A Baby: From Infertility to Adoption
Roots & Wings Adoption MagazineA Baby: From Infertility to Adoption
By Brook Simons DoughertyShots in the butt
peeing in cups
test that turn blue
cash spent
hospitalized, anesthetized, traumatized
elusive eggs
failed again
abdominal scars--
and no baby
Jay was the first man I ever imagined being a Daddy. We decided if I got pregnant, we'd get married. I wanted a wedding. I wanted wedding presents. Most of all, I wanted a baby. I was thirty-four. Six months later and gynecological shadows from the past suggested that maybe there was a problem.
On the way to a meeting, I purchased an ovulation predictor kit. This didn't seem too intrusive. No big deal. Our lives incorporated my early a.m. potty visits. I peed in a cup at 6 a.m. and bungled a test that only had three steps to it. Right away, I was a failure. My test turned a color that wasn't even included in the chart. If it's light blue it means this. If it's dark blue it means that. They don't tell you what it means if it's the color of your couch. Then it was fertility pills. And then it was that ever-pleasant test where my fallopian tubes were blown up with air, like an old tire. This test is a must if you haven't experienced excruciating pain in that area of your body. It was all the thrills of labor--and no baby.
We find out my tubes are both shot. Now comes major surgery. Three hours under anesthesia and my tubes are "fixed". Three weeks in bed, six months before feeling completely human. Meanwhile we have a huge wedding and get lots of presents. Have regular sex, Dr. Newman says. "Regular" is hardly the word that leaps to mind when I think of temperature charts and endearments such as, " We have to do it right this second." Eight months go by--and no baby. Dr. Newman mentions adoption. I bite his head off.
It was time to see a specialist. The specialist had lots of pictures of miracle babies on his walls. None of them adopted. Adoption is not considered to be the miracle that it is. This guy wants to get a look at my insides. Laparoscopy number one. Little scars. Freezing in the surgical hallway. Nice nurse holding my hand and asking as I went under, "What will you name your bay?" "Rebekah" I answered. My first screen credit was a video of my uterus. The doctor took particular pleasure in showing it to my husband. Bustiers, garter belts and a video of his wife's fallopian tubes really make a guy feel amorous. To add to our passion, there was the aphrodisiac of seeing Jay's frisky sperm streaking across the microscope slide. We were told that In Vitro Fertilization was the answer for us. The only answer. Did we want to go to an orientation class at the hospital? Hey, what's eleven thousand dollars when there's a six percent chance of success? The hospital orientation staff de-emphasized (failed to mention) the fact that the people who succeed usually spend eleven thousand dollars over and over and over again. Of course they don't tell you it's eleven thousand dollars. They tell you it's six. And then you're billed for the rest which includes such wonders as the hundred dollar sanitary napkin. Your insurance is supposed to cover these overages. It rarely does. Infertility is not an illness or a disease. Neither is being a jerk, which is what we felt like when we got the bill.
Going into our first In Vitro, we knew we were different. We knew we were meant to be parents. We knew our baby was just waiting to be fertilized. We were right. Our baby was waiting to be fertilized--by someone else's sperm in someone else's tummy. No one mentioned that possibility. Now, we wish they had because it is so much more pleasant to search for your baby in a world of humans than it is in the labyrinth of hospital corridors.
We weren't ready to adopt. First, we had to try to find our baby in a petri dish. But not until I took hormones. Lots of hormones. When I went to get my prescription filled, my druggist said that the last time he filled a hormone prescription of that strength was for a guy undergoing a sex change operation. So I gained a few pounds. So what. We were, at this point, so enthralled with modern medicine, that if I'd seen a billboard saying "Hey, no uterus? No tubes? No problem. We can surgically implant a yak egg in your ear" we would have signed up. An infertility patient's mind can become cloudy. It becomes difficult to tell where the fine line is between a witch doctor and a rich doctor.
Jay tuned out to be terrific at giving me my daily shots in the butt. He played nice music. I bent over. In went the magic and up went our hopes. Suddenly I had an affinity for needle junkies. We has a poster above our bed of a long line of little babies. We'd sit below it and Jay would play a children's song on his guitar. We'd pray that our baby would hear us and know how to find us. It was a good idea, but we were looking in the wrong place. Days of shots. Mood swings. Telling my boss what I really thought of him. Getting fired. After all that, the cycle was canceled. I wasn't producing enough eggs. It was then that I began to feel like a chicken. The specialist said he didn't think In Vitro would work for me--but I didn't believe him, couldn't believe him. Not one of the scientific whiz kids said anything about adoption. Except my mother. I should have been paying her thousands of dollars.
I cried and cried. Unfortunately, we hadn't spent quite all our money. I found the biggest, the best, and the most expensive doctor in all of L.A.--who shunted me over to his wife. A beginner. With the bedside manner of a lizard. They claimed they could "fix" me. Jay administers more needles and love. We play more guitar songs to the infant spirit, and feel so sad for the little baby lost out there in the dark. Another canceled cycle. We try one more time. Who needs to live in a house in Los Angeles? We can do without. Halfway through the cycle of shots I get a call from the nurse. She calls every day of the cycle to tell me whether or not to come in for blood work. She says to come in for an ultrasound. This bolsters my hopes. It means they think something good is going on.
So I jet down there, am ushered into a dark little room lit only by the eerie green from the screen of the ultrasound machine. (In the future, if I have to be in a dark room, I'd take a social worker over an ultrasound machine any day.) I drop my drawers, wrap myself in a sheet and read Better Homes & Gardens. It is full of articles about how to fix up the home we no longer can afford. I am so excited. The wife of the bigwig comes in (I haven't seen the bigwig himself since my first multi-hundred dollar consult). "Well," she said, slapping me on the knee, "your test was a washout. You're not going to have a baby. Unless you want to sign up for our egg donor program. Do you want to sign up for our egg donor program?"
In my innocence, I felt that a member of my own sex would be gentler, more understanding, more tactful. "Washout?" Something deep inside of me beyond the pain and close to the memory of our last bank statement uttered a shaky "No." "You can get a great egg from a young donor for six thousand dollars, and the success rate jumps." "No." I repeated, and she left me alone in the dark room trying not to cry, trying to get my clothes on so I could get to my car where I could cry in peace and go home. But no. "Mrs. Dougherty you have to pay your bill before you leave." They sensed I wouldn't be back. After paying them thousands, my bill is now a few hundred. It's only eight in the morning. I have no checks on me. I'm trying so hard not to cry. The bookkeeper is thoughtfully situated in full view of the crowded waiting room. She does all but blockade the exit until I find a check shriveled at the bottom of my purse from an account with a zero balance. I write it out for her anyway.
As I drove home I knew that my experience with hi-tech infertility was over. I was relieved. Devastated, but relieved. A door had closed. We wouldn't have children. I was glad we didn't have any more money to spend. We would go to Europe, we would sleep late, we would get a puppy. Just as soon as we finished paying that hospital bill. Now I was thirty-nine. And no baby.
During my five year addiction to the miracles of infertility, no one, not once, suggested adoption--except my regular gynecologist--and my mother whom I didn't listen to. There was no literature about adoption as an alternative in either specialist's office.
Dr. Newman gave me a good talking to. "Open your heart to the possibility of adoption. Talk it over with Jay." Again I told him to bug off--I didn't want to wait, the kind of baby I wanted didn't come along every day. But I did talk it over with Jay and he was receptive.
The next day I was at my desk looking out my office window at a lady pigeon who lived on the ledge. She was rustling around like she couldn't get comfortable, and then I saw the two baby birds under her, poking their beaks. The Mama stuck her beak in their feathers--fluffing them up, and dropped a bit of food in their tiny mouths. She looked so happy. In that moment, I knew we would adopt a child. The phone rang.
"Are you sitting down," Dr. Newman asked. He told me he had a young woman in his office, five months pregnant, blonde hair, blue eyes, looked like me. Were we interested? The world stood still. My life was reduced to a pinprick of certainty. I knew at last where our baby was, and I said, "Yes."
He said, "I'm serious, Brook, I'm going to put you up for this, but if she selects you, can you get the money?" "Not a problem." I remembered the first time I ever did a back dive.
Without looking, without trying, we were in the adoption loop. If I had known the miracle we were about to become a part of, I would have cut to adoption from the first. From this moment on, a layer of spirituality entered our lives. As our baby got closer to us, Jay and I got closer to each other. Not wanting to get my hopes up too high, I bought one pair of baby socks.
But the money. What about the money? I sat on our bed flipping through my phone book praying for an angel. And there on the last page was the name of an older gentleman we hadn't seen in a while. I got up my nerve and called him. We had lunch. It was hard to tell him how much I had always wanted a baby, and how low our cash reserves were. Two little girls sat at the next table with their mother. I looked at them, and asked. He said, "I'll do it". With a smile.
In adoption, the whole string of events takes on such mystical proportions that biology hardly seems worth quibbling about. No one tells you that though. The specialists are busy suggesting that you massage donkey urine on the inside of your thighs and have regular sex on the first Thursday of the month. God forbid you shouldn't have your very own genetic repro. As my mother said, "Why would you want to get involved with our genes?" and reminded me about Uncle Bob.
Private adoption doesn't always work. Birth mothers can change their minds. We did not know until the end if Bettina could go through with it, but she did.
When she first appeared at our door, we looked at each other and took a step back. She looked like my niece. There were magic moments of coincidence. Every step fell into place when it could so easily have fallen off the track. Adoption is a human route to finding your baby. It therefore requires humanity. It is not always, perhaps, fair. The birth mother comes to the table with a baby and leaves with nothing. The adoptive parents come to the table with money and leave with a baby. No one likes to feel empty.
One of the reasons Bettina gave up her baby was that she wanted a career. We found out what her dreams were, and then pulled in a favor from an old boss and got her a dream job. We got her the promise of this job before the birth. She had that to look forward to. Granted a job is not quite the same as a baby, but we were the ones who were dreaming about our baby, she was the one dreaming about a career. If she had an infant, she could never have taken that job. So we helped make it a little easier to give her baby up. She mentioned a therapist she liked. We paid for her to continue. The therapist had lots of pictures of miracle babies on her office wall. All adopted. And you know what? They looked exactly like the babies on the walls of the fertility specialists.
Why did Bettina pick us over the seven other couples suggested by her lawyer? When we wrote her we included things that friends suggested we leave out. "Don't tell her Jay's in a rock 'n roll band. Don't tell her you work with gangs." But I put those things in the letter, and Bettina said it was those very things that made her want to meet us.
We don't have a huge house. We don't have tons of money. It felt like Bettina picked us because she knew and we knew that the baby she was carrying belonged in our home, with us. As we came to believe that babies choose their parents, we began to feel with all our hearts that Bettina was a hero. Our baby needed a ride. Bettina was willing to drop her off for the rest of her life with us.
We watched the birth and took our baby home when she was ten hours old. I asked our birth coach if there was anyone else in L.A. as happy as we were. She said yes. Other adoptive parents.
All the hand wringing that goes on about having to have your biological baby ends up meaning zero when you are involved in the adoption process. In this process a couple learns that your baby could be anywhere--in any state, in any country, in the body of an unmet girl.
Everyone in this loop was kind. Dr. Newman performed divine matchmaking. Then he stayed on board the whole way making sure Bettina's feelings were okay and making sure I wasn't interfering too much. The adoption lawyer had a son she had adopted and cut right to the chase. The therapist juggled all of our fears and hopes and gave us courage. She served as the birth coach and stayed up all night long with Bettina at Cedars, while her dog slept in the cold car. Three months later, she sent us a bill for seventy five dollars. The social worker was efficient and friendly. And best of all, there were nostirrups. No bright lights shining on my body. No painful invasions.
I was three weeks away from my fortieth birthday. And we had our baby.
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