The Egg Drop Post

So Nadia and I met our twins on Tuesday night. We went to a support group at my church. I’ve been to the group a couple times before. Nadia went once and really didn’t like it.

This time around I didn’t even ask her if she wanted to go, I just sort of announced that I was going because I felt that I needed it. I’ve been feeling very anxious about my upcoming IVF cycle and I’m leaving no stone unturned when it comes to talking and writing about my fears and anxiety. With each passing day, I hear my bio clock’s tick tock and the sound is deafening. So I just said to Nadia, “I’m going to my group tonight” and she asked me if I wanted her to go. I said, ‘sure’ but deep down I kept thinking that she somehow wasn’t going to make it.

Normally, there are not many women there. I don’t think it’s because there isn’t a demand—there is.  I think the lack of attendance is because it’s a tough subject and if you trek yourself over there once and you don’t find many women there, it can be a challenge to return. I guess what I’m saying is that the group had never really found its rhythm.

Anyhoo, she did make it, albeit a half an hour late due to a crisis at work and to our surprise there were at least eight people there. The other surprising thing was that we met a couple that we might describe as our TTC twins.

For those of you who don’t know, Nadia feels very strongly about adoption. She is very open and, I would say, eager to adopt. She loves children and doesn’t feel the need to birth one or to have me do so. In fact, on Tuesday night she said, ‘getting pregnant is important to me because it’s important to Eva.’ She herself feels that there are many ‘perfectly good children out there’ that need homes and I completely agree with her—on an intellectual level, but I can’t quiet down the burning urge in my gut to give birth.

Needless to say, this ‘difference of opinion’ has been the source of countless arguments and lots of tension in our house for the past couple of years. I get really upset when Nadia is not as in to calculating my chances of getting pregnant every day of my cycle. It’s only been more recently, after a couple months of couple’s therapy, that I’ve been able to calm down and accept her position. Yet even though we’ve come to a bit of détente, I’ve always felt that we were an odd couple. I’ve never met a lesbian couple with this permanent tension around birth vs. adoption, especially in the middle of an arduous TTC journey, at least, not until Tuesday night.

One of the women has been trying to get pregnant for a couple of years. As you can imagine she is desperate to have her own child.  Her partner was not so in to the TTC thing. In fact, she introduced herself by saying ‘I’m not interested in hearing about anyone’s cycle…” She was very interested in exploring her feelings as someone whose partnered with a women who is trying to conceive. One thing she shared was that she ‘wasn’t born but was adopted’ and that it was hard for her to be around women who only talked about the bond between a mother and her biological child.

So it was really great to meet our twins, so to speak. It made me feel less freakish, if you can believe that. It made me breath a sigh of relief and appreciate  the human condition. Let’s face it, it’s complicated.