When we were struggling with infertility, the two-week wait (TTW) felt like an excruciatingly long time to find out if your life was about to change forever. We’d hit that tiny window for conception around ovulation with all the hope and expectation in the world. At least during the fertile period, there was something you could do to feel like you’re being proactive about the process of having a baby. At this point, I was peeing on those ovulation sticks two to three times a day to make sure I didn’t miss the LH Surge which presented itself as either a thick pink line or a static smiley face on the digital testers. Each time I’d see that pink line or smiley face, part of me would pretend that I was looking at a positive pregnancy test. I’d think, “This is how it’s going to look…Maybe if I pretend hard enough and throw enough “good juju” at these ovulation tests during my fertile period, it will manifest as a pregnancy.” Long story short, that didn’t work despite how hard I willed it to.
Soon enough the fertile period would end and we’d enter the two-week wait. Those two weeks would always be grueling. Every little twitch or cramp or “tugging” feeling I’d feel in my uterus seemed like a sign of something growing inside me. I’d convince myself during every wait that that was the month. I could feel it. Somehow, something would always feel different and I’d be certain. I would track my Basal Temperature on an app on my phone that I’d convince myself was a great way of understanding my body regardless of the outcome (yeah right…I have since “lost” this thermometer and am not too worried about the exact date my period shows up anymore). I also had an app on my phone that detailed the stages of conception through to pregnancy so that I could visualize that my egg had split into a blastocyst, then a zygote, then an embryo throughout the wait—whatever gets ya through, right? And then, inevitably, I’d get to 10 days past ovulation (DPO) and figure, “Well now is the time to start peeing on sticks again!” Every month I would think I could hold out until my “missed period” to check, but I don’t think I ever once made it that long. I just kept hoping that every day I tested that I would be able to see more and more of a faint line until I missed my period. There were a couple times when I did some real mental trickery and almost thought I could see something. I’d hold it up to a window or shine a flashlight behind the little screen to see if there was any sign of what I was looking for. I was fooled by a faint evaporation line more times than I’d like to admit. I’d sit on the bathroom floor like a crazy person searching for something so desperately that wasn’t there. I’d even periodically go back to the test in the trash hours later and check again, so sure that this time if I looked more critically that I might see something. It’s amazing the things you can convince yourself of when you want something so badly that you have very little control over.
And then my period would come and the cycle would begin all over again--the amping up, the optimism, the insanity, the denial, the forfeit, and finally the disappointment. It’s friggin’ exhausting. Not to mention throughout all of this, people like to tell you, “no to stress”. Yeah right.
What does this have to do with the adoption wait? The wait that can take months or sometimes years? How could this possibly be better than two weeks you might ask? Well, in a lot of ways, yeah, it sucks and it’s hard not knowing when you might get that call. BUT when you’re trying to conceive naturally on your own, you only get one chance a month to successfully conceive and then only a handful of days when you think there could be a chance it was successful. When you’re waiting for a match call in an adoption, it could literally come at ANY time. There isn’t a set time of the month when you have a chance and then you have to start from scratch again. You could go active and get a call the next day. You could go active and get a call a month or two later, and it’s not in anyway dependent on your period. In a way I find this so liberating. At this point, it’s out of my hands. I don’t have to blame myself or put pressure on myself to create a pregnancy. And I find that the process includes my husband much more than I did when I was curled up with all these negative tests quietly crying on the bathroom floor. It’s like your part of a team suddenly—you, your partner, the agency (if you’re using one), the birth mom, your family and friends/support systems. Just knowing that at any moment, your life could change is such a great feeling. For the first time since our infertility began, I feel a sense of surrender to the process of becoming a parent. It’s out of my control (which is hard in some ways as I am a control freak) but it is also so freeing to know that I’ve done everything I can already and I can finally just let go and let it come to me. And to know that it’s not a matter of “if” but “when” also helps immensely. It’s cool to think I could be at the grocery store or driving around or with family or friends when we get the call and that an ordinary moment could become so extraordinary and memorable. If anyone reading this has already been matched, I’d love to hear your stories about where you were or what you were doing!
So hopefully thinking of it this way helps some of you who are in the thick of the wait with me right now.
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