After years of “manually” trying to conceive, John and Katie Kelly put their bodies, wallet and marriage through the ringer of modern infertility treatments.
Twenty years ago I was living this movie. I’d met my Mr Wonderful but we weren’t making babies. We had to get help making babies. We never did make babies. My ovaries became my most thought-of organs and my marriage was tested to its core. It was a painful chapter of my life in so many ways — physically, emotionally, financially, and relationshipally.
Not many people knew what we were going through back then. At the time, infertility felt like a shameful and dirty secret, so we endured our journey largely alone, relying only on each other and close family.
Letter Writer: My name is Jeannine and I have just begun the journey to adopt. My husband and I have just submitted our application and will tell our families of our plans within the next month (we have a big family wedding coming up and we don’t want to upstage the bride).
We are beyond excited to adopt. This was a first choice for us. We have always known that we wanted to adopt a child, and have not even attempted having any biological children. We may some day, but right now that is not our intent.
My concern is my parents. I am incredibly close with them. While my mom has expressed that she would be happy with an adopted grandchild, she will then make comments about how I will have an easy time conceiving a child, because she did. I have assured her that I will be getting pregnant and giving her a grandchild that will look like us and share our genes.
Amanda Preston is an adoptive and foster mama of 8 from a suburb of Vancouver, BC. She is also a social worker and founder of a Canadian nonprofit organization that helps find homes for kids, especially for children with special needs and older tweens/teens in Canada’s foster care system. Amanda reached out to guest post here about the value of truth and openness in adoption situations in which the rights of first parents have been terminated.
