Author’s note: I recently came across this blog post I wrote from January 2012, about 17 months before I gave birth to my son. I hope it inspires you to keep gratitude close by.
What a difference a week makes.
Last Saturday, January 14, 2012, my husband Daniel and I stopped off at Diane’s, one of our favorite local café spots, on our way to the airport. We were giddy with anticipation and excitement, thinking about our imminent trip and what miracles this little excursion might bring.
You may be wondering what warm, exotic place we were headed to on this freezing January day, but believe it or not, we were flying to Chicago with plans to drive 90 minutes to Wisconsin on Sunday, leaving our cold Long Island for an even colder lakeside town in the Midwest.
The weather was the last thing on our minds, though, as we held hands and nibbled on our breakfast, gazing into each other’s eyes with grins as wide as our island is long.
Fast forward to today, one week later, Daniel and I sitting side by side each other, back at Diane’s, enjoying our breakfast as always, he reading, me typing, the two of us enjoying being together but for no special occasion. Just business as usual.
Every now and then we look up at each other and say, “What the what?”
“WHAT just happened to our lives?????”
As an infertile couple, we’ve had our share of disappointment over the past seven years. It seems every path we’ve taken has ended this way. Whether we tried medical intervention, holistic approaches, and now domestic adoption, our journey to parenthood has been met with one “Dead End” sign after another.
This past November, after coming very close to giving up on becoming parents, I got a phone call from a woman who saw our adoption ad in her local paper. She explained that she and her boyfriend had four kids between them and were now pregnant with twins – a boy and a girl – due in February. “Could this be the universe blessing us with the miracle of miracles?” I thought, as she explained her situation. She and her boyfriend were out of work and with two more on the way it was clear to her that these children were “a gift that was meant for someone else.”
For the next few months I kept in touch with “N” as Daniel and I cautiously hoped this one would be “the one,” especially since we have always wanted at least two children.
We both come from very close families, we love our siblings, and we always thought we’d be able to someday give the sibling experience to our own children. But after 3.5 years of waiting to adopt one child, two was beginning to seem like a pipe dream.
Until now.
Even though there were so many unknowns, we finally had hope that it could happen for us. As I got to know “N” more, the more I liked her. She was funny and easy to talk to. She seemed like a wonderful Mom to her other children and she knew about holistic health and how to take care of herself during pregnancy. She went to every doctor appointment and ultrasound and shared with me how well the babies were growing as well as their weights and positions. She asked me if we had a nursery ready and if we would be keeping the twins together in one crib for the first few months. She wanted to know if I would be breast-feeding and if I planned to make my own baby food. As a holistic health and lifestyle coach this was all music to my ears. Twins. Healthy twins. What more could I ask for?
Meanwhile, our attorney warned us not to get too excited. Until we had proof of pregnancy, twins was a red flag that this woman was a scammer. I kept saying to myself that she was either telling the truth or she was one hell of a good scammer.
We requested that she fill out paperwork and suddenly her calls stopped coming. I texted her frequently, not wanting to give up. She finally got back to us, saying there was a death in the family and that she was overwhelmed but would get the paperwork in. A few more weeks went by and still no word.
We left for our yearly holiday trip to visit family in Colorado not knowing if Santa was going to deliver this year. The holidays have always been a tough time for me. Seeing so many nieces and nephews arrive each year brings up painful feelings of grief and disappointment, leaving an emptiness that overtakes me. But this year, at least, I had a glimmer of hope tucked away in my suitcase. I might not have a baby in my arms or a fetus in my belly, but I had actual “possibility,” a rare occurrence in my life these past seven years when many of my friends and family have been growing their families.
Two days after Christmas the call came. It was our attorney who told us that “N” had called him and told him that she and her boyfriend had actually been talking to another couple who offered them quite a bit of money for the twins. When this couple failed to live up to their promise, perhaps realizing that it was illegal to “buy” babies, “N” decided to come back to me and Daniel, saying that she should have trusted her gut and stayed with us.
“Thank you, Universe,” I said to myself.
We paid FedEx to drop off and pick up a new set of documents and a few days later we had proof of pregnancy. A beautiful pair of healthy boy-girl twins indeed!
“Thank you, Santa!” I said to myself.
When I got home I met with a lactation consultant, rented a hospital grade breast pump and began pumping my breasts for 10 minutes every two hours. I researched which herbal supplements support lactation and started my protocol. Daniel and I also met with a pediatrician in our town and after some initial hesitation, decided to tell our family and friends about the twins, realizing that we were going to need some help very soon.
On New Year’s Eve we put the Christmas decorations away and took out the bassinet Daniel’s sister sent us over a year ago, excited to finally put it together. It was a great day.
In between pumping and getting our home baby-ready, aka “nesting,” I indulged myself with my own private visions of laughter and silliness as I imagined Daniel and I playing with these kids, chasing them and tickling them all around our house.
The next few weeks brought a bit of drama with our attorney calling me daily to explain how “N” was still hoping to get some money out of the deal. She and her boyfriend had high hopes that this pregnancy was going to get them back on their feet as the other couple had promised, and they were having trouble accepting the reality that this just wasn’t possible under the law. They were living in one room in his parents’ house and they were desperate to get their own place. Unfortunately, Wisconsin law only allows adoptive parents to pay $5,300 in living expenses and since the other couple had given them half that amount already, there was little we could do legally to help them out financially.
Our attorney warned me over and over again that this case was unpredictable. “In any case,” he said, “there’s always a 50-50 chance the birthmother will change her mind in the delivery room and decide to parent.”
“And this case is even more risky,” he said, “because the only thing these birthparents care about is money.”
Somehow I was able to separate his “negative” perception from my own. “N” didn’t seem quite that horrible to me, and my attorney didn’t know her in the way I did. I had been developing a relationship with her. That was my role in this process and I was doing an awesome job of it. “Maybe he’s just protecting us, that is his job afterall,” I thought.
We tried to do as much as we could to keep “N” and her boyfriend satisfied that we were the best people to adopt their twins. We even arranged to meet with them in person in Wisconsin and take them to lunch.
The Friday before our trip I had what I felt was a great conversation with “N,” which involved finalizing our plans to meet on Sunday. I told her that I had been pumping and how much my breasts hurt and she told me that her doctor appointment went well and that the twins were about 5 lbs each. I stayed up late organizing myself for the following weeks and packing for our trip.
The next morning, as Daniel and I ate our breakfast, we talked about the baby names we’ve been saving all these years. Of all the names we came up with, we kept going back to the same ones, our favorite boy and girl names. We talked about how fun it was going to be to give Daniel’s nephew two new cousins – his only ones in NY – and wondered how my niece and nephew would handle having to share their beloved Uncle Daniel with two more kids.
We left Diane’s with full tummies and full hearts.
We weren’t but 1/4 mile away when my “baby” phone rang. It was “N.” Her boyfriend did not want to meet. He was saying he didn’t want to terminate his rights. She explained that her mother had finally gotten through to him that the adoption was the wrong thing to do even though “N” still wanted to go through with it. Then he grabbed the phone and said he didn’t want “N” talking to us.
We decided to get on the plane anyway. We had dinner plans with Daniel’s Aunt whom we were staying with, just outside of Chicago. We reasoned that “N’s” boyfriend was just having cold feet, completely understandable, and hoped he would come to his senses and change his mind about meeting.
No word.
We spent Sunday walking around a mall in a cold suburb of Chicago like two lost souls searching for something, but not knowing where to look. None of the stores at the mall were selling dreams that day.
We flew home on Monday.
On Tuesday we got word that “N’s” mother was stepping in and preventing the adoption from happening, claiming that she would raise the twins.
We contacted the social worker at the agency we were working with in Wisconsin and informed her that we wanted to pay for counseling for “N” so that she could be certain she was making the right decision for herself and her twins. All along she had told me how certain she was that these twins “are a gift that’s meant for someone else.” And when our attorney had asked her how certain she was that she wanted to make an adoption plan for the twins, on a scale of 1-10, she replied, “Eleven.” So this sudden change in events left me wondering what was really going on in that poor girl’s world.
In the midst of all this I managed to get a few packages together to send to potential reviewers of my journal and headed out to the post office in the pouring rain. On the way, my attorney called so I pulled over to take the call. “N” turned down our offer of counseling services, saying her boyfriend was still refusing to terminate his rights and that she was not interested in moving forward without him. Apparently she hung up on the social worker.
As I said goodbye to my attorney, the tears slowly drifted down my cheek. Then all of sudden as the rain beat down on my windshield, my tears began to pour and my body began to wail. In the privacy of my car I let out the longest, loudest cry I have in a long time. After some time, I somehow got myself to the post office and mailed my packages, hoping the postal clerk wouldn’t notice my tears, then headed home to tell Daniel the news.
“It’s over,” I said. “It’s really over.”
He gave me a long, close hug. Then he went back to work.
For the next two days I made best friends with my couch, stayed in my PJ’s and kept the tissues close by. I didn’t work, I didn’t read, I barely ate and I hardly talked to anyone. I also slept a lot.
I grieved.
On Wednesday I texted Daniel to tell him I hadn’t eaten or done much of anything. I told him how I should have listened to him when he told me not to get excited about this one until we knew it was definitely happening. Instead I chose to believe in baby bliss, giggles and dreams.
Stupid me.
On Thursday morning, as I lay awake in my bed wondering if I should get up or keep laying there, I said to myself, “I don’t want to feel this way any more. After seven years of this, I don’t want to do it anymore.”
I wondered what advice I would give a client who was grieving. What words of wisdom could I offer someone who was experiencing such a deep, sad loss?
Although we knew this situation was a long shot, when it fell through it didn’t only create feelings of disappointment about not being able to adopt these twins, it brought up feelings of disappointment for every other time we missed out on being parents. Thoughts of children who never came to be over the past seven years filled my mind. While I couldn’t imagine life without our nieces and nephews, somehow I was living life without the children we dreamed of having. Where were they? Why haven’t they joined us?
Because I’ve been through this so many times before, I was able to find strength in my grieving. I began to think of all the work I’ve done on the subject of emotional healing, and of course of all the things I am grateful for, remembering my “Vitamin G.”
Then I remembered this: “The best way to heal yourself is to give to others.”
So as I lay there, I thought, what can I do right now to help someone else? And I thought of all the children in the world who are born into poverty. I started to send them thoughts of love and light, hoping my positive energy might reach them and help them have a better shot at having a good life.
Guess what happened?
My mood shifted. Immediately.
I got out of bed, got dressed and began my day. I called my brother and my sister and a few friends. I gave my husband a hug and teased him about something, what, I don’t remember and it doesn’t matter. I felt enormous joy and gratitude around the fact that we have such an incredibly playful relationship. The truth is, we’re always joking around and acting silly, just like kids do. I was so happy. In that moment I realized everything was going to be all right. Daniel is still Daniel and I am still me and we are still us. Kids or no kids. It actually felt blissful.
Today is Saturday, January 21st and I am as energized as ever to continue living the best life I can. My infertility has given me the incredible opportunity to realize the healing power gratitude can have in a person’s life and to share that message with others. By feeling grateful, I was able to shift my thoughts to something positive, open my heart and send loving energy to all the children around the world who are born into poverty. It was this sequence of events that got me out of bed on day three of my sadness and grief, living proof that Vitamin G can heal.
Last year I created, From Gratitude to Bliss: A Journey in Health and Happiness as a tool to inspire people to follow the very simple gratitude practice I call, Vitamin G. In my own life, and in my work with clients, I have found that when we approach life from a place of gratitude, instead of lack, worry, and despair, we begin to move, to heal, to hope and believe, ultimately shaping our own destiny.
Whether one is experiencing depression, financial trouble, the end of a relationship, a deep loss, or a chronic illness, or simply wants to get more out of life, Vitamin G is the one tool that can literally turn everything around. I’ve seen it happen in my own life and I’ve seen it happen in my clients’ lives as well.
When we start each day from a place of gratitude, we find each moment to be more joyous, more momentous, and more hopeful, and this fuels us to keep going in the direction we want to go. The more we approach life from this place of joy and gratitude, the more good things we attract our way.
From Gratitude to Bliss can help you practice Vitamin G on a daily basis and help you stay on track with this gratitude-based approach to living your best life.
As this past week has once again proven for me, having my Vitamin G practice in place keeps me strong during difficult times and allows me to bounce back from disappointment more easily. It also allows me to see the positive in every situation and appreciate pain as a way to heal past hurts and more forward in my life.
If you don’t make time for gratitude in your life every day, you’re missing out on one of life’s most precious miracles.
