All of my children have come to me quite magically. My mom gave me the birds and the bees talk about how babies are made when I was in third grade. I learned all about it in health class, and since I was always obsessed with the subject of babies, I went out of my way to read books on obstetrics and childbirth and babies when I was young. I always knew how babies were made, but it turns out that’s nothing like how I got my two babies. I think my next baby will be just as magical.
So here’s my whole post, in a nutshell. I was infertile. I became friends with Sabrina, who recommended Dr. Hubert to me. He became my doctor. His efforts did not result in a baby. I adopted Gracie Makana. Four years later, Gracie’s birthfather made a half-sibling with another woman. I adopted that baby – Hudson Ryan. Sabrina’s husband’s best friend Ryan texted me one day when I was a single mom. I liked that my son’s middle name matched his first name. I fell in love with him and then I married him. He’s adopting Gracie and Hudson.
I said before that infertility blows. And it does. But now I think, if I hadn’t been infertile, I’d be a sad single mom to my ex-husband Voldemort’s kids. They’d be ugly, probably, and the girls would have endometriosis and the boys would have mental health issues. I wouldn’t have met my best friend, Sabrina. I wouldn’t have met Ryan or Gracie or Hudson or any of the people in my life…. It’s really a good thing I had raging endometriosis. It was worth it.
When I adopted Gracie, I was already best friends with Sabrina. She used a surrogate and ended up having triplets just before I adopted Gracie. By that time, I was married to Voldemort and had completed two cycles of in vitro fertilization (IVF) and had had two surgeries to clean out my raging stage 4 endometriosis. Voldemort and I borrowed a lot of money to pay for another cycle of IVF and the cost of a private domestic infant adoption. I was paying the fertility clinic and the adoption attorney at the same time, hoping to get a baby as fast as humanly possible. I didn’t like the idea of waiting 9 months to grow my own baby. I just wanted any baby, like yesterday. So I was hedging my bets, see. As was always the case with my fertility treatments, we had problems right away. The IVF cycle couldn’t even begin. I developed a huge cyst inside one of my ovaries, that I lovingly named Pedro. And this cyst, Pedro, looked just like an alien from Mars Attacks with a big head and small eyes and a mouth.
He was kind of a cute cyst, but I had to kill him. We scheduled surgery #3 while I busied myself filling out adoption paperwork and completing the first steps of a home study. I made a cute resume for our attorney to give to potential birthmoms, and I put together the world’s coolest Hawaiian nursery for my upcoming baby, wherever it came from. Five weeks after we met with the attorney and signed the retainer agreement, the lawyer called to tell us we had been chosen by a birthmother in Las Vegas, and she was 7 months pregnant and both bio parents wanted to meet us. A week later, my ex and I were in Vegas at the Hilton Benihana, becoming friends with Gracie’s birthparents over dinner. We found out our baby was a girl, and every single hope and dream I’d ever had for myself was fulfilled when Gracie Makana was born on January 8, 2006.
We spent a week in Vegas waiting for our clearances, then all the papers were signed and we took her home to be our daughter forever. Compared to my struggles with infertility and endometriosis, adoption was a walk in the park. All my fears about the process turned out to be unfounded. The birthmother never changed her mind or even scared me that she might. Both birthparents signed the adoption papers 72 hours after the birth, right on time, with big smiles on their faces. We got our interstate clearance, took our 6 lbs of love home to California, and lived happily ever after (well, at least until my ex turned crazy and became a homeless eternal victim and never recovered – but Gracie and I stayed happy and together the whole time). When we adopted Hudson four years after Gracie, his adoption was even easier! Our adoption attorney called one day when my husband had just sold his company and we happened to have a few hundred thousand dollars that had just been wire transferred into our account, to tell me that Gracie’s birthfather had impregnated another woman, who also wanted to place the baby for adoption. A biological half-sibling to Gracie! That call came after I’d had 2 more surgeries to clean up my endo, three more IVF cycles which resulted in two ectopic (tubal) pregnancies that had to be terminated, and a blighted ovum pregnancy, which is when a pregnancy and embryonic sac forms in the uterus, but with no baby inside. Those sucked. Then I had a hysterectomy. Then my ex sold his business, then I got this phone call. Literally the same morning we got paid, the attorney called to tell me about this baby and asked if we wanted to adopt him. Ummmmm yes??? We met his birthmother in Encino, where she lived until after Hudson was born. We moved to Thousand Oaks 4 days before Hudson was born – on January 15, 2010. We paid cash for his adoption (imagine that) and brought him home from the hospital at 6 days old. Easy! And he is, by the way, the love of my life. My cuddly mama’s boy who needs me and tells me every day “Mom, I wuv you sooooo much. I will never weave you.” haha. He’s just a ball of love and joy, that one.
Now, they have a WAY BETTER father, too. Ryan was the dad they always had coming to them, but none of us expected how or when or under what circumstances. As Garth sings, “some of God’s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers”.