From the moment we decide that we're ready to become parents, a nagging fear of inadequacy begins to bloom somewhere deep in the hidden recesses of our hearts and minds. The fear that we won't be good enough, won't be strong enough, won't be able to provide enough. As if that weren't bad enough, when we start to analyze this fear in an attempt to squash it like the creepy bug it is, we find this other fear. This new fear. A fear that somewhere along the lines we will mess our kids up. That we will somehow damage them beyond repair.
Sometimes I think that people who are able to carry their own children for those first nine months have it a little easier than those of us who struggle for years with infertility treatments or for those who plod slowly down the road to adoption. The people who are fortunate enough to carry their own children only have to wait nine months to figure out a way to squash that creepy little bug called Fear. The rest of us? Well, it's like a longer pregnancy than that of an elephant. Some of us have to wait years to kill that little monster. We wait years, year spent worrying that we won't be good parents. That we won't be enough for the children we want to raise, shape, mold.
How do you deal with those fears when they have an indeterminate amount of time to fester, when there is no end in sight? Sometimes, the pregnant people have it easier. Sure, they get all of those pains from ligaments stretching, they get the stretch marks, and they get to see the scale continue to rise. But they get a definite date when they can stomp on that little monster and banish the fear of inadequacy from their homes for good. The people we keep company with, the "infertile ones", we don't get that. What do we get? the worlds longest pregnancies. The ones with no due dates. We get months that have a tendency to bleed into years worth of more than just one fear.
I look forward to the day when I can kill that bug, but in the meantime, this sucks.
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