Updates and Decisions

Remember when you were in high school and you refused to believe that you wouldn’t be best friends with those people for the rest of your life? Yea I was totally one of those people.  Not that I don’t still keep in contact with a few people (a good friend and her husband live just a few miles away from us!) but it was nothing like seeing each other every day for years. High school relationships are special to each of us. Even if you hated high school, you still have friends that you love and miss seeing every day.

For me though it was in my first few years of college that I made one of my best and lasting friendships. My best friend Mikki and I had a few years of seeing each other multiple times a week (if not every day) and were there for each other through break ups, ministry ups and downs and a lot of laughter. If you looked at us we have little in common. She is this gorgeous 6’0 (err… 5’11 ½) light brown, straight hair woman who high jumped for the University of Toledo with one of the biggest hearts you have ever seen.  I am 5’4 dark brown, curly hair and couldn’t jump over something 4’0. (Seriously I tried I coach track)

Our sophomore year of college, I was hanging out at her house with her parents like I did often and the topic of adoption came up. How have I totally missed in the last six months that, yep, Mikki is adopted. Huh. I don’t know why I didn’t put it together when she is super tall and her parents aren’t at all. Then at the young age of 19 it hit me. This is what adoption should look like.  They love her so much (seriously you should see the Mikki shrine in this house of pictures and sports trophies) and you would NEVER be able to tell by the way her parents and grandparents love her that she was adopted.

We are now 25 (lies, she just turned 26 a few days ago!) and my heart is so very open to adoption because I have seen it done right. If you asked her mom (and someone I call mom too) she could never imagine not being Mikki’s mom. 

Just to catch you all up, these last few days I have experienced my 3^rd miscarriage.  We went to 3 different ultrasounds, all of which showed that a gestational sac and yolk sac developed but a fetal pole/baby never did. It was a really tough pill to swallow since for the last 6 weeks I have had more pregnancy symptoms than I did with the first 2 pregnancies combined. So we are now looking at miscarriages at 10, 11 and 8 weeks along.

When each of these have happened especially the last 2, we have thrown around ideas of what are our next steps. Do we get tested? Do we start possibly looking at adoption?  Or foster care? For those of you who have had successful pregnancies each time or maybe have had one miscarriage and then went on to have children, it is hard to explain the place I am in right now.

Having 2 miscarriages leaves you in the place where everyone says it was probably just “bad luck twice” (which is a term I hate by the way) and you have hope that the 3^rd time it will work out. THEN you have 3 miscarriages and our world has turned a little. We now have a 50% chance of each pregnancy being successful (compared to most at 70-80%) and there is a good chance that there is something physical wrong with one or both of us.  Ow. It hurts and is a lot to take in.

Before I jump into what I feel like is defending our decisions, I want to put some perspective in your eyes and maybe allow you to see a little of what a friend or family member who has had a miscarriage goes through. When you miscarry, it is literally your body expelling everything from the pregnancy, similar to birth. There is no other real way to explain it. Your body, while yes it isn’t pushing a full term child out, is going through contractions and pain similar to going through labor. I am not saying it’s the same because I haven’t experienced labor, but several women I know who have experienced both have said they were either the same or the miscarriage was worse.

*the next few paragraphs are descriptive, so if you don’t want to read please don’t*

I mean think about it. A week ago I had to take medicine to help my miscarriage start, because for some reason my body thinks it’s a good time to hold onto pregnancies when there is no baby or the precious baby stopped growing. Within 2 hours I was bleeding and within 4 I had period like cramps. Then by hour 6 I had to take the medicine again. Once I took it the real pain started. I had to sit on our toilet pushing, like you would during labor (like my body was actually telling me to do it) for close to 6 hours. Finally once I felt strong enough to get up, I feel asleep on our couch sitting up because that was the only comfortable position. My doctor gave me this prescription and no pain meds, so I took Tylenol. Let’s be honest, I could have taken tic tacs and it would have had the same effect as the Tylenol did to mask these pains.

For me, I knew it was something that I had to do to prevent infection for my body so I pushed through with the cramps for over 12 hours total. (And I am still having them on and off today) But I had to do it knowing that I wasn’t going to be holding my baby in the end. I have now gone through this exact thing twice and one D&C, where I was waking up knowing I was no longer pregnant. I am not telling you this to make you feel bad for me. I want you to have the knowledge and understanding about the pain mentally and physically a woman goes through during a miscarriage.

In the last 18 months, we have gone through this 3 times. That is a lot on anyone mentally, physically and spiritually. So naturally, when we get to this place of deciding our future, please understand to our option to adopt. Several people have said “don’t give up” or “keep trying on your own”. It isn’t that we are throwing that option out completely, but adoption is an actual option for us and was way before we ever had our first miscarriage.

Josh put it this way, “it isn’t giving up considering adoption, it’s like foul shots in basketball. If I miss 10 consecutive foul shots, I am not going to give up but I am going to change my approach to them”

(I am also supposed to tell you that he has never missed 10 consecutive foul shots in his life.  Ha)

We have been through a lot but we aren’t giving up. I am not sure why we think something like adoption is “us giving up”.  Sure I don’t want to go through a miscarriage and the pain ever again.  However, I want to have that super cute baby bump at some point in my life. But what I really want is to be a mom. How rewarding of an experience even if the child is not our biological child. I don’t care. It is not giving up. Mikki’s mom doesn’t care that she didn’t give birth to Mikki. She is still her mom.  She sat up with her at night while she was sick; she was at every volleyball, basketball and track meet. She cried as she watched her daughter walk down the aisle to get married. She cried as she moved away and like any mom she can’t wait to be a grandma. THAT is a mom.

I have witnessed adoption done correctly. Josh and I are currently looking at our options adoption wise. Yes it is super expensive, but so is all of the testing we would have to have done.  Just please understand that miscarriages are such a tough thing to go through, that no women who wants to be a mom WANTS to experience it. But when you decide to take another route to being a parent because one thing may not be working, there is no need to judge.  We need to throw out of our mind, similar to miscarriages, that adoption makes you less of a parent. Raising a child is a blessing however you get there.

I have my best friend because her parents didn’t give up.