The Question

"So, do you guys have any kids?"

{cringe}

For four years now well-meaning people have asked us The Question. They haven't meant any harm in it, and there was certainly no offense taken by it. It's a natural question that comes up in conversation. If someone is asking, then they obviously don't know us, or the back story to our "no" answer.

So I don't hate the question, and I'm not going to go off on a tangent on how it should never be asked because you just never know what that person has been through. {I will say there are forms of that question that should 'never' be asked... "so, what- do you just not want to get pregnant, or something?" is definitely one of them. Yes, I was asked that. By someone I barely knew. In front of a group of women I also barely knew. But that's another story.}  But for four years I've dreaded it...

or probably more honestly, I've dreaded not knowing if the answer was ever going to be "yes."


We had talked about raising a family well before we were even married, so after not having the same 'luck' as our friends were having when it came to getting pregnant we were a little bummed, but certainly not discouraged. The Army was moving us to Fort Irwin, CA, and we had heard amazing things about the infertility specialists at Balboa, the Navy hospital in San Diego. Without question, we knew we would do whatever it took to have a family.

It was a three hour drive one way to get to Appointments, but I didn't care. The Drs were fabulous, and we were feeling hopeful. The tests on me weren't coming back as happy & rosey as we'd hoped, but we were given a 50% chance that IVF would be successful. At the time - because of funding - there was a 6 month waiting list before you could start the process. We got our names on the list right away, but the Drs decided to do some tests on Mike in the meantime just to cover all the bases.

One thing we learned awfully quick: when a specialist calls you at 9AM on a Saturday, it's not good.

We were sitting in San Diego, enjoying a gorgeous sunny morning at an outdoor coffee shop. Our dog, Quilla, was with us, and we were excited to be linking up later that day with a good friend from college and his girlfriend.

Mike was diagnosed with Testicular Cancer. They wanted to operate - immediately. It had already spread.

Our world crashed down. Our life became months of week-long chemo treatments.

In a cruel double-punch, as soon as Mike's treatments were over and we started to be able to breathe again, I got sick. It took 6 months, nine doctors, and me getting to the point of being malnourished, living in extreme pain, and losing 20% of my hearing before anyone could figure out what was wrong with me.

I was diagnosed with a rare vascular disease called Wegeners Granulomatosis. Treatment included taking an oral chemotherapy for over a year. Between everything our bodies had been through, coupled with the fertility problems we had already faced prior, being able to conceive was no longer an option.

We got a call saying our name was now first on the list for IVF. We could make our appointment. Our names had not been removed from the list in all the hubbub. That phone call stung a bit.

In an odd way I consider us lucky, though. Talking to a lot of people who have had to go through infertility treatments, and just from our own brief experiences with it, it's easy for one person in the relationship to feel like they are "faulty" and "defective," and the emotions and finances of dealing with multiple attempts to have a successful pregnancy can really put a huge strain on even the best of relationships. It's certainly beautiful and worth every penny and tear when the result is a sweet little newborn, but the time in between can be a long, hard road.

Cancer and Wegeners took that option away from us. It was difficult to cope with knowing we would never be able to experience a pregnancy, but looking back now I see that in the end we were 'spared' from having one of us feeling inadequate compared to the other. We are both "defective" so in theory neither of us can feel like we are robbing the other of something. That certainly doesn't mean we haven't felt like that at times, but we understand how the other person feels.

It took me a lot less time than it took Mike to accept our infertility. I just couldn't picture my life without a child in it, and I knew immediately that I wanted to pursue an adoption. It wasn't easy to give Mike the time he needed to heal and find again that desire to be a Dad. But almost a year ago now, on a pre-deployment getaway to St. Croix, Mike turned to me on the beach and - out of nowhere, we were both just reading and relaxing - said, "You're right. I do still want to be a Dad. Let's adopt."

It was then that I stopped dreading The Question, because while the answer we give is still "no," at least  we know that someday, thanks to the most incredible gift imaginable, we will be holding a baby and that answer will finally be "yes."