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From: 30 something married male that started to explore adoption two months ago
Date: 28 Jan 2000
Time: 14:30:11
Remote Name: prxy2.nwbl.wi.voyager.net
My wife and I experience infertility related to my wife's body. We got pregnant after the first artificial insemination, but the pregnancy failed in its 13th week (extremely rare set of conditions). Pregnancy does not seem medically sound (long story), even if infertility treatment results in conception again (it has not and we're just about to quit treatment).
A month or so ago, I realized that my hopes for a biological child was too much hope and not enough probability (picture a shift from believing you will have a biological child someday to believing that it is not meant to be). This shift caused a surprising change in my personality. It's pretty simple--my personality was hopeful for something that most believe and internalize as normal and expected; as soon as I realized that this hope was relatively empty, I became quite sad. I've even questioned, I'm ashamed to admit, whether I should be married to my wife anymore because I've found shifting from the hope of having a child to not and/or adopting quite traumatic--a very overwhelming sense of loss and sense that this is not how my life is supposed to be.
Intellectually, I applaud adoption and believe its wonderful, but that was an academic perspective. Now that the experience is not academic, I find my emotions quite surprising. I picture the worse case scenario with adoption. I picture never letting go of the anger that life dealt me with only an adoption card. Part of me wants to just get out and start fresh (again I'm ashamed to admit it).
I don't think this is primarily a male issue, but I suspect my wife (and most females) would react much better if she were the one without the infertility.
I'd appreciate any comments, suggestions, shared fears, or similar experiences. I'm hopeful this is just a phase, but I fear I may be less of a person and husband than I thought I once was.
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