It’s A Girl!

Nothing feels quite as invalidating as hearing, “Everything happens for a reason!” — however well-intended — when you’ve just suffered a trauma. And even though I’ve lived long enough to witness that the phrase usually bears true, I could not for the life of me understand why I was not blessed with the ability to have children. 

I certainly tried, both in my previous marriage and with my wife, Steph. Four attempts in total — the last one using IVF and wiping out our savings, which at least put an end to the baby-making hamster wheel that so many people get stuck on for years. 

I’d been on the fence about having children, probably because so many of my maternal needs were indirectly met during the first 15 years of my career when I specialized in working with teenagers. But time was ticking and everyone said I’d regret it if I passed, so I tried.

It’s not that I couldn’t get pregnant. I’ve been pregnant more times than I wanted. It’s that I kept miscarrying. And the last time I was pregnant — the one time I didn’t miscarry — my fetus was so chromosomally abnormal that I was told it wasn’t viable, so I terminated. 

I reminded myself that from the beginning of the process, I promised Steph and myself that I would accept the outcome. And the outcome indicated that I was clearly not meant to be a parent. The universe must have other plans for me. 

But that last pregnancy tore a rip in me that no amount of years or professional success could close up. 

Four years later, a twenty-year old stumbled into our life who had just lost the last of her parents. She was a sophomore in college — my niece’s childhood best friend — so I agreed to help find her a therapist.

Then she lost her childhood home and needed a place to go for winter break. We had a second bedroom and by the time we put her on the bus back to college, we had the seedlings of family germinating inside us. 

That was 2016. 

A year and a half ago, a New York State Family Court made us a legal family on Zoom — and this Saturday, our friends and family will gather with us to celebrate our adoption.

If parenting had a speed, the years between 2016 and now have felt like they played on 3x. In an effort to fast-track our parenting, Steph and I look for teachable moments in the most mundane conversations and situations, which must, at times, drive Danielle crazy — and which, to her credit, she controls from outwardly protesting. Usually.

I won’t take credit for who she is today, but I will celebrate her for beating the odds by graduating college. And again by having a job offer waiting for her upon graduation. And a third time by recently becoming an entrepreneur.

I can’t in good conscience say that I was unable to have children so I could be my daughter’s parent. And there is no scenario under which I’d claim that she lost her mother to stitch up the hole my trauma left me with. But I will say that through our respective losses, we found one another — a child needing parents and two women who wanted a child — and somehow, in our darkest hours, we managed to turn grief into love. And then into a family.