IF stole my innocence

Flashback to April 2009…  Blue and I wanted to start trying but had to wait due to his crazy job and all the traveling.  We decided to wait until May to start trying because that would be the ‘perfect’ time.  The baby would be due in time so that when Blue moved to Albuquerque, for 6 months, we could go with him.  We’d been waiting for May for what felt like forever.  I’d had a pre-conception physical, started pre-natal vitamins, stopped drinking caffeine, etc.  We were ready for May to be here already!

That April, midway through my cycle, we said screw it and threw away the pills, forget all the perfect timing, we wanted a baby already!  It didn’t happen that month but it didn’t bother us, we hadn’t even planned for it.  The next month we had an amazing 6 day trip planned to raft the Grand Canyon.

Back then baby-making was like this, relaxing and fun...

My fertile time ended up being while we were in the middle of our rafting trip so we had fun ‘baby making’ quietly in the wilderness!  We were so excited, so full of love and so sure it had worked.  After we made it off the river we went to visit my sister in Tucson Arizona for a few days.  I remember lying on the bed in her house giggling with Blue about what we’d name our little Grand Canyon baby.  We had four options, two for a girl and two for a boy.  If our little one was a boy he’d be named either; Wolverine Cyclopes The Hulk Hunter (Blue’s choice) or Canyon Hunter (my choice).  The girl’s names were a tougher pick; Nanny Daisy Hunter (Blue’s choice, a mix of my grandmother’s nickname and my parent’s dog’s name) or Arianna Annette Hunter (my choice, using my mom’s middle name.) 

Don't we look blissfully happy, no cares in the world?

I miss that day.  I miss the naivety of that moment.  Everything was grand.  We were pregnant.  We laughed.  We were so delightfully happy.  Infertility hadn’t weaseled its way into our relationship yet.  Baby making was fun!

I know I will appreciate our baby so much more when we take it home than I would have had we made our Grand Canyon baby, but I can’t help but wish our hopes and dreams hadn’t been stolen.  I wish when we looked at our baby we could go back to those blissful days on the river and remember when we made a life by being together and in love.  I wish we didn’t have any painful memories of the baby making days gone by.  I wish my body wasn't broken.

When IVF was still a hypothetical possibility the idea of a baby made in test tube never even entered my mind, it would still be our baby just like an adopted baby would be.  I was so grateful that we had the option of IVF unlike people 30 years ago or even people in a different financial situation than us.  I thought I’d be excited to share with our little ones how much they were wanted, how we prayed for them to come everyday for two years.  I still use off hand ways to describe what IVF is to people who didn’t understand, IUI is like a turkey-baster and IVF is where the baby starts cooking in a Petri-dish.  The simplicity of those descriptions never bothered me because they were always to people that I loved that wanted this baby for us as bad as Blue and I do.  But the other day I read an awful post on STFU Fertiles Blog about a conversation with an ignorant person who referred to IVF babies as frankenbabies and it made me worry that ignorant, hateful people would make our babies feel like that.  I never even knew that people could be this thoughtless or cruel, this post really angered and disillusioned me.

It made me feel like we needed to keep the details of our miracle baby’s conception a dirty little secret.  Before I read that I always thought I’d shout it on the roof tops.  I would think back to my ‘miracle’ status and think how proud I am to tell people how bad my parents wanted me.  I was no accident, they worked their butts off to bring my sister and I home, and I love to share that with the world.  But there will always be ignorant people, there will always be people who judge us for not choosing adoption, people who think there are babies lined up at orphanages hoping to be taken home.  I hate that I have to worry about this, but alas I am worried.

Will my babies feel proud like I do?  Or will they wish that they’d never heard the term IVF when some red-neck calls them a Frankenbaby?