# Is anyone else adopted & struggling to conceive?



## Blueflower (Apr 12, 2015)

Hi! Are there any other adopted people out there? I’m feeling quite isolated as I’m adopted myself & struggling to conceive my own child. Trying not to feel sorry for myself but it does seem very unfair that I’m not biologically related to any of my family and now unlikely to have my own children. Hoping there’s others out there who can relate to how I feel?


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## VoyageXOXO (Feb 25, 2015)

Hi Blueflower,

I'm also adopted and been trying for a baby for 3 & 1/2 years. I'm not sure why but i'd always felt that when the time came I would struggle to conceive and it's turned out to be true 😔 It was a gut feeling my whole life but i'd just brush it off hoping that maybe it was just an insecurity feeling from having been adopted myself. Anyways, we've been through various methods and are now on the IVF waiting list to probably start in April-June. 

How are you feeling lately?


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## Blueflower (Apr 12, 2015)

Hi! Thanks so much for your reply, thought I was the only one! 
I think that I didn't take having kids for granted because my mum couldn't have them, being pregnant wasn't a normal thing in our family. My younger sister now has 2 & said she had no idea what to expect and mum wasn't able to advise her at all.

I don't think non adopted people understand the importance of looking like your family. We have been matched with a donor now and are starting the cycle in April with a practice cycle on my next Day 1. I am looking forward to it but also gutted that I wanted a child with my genes, been having such weird nightmares the last couple of weeks! 

I really hope your ivf is successful first time and you don't have to go through what I have. Are you scared? How old are you if you don't mind me asking? My issues might be cos I got married too old although I know ladies who got pregnant at that age or older. So unfair!


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## Red sand (Feb 26, 2016)

Hi Blueflower,
I just saw your post and I am also pleased not to be the only one.

The further I have gone on my infertility journey the more significant my adoption has become, even though I was adopted at 6 weeks old. It feels like a double whammy of grief. To not have any biological connection with your history (I have some, but it's complicated) and then to be faced with no biological connection to your future. For me it feels like ' How lucky can people be, when they have both?! And they have no idea ho lucky they are!'

I realised during my IVF that I had - as a kid - subconciously eased my feelings of pain about being adopted (and feeling out of place, and inferior to others who weren't) by saying to myself 'Ah but when you have your own kids, all these feelings will go away. Then you'll be just like everyone else, and you can join in with those conversations about who looks like who etc....And you can feel connected to the continuum of human life, knowing you have kids and might have grand kids into the future." I don't know about you but being adopted I often felt like I had landed from space, rather than feeling part of a family tree with ancestors, connected to people in the past. I never felt grounded or like I belonged, despite a good adoptive family.

For me one of the things that has felt hard, as the reality that I might never have my own kids has sunk in, is the number of people who use my adoption as a way to dismiss my right to my own family. They say 'Well, you're adopted, you should adopt - you know all about it!' As though by being adopted, my first choice when faced with infertility should be to adopt myself. When the reality is that ANYONE could choose to adopt- not just the adopted ones!

(And, on a similar topic, anyone can adopt - not just the ones with infertility! It drives me crazy when people say there's 'so many' unwanted kids out there, infertile people should adopt them, rather than do IVF. Why don't THEY adopt them, instead of procreate?!)

Anyway I digressed...
It's really complicated but increasingly a large part of my pain comes from this double whammy I feel of no genetic connection to the past or future - it feels so unjust. But isolating too, because it's hard for others to understand why it hurts so much. If you already know your own identity, and genetic heritage, it's hard to imagine NOT knowing it and therefore to sympathise.


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