Off the Beaten Path

A Different Road To Motherhood

Part One

By Kathleen Sorabella

Pages: 1 2 3

"We're getting married now because we want to be young parents," I replied to the question of why Carl and I wanted to wed at such an early age. That was in 1985, as we were both just 21 years old. We had dreams, like every young couple in love. Both of us hailed from large families with "older" parents, and we decided it would be different for our children. Not that our parents weren't great people, things are just different with more "mature" parents.

By the third year of trying, we knew that natural children weren't happening. But we didn't know why, and I didn't have the emotional energy to go through the monthly loss of learning that I was indeed not pregnant again. The disappointment seemed to invite a wave of emotions that took me into a dark place inside of myself, and I didn't want to revisit.

Friends coutnered with, "Oh, you don't want children – they're a pain." And then there was our favorite, "You can take mine; he's a monster." Those sentiments were never very helpful; they felt like salt in an already openly raw wound. What I found over time was not that anyone could say the right thing, but that there was no right thing to say.

At various times throughout our marriage Carl and I peeked down the adoption road, but we never could find an extra $20,000 lying around to make our dream child happen. Plus, I seemed to go through what I call my "temper tantrum" stage of grieving natural children. "If they can't be our own kids, then I don't want anything to do with it," I often cried. Eventually, I began dealing with the medical issues associated with infertility (diagnosed with polycystic ovarian syndrome), and was somehow able to open up my heart and mind to unique ways of parenting. I came to the realization that we needed alternatives until either medical science made a child happen for us or our adoption placement came through with the Department of Social Services.

Pages: 1 2 3

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