PAIL: Healing Week

It is healing week in the PAIL world and I thought I would post my own thoughts on the subject.  For some of the other PAIL healing posts, click on the PAIL button on my blog.

As I draw to the end of my journey through the infertility landscape, I do find myself reflecting on what has brought me to this point.  When I started this blog, my main aim was to provide information on our journey to others who were considering the same path.  Ours is a fairly unique on in that we pursued donor eggs via a different race than our own and still to this day, I don't come across many people that make this choice.  We just wanted to be parents and we didn't care how.  We looked into all options, adoption, surrogacy, foster care and donor eggs.  Donor eggs in Australia was going to be a long wait (2 1/2 - 3 years), adoption in Australia is ridiculously difficult and by the time we had served all the waiting periods for international adoption, I would most likely be over the age limit.  When we were deciding on our course of action, I was 38, I was 39 when I had JBB and I am 41 when I will have Boo2.  

So, we decided to go to our beloved Thailand to source donor eggs from there.  We have all the issues of using donor eggs but some of the issues of interracial adoption.  These have not been insurmountable options and they became easily dealt with once I realised how I could heal.

Healing is such an important part of our journey through infertility.  Without it, I wouldn't have been able to pursue donor eggs in a country other than our own because I most likely couldn't have moved past using my own eggs.  Does that mean that I have completed healing from our journey?  I don't think so, this pregnancy has thrown up some more things that I feel that I need to heal from but for the most part, we are moving on.

To me though, moving on does not mean, forgetting.  I feel like to move on, I need to grieve the parts of the journey that didn't go the way I expected and we all have expectations about how we 'should' be able to conceive our kids.  I think that moving on means also celebrating those parts of the journey that brought us here as well.  I have grieved having my own biological children, that part of me has been healing for a long time.  I look at my beautiful JBB and am thankful and celebrate every day that I allowed myself to move on from having my own biological children.  How can I not celebrate when I am a parent to such a fantastic kid?  Each celebration brings a little bit more healing.

I am happy to move on from our journey through infertility.  The thought of not having to do any more cycles and all of the supplementary treatments that go along with it.  These are lovely thoughts, a balm of healing to my soul.  I feel like there will be some grief that I will need to work through about this but I will be able to do this and celebrate the birth our darling Boo2 very soon.

There is no forgetting for me though and, to me, that's okay.  The main reason is our journey through infertility is intrinsic to JBB and Boo2's stories.  It is part of their identity and that is why I don't regret anything that happened.  Sure, we would all love to have sex with our partners and *boom* 9 months later, baby arrives but to me, that would mean that JBB and Boo2 would not have come into existence and that is impossible for me to face - along with JourneyMan, they are my world and my greatest achievements and that is a healing thought.

There are still scars, both physical and mental but I am hoping that one day, they will go white and fade into the background.  For now, they are still a little red raw (I think that the panic over this pregnancy has everything to do with scars from negative cycles past). 

The healing for the main part though, resides in the face of JBB and the movements of Boo2 that I can feel - they are who we wanted all along.