March 06, 2018

Adoption Can’t Cure the Pangs of Infertility

Although there’s an idea that it can, isn’t there? That as soon as you bring a new child into your family all your struggles with infertility will melt away.

Unfortunately that’s just not the case. Here are a few reasons why.

You’re always going to be exposed to pregnancy. Just because you’ve become a parent doesn’t mean that pregnancy won’t reenter your life. Because it will, over and over again. In films, family members and friends, when your child becomes an adult, in the books you read, the women you pass on the street. Pregnancy is everywhere, and no one knows that more than someone who has struggled to become pregnant.

If you’re still grieving, you’re still grieving. Adoption doesn’t erase grief. And even after adopting you’ll remain where you are in the grieving process unless you continue moving through that process. Either on your own or with therapy.

The biggest lie we tell ourselves is that adoption will take away the grief we feel from infertility. But that’s unfair because they’re two separate things, each with their own emotional process and realities. No matter how much you love being a new mother, that is separate from processing your infertility. Adoption makes you a parent, absolutely. But it doesn’t create fertility. Regarding them as different situations helps resist the idea that one can cure the other.

You may be thrilled to be a mother, but are you still mourning pregnancy? If you are, that is completely natural and okay. Especially given what we established earlier: your exposure to pregnancy will be lifelong. So many women put themselves through a vicious shame cycle, lamenting their cravings for the experience of pregnancy even after their adoption is final and they’ve become mothers. Feeling this grief doesn’t mean you love your child any less, or that you’re not unbelievably grateful for your adoption process. It just means you’re human.