Achey

I was recently perusing Facebook and found several old friends from Seattle I haven't been in touch with for a while. So so many of them have kids, numerous kids I never knew they had. Today it feels like EVERY female I know is either pregnant or has recently given birth. Some friends have 2 and 3 kids already. I hate the feelings that come with this. Especially when just yesterday I was excited about adoption and not feeling like I wanted it to be any different. The variety of feelings related to this process surge and vacillate and lay dormant, then re-surface. There are highs and there are lows. I can feel one thing one day and the exact opposite the next.

I am experiencing the complex package of emotions brought on by infertility and adoption and preparing to be a parent and being a woman with the inherent strong physical desire to become a mother through childbirth but without the opportunity as of yet to achieve that milestone, that coming of age, that most basic, yet miraculous rite of passage. I feel stripped of my inheritance as a woman. That which should be mine. I feel angry and I'm afraid to call it what it is because being in the adoption process complicates things and I don't want people to think that our future adopted children are considered by us as second best. I KNOW deeply that is not the case so please don't get me wrong.

I'm excited to be a mommy but I'd be lying if I said it meant that I didn't wish I were pregnant. I have to be honest. Infertility sucks. I am jealous of those for whom getting pregnant is easy. There. I said it. That feeling is there. It's real but it doesn't mean I wish my friends didn't have kids or that I'm not truly happy for them. As I said it's all just a big jumbled mess of conflicting emotions that just have to be expressed and felt and processed when they come. It helps me to do that here.