How we started our family - Part 1

Child birth is a special, exhilarating, exhausting, exhaling event so I'm told. My wife and I spent two days in the hospital waiting for our friends' daughter to be born. Aline was actually in the room with the mother at the very moment, the baby took her first breath. I had gone home for a few hours sleep. I was never going to see this moment until it was my turn as a dad. The mother didn't feel comfortable having me in the delivery room when the time came, so I was only there for moral support.

We were trying to have a baby about three years before that. We couldn't conceive. At first we thought it was just poor timing. Every time our families would ask us about grandchildren, we would go home and cry. We wanted a family so bad. We felt wronged that others who didn't want kids could pop them out like groundhogs. We questioned God's fairness.

It was time to seek medical advice. Doctors confirmed everything was ok for both of us. To speed up the process, the doctors suggested we hire a private clinic to induce artificial insemination. 

At first, we had to take Aline's temperature to determine her ovulation cycle, then we had to keep a graph of the details of our sexual encounter.  At first, we would laugh that the graph was a great momento of our sexual escapades of the time. That soon faded as the process became more technical.

As the situation escalated, the magic of conception was thrown in the garbage. I watched my wife get strapped into metal stirrups, all while three people clamped her open and added my contribution. All while Aline was injecting hormones to help the process. 

We did this for 4 months. Every month started off with an extreme high of excitement and hope followed 15 days later by intense lows. One time after an extreme low, Aline called me crying so despairingly that she couldn't even make a sound. I thought the line was dead. Then I heard a faint whimper, a sign that someone was actually on the other end of the phone. I rushed home to find her on the floor in the fetal position. It was the weakest I have ever seen her. I had to be strong, so I never showed my pain. I waited until she went to bed so I could cry myself to sleep.

Side effects of the hormones started showing up. Aline developed a dark rash on her stomach, roughly where her ovaries would be. We had read reports that suggested the drugs Aline was taking could cause ovarian cancer. The rash, combined with the extra emotion and the amount of money we dished out led to change our minds about artificial insemination. We were out a significant amount of money and there were no guarantees that an extra dose of cash would change our baby situation. Plus we felt the risks were getting too high.

That was the day, we sat down and decided that we were going to adopt. Adoption was going to be three times more expensive but at least there was a guaranteed baby at the end of the process.

As despair increasingly grew, to keep our spirits up, I used to say, "It's not a question of "if" we'll have a baby. It's a question of "when" we'll get her".

To be continued...