Why I Can't Let Go

Some time ago, I realized the best thing to do when I'm making a decision is to step away from it a bit and see how it feels. Whether it's buying a new coat or assessing a career move, if I stop thinking about it after a couple of days, I know I wasn't very attached to it in the first place. Because if I truly want something, it lingers. Persists. Sometimes takes over all my waking moments.

You'd think after all the torture I've been through on my road to parenthood, I'd have an easier time walking away now, calling the game, settling into my happy life with my one, gorgeous child. The fact that I haven't let go yet tells me this is not some optional pursuit in the course of my life. This has to do with the very vision I've long held of my life itself. I want my son to have a sibling. I believe I should be a mother of two. It still feels like there's someone missing, and just because it's been a rough go doesn't make it easy to walk away from that.

There's this whole thing around infertility/recurrent loss where people are made to feel they're greedy for "pushing their luck" and trying for another after receiving the miracle of a first. And it sort of enrages me. You wouldn't walk up to some random fertile and ask them why they believe they're entitled to a second child, so why is that suggestion made when the path is less smooth? Others, whether they've had problems or not, are no more entitled to it than I -- they've just gotten lucky. But if getting rejected by a first-choice law school (even with the right LSAT scores) doesn't stop people from becoming lawyers, why should I give up on my dream of a family of four?

Just to be perfectly clear, I am grateful beyond words, every day, for my H. I look at him and know now, more than ever, that he is a gift -- and we celebrate that every day. But he had something taken away from him in March, too. A whole world disappeared in that horrible moment when they told us there was no heartbeat. An entire trajectory of our lives has ceased to exist.

I still want him to have a sibling. I still believe in it as one believes in a vision of her life. And call me crazy, but I want to experience all the highs and lows of early childhood all over again, with the added dimension of H taking part. And so the options toward that are expanding; I am trying to think of possible paths toward surrogacy, along with adoption (which has always been a possibility, but doesn't solve the problem of our unused embryos, so I'm trying to sort through that). I still believe this is possible, and I stand ready, my heart and arms open.