldn't be pregnant anymore? How do you feel about adoption? Andy, can you answer this one also do you love that adopted baby as your own??? Like when you see it you know it was meant to be with you?

When does this grief heal. I wanted my baby (babies) so much. I am so hurt. When you adopt does it take all this pain away?

Also, for those of you who had to terminate when did you start feeling better physcially and emotionally???

Beth

[peanut]

Beth,

I have never adopted, but I new a ton of people who did when I worked in the nursery at church. According to them, you do not love them differently, they are all your children just some grew in your heart instead of your stomach.


Lora

[DebbieS]

Beth,

I lost a baby due to complications with hg at 13 weeks. I had a placenta abruption and they said they needed to remove my live baby for me to survive the next 15 minutes.

When does the hurt or grief go? I'm only 9 months on, and others in the forum would be better able tell you from their experiences. For me I guess there will always be a part that will grieve and hurt over what happened, but that as time passes I've gained in understanding, peace and acceptance.

When we lost our daughter my husband took two weeks off work, the first week we spent at his parents so we didn't have to cook or clean or look after Joshua. We asked friends not to contact us except by email. If your family is able to take some time away and just be together, not work, do that.

Take care,

[justme]

Beth,

My dh and I are also going to start looking into adoption at the end of the year. Right now, I am just trying, like you, to heal and get past this next month when I should be having Casey.

I don't know about the adoption process, but I will tell you this: my parents are divorced and have remarried. My stepdad is like a dad to me. My dad's step-grandson is simply his grandson. Love and family take on many shapes and sizes.

There is an older couple (not that much older) that I "adopted". I call them mom and dad and Riley calls them Grandma and Grandpa. To us, they are our love, our life and our family. Riley prays for them every night and has no idea about genetics, or dna, or any of that stuff. All she knows is that she loves them and they love her and together they belong. We share stories, and holidays, and rituals and . . . They bring her joy and happiness and are a great gift to her.

In fact, we don't have any family around us and we have created family for Riley. We nurture this idea of family and the relationships that make them up. And just like real family, we sometimes fight or missunderstand and do stupid family stuff. But also just like real family, we love and cherish and nurture and support.

I believe that family is more than just who gives birth to you and who you give birth to. It is those people that you chose to bring into your life, into your innermost being and allow to truly know and love you and allow yourself to truly come to know and love.

To adopt a child, or many children, is a great blessing. For many, it will be their only chance at family, at love, at security and safety and blessing. You will take them into your home and heart and together you will become a family. And your babies in heaven will be a part of that family also.

I will be praying for you as you heal (you are so in my heart) and as you pursue the journey of adoption should you choose to do so.

Hugs,
Karen

[Ivydragon]

Oh, Beth,

So, you've decided to throw yourself into the next thing. Can't blame you, really, it's what I did for nearly two years, adding more and more to my life to be busy and distracted from anything that was going on inside, before I reallized I'd taken on too much and started to push things back off my "plate" of responsibility. Been pushing things off, one by one, for over a year now - not finished, either, lol.

"I am focusing on the adoption process. I should have done that all along". Aye, me, too. My dh is convinced that I was supposed to conceive the child we lost - ectopic, so not related to HG, and not a termination. Still devastating. It's been three years, and I'm still not so certain I should have ever conceived that particular child. I wanted to, and maybe it was the right thing, but there is doubt inside me.

I've known twice that I just couldn't be pg anymore. The 1st was when I was 9 weeks pg w/ Anna, before Zofran, and in the hospital, unable to eat, and they couldn't figure out what to do with me. That was it for me. Later, through the HuGS forums, I began to reallize that I might not have to end up w/ a PICC line during a 3rd pg. Years of planning later, I conceived. But it's like that miscarriage walked me over a bridge, and then the bridge exploded into a storm of fire, and there is no power on the whole of the entire earth that can rebuild that bridge strong enough to convince me to go back over there and conceive again. I suppose God could convince me . . . but I hope my faith is never tested in that way.

I think every woman has a breaking point. They vary widely. Women who, in my private opinion, should never conceive again find the strength to do so, others hold on to the hope of the future - maybe rightly so - that medical technology will find something new. There are women all over the world who never suffer as much as even the mildest HGer does, and says, "that's it, no more babies for me!" This 2nd "knowing I'm done" is different than the first knowing I was done with pregnancy. This time I made sure all avenues of conception were closed. I could probably open them again with a single sentence, but within myself, all the doors are closed, and it is a hallway I don't enjoy standing in. The "Waiting to be a Mom" hallway. More doors have opened and been slammed in my face than have lead to a child. Even my dreams seem to slam doors in my face. A friend who is "done" having kids, pregnant and delivering in my dream - I, pregnant w/ HG and miscarrying in the next dream - and watching a woman who isn't even approved to adopt being handed a baby to take home in my dream last night. Woke up raw.

Adoption is a means to an end. It means no HG. It can't mean no losses - because every opportunity lifts up hope, and we've had 4 maybe's turn into "No's" this year. Other people have said, "that's like a miscarriage", except, with a miscarriage, there's no doubt the child is yours, and in this, the child is alive, and well, and going to someone else. In my heart, I just tell myself the child was not meant to be mine. My miscarriage was harder - they were already mine. I am also glad to know that 3 of the 4 maybe's were actually placed for adoption with a couple just like us, people hoping to adopt. Somehow I think it's easier on me knowing that someone out there had their dreams come true - and one day it'll be me.

A baby is a baby, they need love, and food, and diapers, and cuddles, and guidance, and everything else babies need. It doesn't matter who they are, or where they come from. They all need the same thing, and they don't actually care who gives it to them until they've attatched to someone, and then prefer them. Adam preferred me to his birthmom at the first visit. She couldn't calm him down. I could. Down the road, now that we've had him for 5 years, and he's been our son officially for 4, I can't imagine my life without him - just like I couldn't imagine my life without my biological children. It's a choice. It's a choice to look past biology. Ok, so we can't take credit for how cute he is - that is his biological heritage - but we can also blame that bad behavior completely on his birth parents! He's adopted. He has birthfamily. It's a fact, not an issue. Sure, he wasn't in my tummy, but he was in somebody's tummy, and he happens to know who she is. It is truly amazing to be able to join flesh with another person and create a child, but raising that child takes a lot of hard work and determination, and cooperation that far exceeds the magic of creation. Perhaps the greater miracle is the accomplishment of raising a child to be a good force in the world. I will be far more proud of Adam if he manages to grow up to be a deceant soul. Far more relieved. He marches to his own drummer - inherited different characteristics, excells at different things. Challenges us on a weekly basis. Our biological children are obedient, he's not. Our biological children struggle with musical concepts, but he excells. Each child is different, and has strengths and weaknesses. Biological siblings can be as different as night and day. Adoption in my opinion guarantees that. But, that's ok. I knew families in my childhood that were threatened by different interests - they all had to do what the Mom was interested in, or forget it. But, we're not like that - we encourage the children in their own different interests. I bet there is an adoptive family that is out there that could say that their adopted children are more similar than some of their biological children, though - there's always a balance out there in the world for things like that.

Adam is no different in my heart as my child than the other two. But, it took a while. He made it difficult, being as needy as he was - being so stubborn, and having the trials that surrounded him through no fault of his own. For a while his birthdate was hard to remember - after all, I wasn't exactly there for that birth. But now I remember it easier than my biological children's birthdates, lol. Life moves on. He's a child, and he's ours.

The very first time we saw Adam was pretty magical - I looked at him, and instantly, he looked like one of our babies. We thought and prayed about him for one night, and the next day told the social worker that he was ours and to bring him home, and they presented us as his best fit for a family, and then he brought him home. A couple of weeks prior, however, we'd been phoned about Adam - and had a bad feeling about the whole thing, and told them no. We'd also been riding the maybe roller coaster for a few months. Every 2 weeks on the nose we'd be called about a baby boy - all less than a year old. We saw and visited with 2 of them before Adam. We could have kept any of them, as far as we were concerned. I think it's easier to wonder, and worry and intellectualize the idea of a child - will it feel the same, will I love them the same, will they feel like they are really mine. . . who should they really belong to, which family is best for them. But, when people are there - children are there - babies there to touch and hold and cuddle, we aren't intellectual beings anymore - we're huge hearts waiting to love.

Just the other day a friend was telling me of some of her friends who adopted from China. They'd gone to adopt one girl, and came home with three. They said that once they got there they just couldn't stand the thought of leaving there without their arms full. They could have brought home four, but wanted to make sure they could handle the 3 they'd picked out, first. They went back later on and got 2-3 more girls. I really think that if my adoption worker knocked on my front door and said, "Andrea, here is your baby", I'd fall instantly in love. I do believe, though, that there are children meant to be ours - they just come home different ways sometimes. Adam's 1/2 sister, Emily, could have been ours, but she was NOT our baby. Not interested in her at all. She brings such great joy to her adopted family. I just trust that when all the pieces fall into place, then it will be the right child, at the right time, and in the right place for us.

I do not know if adopting erases the pain. I'm still between the pain, and the adoption. I think it kind of depends on your own spiritual beliefs. I believe that we come from some place, that we have a spiritual existence before and after living on earth. Thus each child is a different spirit. Thus the child I adopt will simply be a different child than I conceived. Thus I will always miss the child I miscarried, until I can be with them again in heaven. Time has helped to dull the pain. I have a dear friend - a mom of an HGer who used to be active at the HuGS board. Her daughter was due the same day I was due. Through the years she has sent me pictures of her grandson - and sometimes it was painful, seeing what I would have had in age - but now, several years later, we say, "wow, really?" because it is just so far from our reality. It's hard to even imagine that they would have been here - because they aren't.

I've learned the hard way that I can't live my life focused on shoulda's, or coulda's. What ifs do not change what simply is, but can make you loose what you do have if you focus on what ifs. The future and the present are what are malleable, not yet set - changeable, moldable into what you want. Sure, there are rules, and regulations, and paths we choose never to trod again - thank goodness! I'd hate to live life with all options open to me all the time - it's far easier to choose when the answer is not "unlimited options".

I know this is long, and probably makes no sense. I wrote to a dear new friend recently that HG I have found touched every bit of my life, like tentacles, reaching into the farthest corners of my soul. My loss did not. There are places my miscarriage didn't affect, didn't color with sorrow - didn't really affect. It was a horrendous happening - but it is already in my past, and I looking forward in only a few short years - and HG has affected me far longer than that. I know that yours are more linked together. But I came to terms with the child I lost far before I have completely come to terms with how HG has affected my life. If it wasn't for HG . . . I wouldn't be waiting for a birthmom to choose me. I've been married 12 years - we would have already had all the children we wanted to have - or at least be ttc the last.

Know that you can and will heal. Sometimes time moving forward is a hard thing - saying goodbye is never easy, and time does not slow down for those moments. But, good things are brought closer with each day that we live, and we are sorry time doesn't bring those closer with more speed. Time has been the best thing for my grief.

Huge

Andy

[Mom to Aidan & Daniel]

My dear, I just wanted to send you a big huge hug .
I've never had a loss, but am considering adoption for a number of reasons. We considered it even before concieving Aidan. We discussed having one bio and one adopted child to complete our family. I go up and down with this, but I'm at a point where, if I got pg, I
d mourn the loss of our adopted child as I feel strongly that adoption is magical and beautiful in its own special way. We're considering adopting from a third-world country, and will take a trip to pick up our child if we do. It is lovely to read stories online by both adopted children and parents. Very inspiring and sweet. And seeing the pictures of the children makes them so real and lovely. For example, this site is lovely:
http://www.tussah.com/lara/chinasto.htm

It's focused on Chinese adoptions, and the stories bring tears to my eyes.
Angelina Jolie, in her interview with Anderson Cooper, speaks about how having a biological child wasn't a better experience than adopting, and about how much she loves her adopted children. She was passionate and clear about it, and seeing the pics of her with her children is so sweet.
My good friend from Belgium adopted a daughter from Ethiopia. She weighed only 5 kg (about 11 lbs.) at 9 months and her muscles were so weak she could barely lift her arms let alone sit up. She would have died had she not been adopted. She's the smartest, sweetest, most amazing 12-year-old today. She came to visit us a few weeks before we left Norway. It was so nice to get to know her.
So, I think adoption can be a wonderful option. Speak it over with friends and supportive people in your life, and get lots of info before you make the decision. Keep us posted. Lots of love.