Let me make one thing very clear....

...adoption WAS NOT a last resort for us! As a matter of fact, it was our first choice! I am so tired of people asking when we're going to have a child of our own or acting like the fact that we're not getting pregnant(when in fact we're preventing it) is such a sad, depressing thing. Even complete strangers! (And no I don't lump kids into this category! They don't understand and I realize that.)Flower IS our own child. I guess I don't view pregnancy in the same light as everyone else. As excited as some people are about being pregnant, I was that excited or more to adopt! I was never sad that I wasn't pregnant or grieving over some 'loss' or 'right of passage' into womanhood. PLEASE! I think it sucks that we raise our little girls to think that way. That the only way to have a baby is to get pregnant! Why don't we raise them that being pregnant and adopting are on equal ground. That adopting doesn't happen just because you can't get pregnant. That you can do both and have some kids that are adopted and some kids that were birthed. I think it would be so much less depressing for woman that 'can't' get pregnant to lean to adoption. It would just be a natural choice instead of being something that is done after years of sadness with infertility. I promise you the bond and excitement is exactly the same! It doesn't have to be second rate! I just don't get it!
Let me give you some history so everyone can be very clear as to where we stand.
When KG and I were dating, we had planned to wait 2 years to get pregnant and then we always thought we'd adopt as well as birthing children. We got pregnant just as planned, two days after our 2 year anniversary. I miscarried at 8 weeks. That was very hard for us because we were so excited to be having our child and all that goes along with that. I was at my highest weight at the time. I lost 19 pounds during that pregnancy and honestly, aside from the excitement of having a child, that was the worst two months! I hated being so sick! I had no desire to get pregnant anytime soon. It was not at all what I thought it would be and then I just kind of wondered what the big deal was! Six months later, in 2003, we thought again about getting pregnant and that didn't seem right so we talked about adoption. With all the paperwork etc., that seemed sooo overwhelming that we thought maybe that would never be for us. (For anyone that knows me, you know that I get VERY overwhelmed with anything big. Big stacks of paperwork, big messes, big tasks. I totally freeze up and don't know where to begin so I avoid!) With nothing feeling right to us we decided to get in gear, get healthy, and continue the weight loss and then look at expanding our family again in a year. I lost 60 pounds and then we tried for about 3 months to get pregnant. Then we started preventing it again. It just didn't seem like the right path. We tried again for another three months in there somewhere but it just wasn't feeling right. At times nothing felt right and we considered that maybe having kids wasn't for us. It was NEVER a sad or depressing thought and for most of that time it just wasn't even thought about. Then at the end of 2005 we were on a cruise and the topic came up. All of a sudden we both felt an overwhelming feeling that we were to adopt. When we got home we contacted an agency and were sent the exact same paperwork that we received in 2003. I was fully expecting to see the stack and give up again. That didn't happen. Actually I looked at it and wondered what the big deal was and we completed the entire stack in a weekend and were completely ready for adoption a month after meeting with our case worker. That was a huge sign that when it's right, IT'S RIGHT! Our case worker was so shocked at the rate we were going and how at ease we were with the whole process. I am not going to go into the entire process that was so incredibly spiritual and testimony building because it's long and most of you know it. (If you don't you can read about it here.) That being said, had we done this process at any other time, we would not have received Flower and she is so MEANT to be in our family. She just took a different path. A path that was never our second choice but in fact our FIRST choice. I never want her to think that we chose adoption just because we couldn't get pregnant and so, as a last resort, decided to 'get' her. That is terrible and nothing we ever felt. I feel horrible for people that go through terrible pains of infertility but that just wasn't the case for us. I have always felt a huge trust that my Heavenly Father would guide us in the area of expanding our family and so I've just never gotten emotional or heartbroken over it. If we never add another child to our family I am totally fine with that. At this point that is what feels right to us because the thought of anything else seems completely overwhelming. I know exactly when we'll add to our family and that is when I think about one of the processes without getting overwhelmed and then that's the route we'll take. The things we always think about are getting pregnant, international adoption and domestic adoption. It may very well be to birth a child. Who knows, maybe I really can't get pregnant on my own and if we felt that was what were were meant to do then we'd seek fertility. But we've never tried long to know that. And I really don't care. But out of those three, international adoption has been on the top of our list. I will let you know that in the last month, adding to our family has been more on my mind. The thoughts I am having are even surprising me and pleasant dreams have started occurring, just as they did with Flower. It's not really my choice and we'll be lead to where our child is.
Hopefully this will shed some light onto why I haven't just been a baby making machine and popping them out left and right. NOT because we can't but because it wasn't our first choice or where we were lead.
Please respect that.