Expectant Mother – Adoption Journey Series…

To say I always wanted to be a mom would be a lie.

My relationship with my physical abilities as a female to create life has been a long and slow acceptance.

I am a romantic soul at heart and the creation of life was my most romantic notion of all. It was something I did not want to do until I was completely, fully, 100% in love – for the rest of my life in love – with the man of my dreams.

In my youth the thought of becoming pregnant terrified me. Not only would people know I’d had sex, but I’d get fat, and I’d have a baby at the end of it. The whole thing was horrifying. Especially the part about people knowing I had sex. I would see pregnant women with their husbands and think ‘ew, they had sex to make that happen, grosse‘.

I was a little immature about it you might say!

When I started dating my ex-husband in my late teens, his family all had children young. Three generations of late-teen-early-20’s mothers and they wanted me to join the ranks. I still remember telling his grandmother after what felt like the umpteenth time we’d had that conversation that “my mother was 35 when she had me and I plan to wait until then.”

They stopped pestering me for fear that I was serious. I was.

Honestly, I just knew that he wasn’t the person I wanted to have babies with, and I wasn’t – at the time – the person who wanted to be a mother.

Maternal instinct….not!

Perhaps it was my own mother that deterred me; she was not the greatest role model and I certainly didn’t want to end up living her life.

Perhaps.

Though I heard plenty of women say that, “all they wanted to be when they grew up was a mother,” – even some with rougher beginnings than mine – they dreamed about it, fantasized about it, and imagined what it would feel like to be preganant. I didn’t do that, or feel that as a youth, or for a very long time as an adult. I couldn’t relate.

Motherhood wasn’t something I aspired to, nor was it something that I desired to do in the confines of my fantasies.

I wanted to be famous, I wanted to travel, I wanted to have adventures, I wanted to be swept of my feet by love and passion and romance. I wanted to be free! And I wanted to get to know me better than I knew anyone else.

When my niece and nephew came along, I fell in love with these two amazing bundles of joy. I adored spending time with them, watching them grow and change, and become little human beings with attitudes and opinions! But even they didn’t make me want to run home and convert my dressing room (one spare bedroom was a dressing room) into a nursery. Nope. Not even a little bit.

I always felt like I had to justify “why I didn’t want kids” to literally everyone we met. As a couple who had been together for a long time (11 years from go to woah), everyone always asked “when are you going to have kids?” or worse, those smarmy comments like “it’s your turn next” with a wink as if they knew better than I – what I wanted.

Those people annoyed me most. I have never enjoyed the people who think they know me better than I know myself; it’s impossible, and quite stupid to imply. So I became almost vicious in my rebukes. “I hate kids. I’d have an abortion immediately if we had an accident.” The abortion comment that I was so carefree with was the one to shut them up.

And at the time I believe I meant it. I likely would have chosen that way. I did have a few ‘scares’ in the early years and each time, abortion was the solution I played out in my head. I never considered even in my imagination keeping a child with my ex. It wasn’t in my heart to have children with him.

When I met my friend’s children for the first time, my first interactions with children outside of my niece and nephew, they too became the exception and I adored being with them. But it still didn’t make me want to have a brood of my own.

I often wondered if I would ever want to have children, if there was something wrong with my femininity, or if maybe it just wasn’t in my make up?

Then, in my early 30’s I fell deeply, powerfully, passionately in love (for the first time in my life), and I felt that spark of desire, that deeply ingrained maternal bloom had awakened. Fascinated by the feelings, and overjoyed that I wasn’t actually “broken” as a woman, I found that I wanted to have a child with this man. I  fantasized about it and tested the waters with my imagination. My heart, my body, my mind – all were on board. And he even was already a father to a 3 year old.

Then I had to return to Australia to sell my possessions and work out a way to make Canada my home for good. During that time I dreamed about nothing else but having a family with this amazing man. Unfortunately time surged ahead and long story short…children for us became unlikely to ever occur, at least naturally.

I’ve come to terms with it, though for many years I hoped and prayed every single month for a miracle to create the life within me I so desired. We even had three incredible weeks of believing that this had occurred (another story for another time), and I’d never felt so excited about anything in my life.

So…as I neared my 40^th birthday, those well-meaning people who knew the big four-oh was coming for me started telling me stories about a friend of a friend who had frozen her eggs, or who had met the love of her life and had children after 40, or who had tried the various ‘procedures’ successfully.

I would joke, “Oh don’t worry about me, if I wanted kids I’d just take a trip to Europe, buy an ovulation kit, and not return till the deed is done.” I always was a bit of a “shocker” when I felt someone was prying too much into what I consider my personal life.

My close friends and I talked about how much I wanted to be mom to a child born of love, and they knew that my internal clock was starting up its motor. Oh how I used to laugh at those notions, not believing I would feel the urgency of time vs. motherhood.

But it happened.

So, I started to consider my options – adoption was high on my list after talking with Jennifer and through my own experiences with it, but I was becoming open to the other options too.

I asked myself to consider if perhaps I could have a baby with another man, with a man I didn’t know and may never know. Hence, the European vacation story – I was only partially joking. I do love adventure and travel, and a holiday romance is still romance!

IVF was out of the question because it is so far out of my budget…those fertility clinics are raking it in and the cost of treatments seems criminal.

As with all things…when I started to consider my options and opened myself up to discovering new ways… then options started appearing… everywhere!

I saw the movie The Switch with Jennifer Aniston and Jason Bateman (love Jason Bateman!) and she was having a sperm party. I remember thinking, “huh, that’s kind of cool; imagine if that was a real thing.” Believing it was just the imagination of the writer.

Then I saw a TV show where they mentioned the same thing! So, I Googled it and found it was a real thing. People actually donate live sperm to be either ‘turkey basted’ inseminated, or the ‘natural way’. I couldn’t believe it!

There were several forum groups around Vancouver that had donors. And a site called “co-parent match” that seemed professional. I started to read. It’s quite a big network actually with many men, some married, some single, some gay, some straight, offering their seed to women who want to have a baby but don’t have the means. They have full profiles (like a dating site), and offer full medical histories and clearance checks. It appears to be a really great option for those who want to bypass the IVF procedure and use a more natural approach to artificial insemination.

I considered this for about a week, maybe two, toying with the idea.

I tried to imagine meeting this person who would father my baby, and who may want to co-parent and share the responsibility which seemed like a nice idea. But every time my heart would constrict and my stomach would twist in a sick little knot.

My heart wasn’t in it.

The reality is: I don’t want to create a life unless it is with someone I love – deeply, passionately, truly. It’s who I am. I am a romantic at heart. I want a child of my own flesh to be created by the romantic love between two people.

Even today, even knowing that I want to be a mom, even feeling ready to be a mom (finally), even with that internal clock tick-tock-ing away…even still, I only want to create life with someone I love.

Which leaves me with one very beautiful option…

Adoption.

Here we were again, it keeps coming up as the way that feels right to me. To have the opportunity to be a parent to kids that are already created, perhaps by love, and in need of a loving, safe, family – that we could create that family together.

Adoption is even an idea I talked about years ago even when I was married, when people I cared about would say that maybe one day I would want kids. I often would reply that if that happened, then at that point I would prefer to adopt.

Two of my step-siblings were adopted; in fact all four of the kids in my step-family had different birth parents. So Adoption was something with which I was personally familiar. I’d had first-hand experience with a family blended through adoption and ‘steps’, and I loved my sister’s and brother so much growing up. It felt right to me to create a family in this way.

And when I came back around to this idea… Universal Forces brought Jennifer’s call.

To say I always wanted to be a mom would be a lie.

To say that I now feel a deep, deep desire to be a mom to children who need one, is such a compelling truth in my heart that it sometimes surprises even me.

What about you? Did you always want to be a mom? Please leave me a comment.

Warm smiles and Love,
Ali Jayne 🙂