This blog post is from the archives of Inner Life Portraits, my portrait business from 2015 – 2022. This story has proven to provide solace and inspiration to people struggling to start their family, so I’m preserving it here at The Soulful Wedding.
~ Maureen
So many people are struggling to create the families they dream of, but their stories—if ever told—are told in extreme private, or years after the fact. Margaret and Oliver are allowing me to share their story. They hope to be one small turn against the tide of secrecy and shame around infertility struggles.
Expecting
“Congratulations. You’re expecting,” Margaret and Oliver finally heard—four and a half years after deciding to have kids. These words were not from a nurse after a blood test, or after peeing on a stick, but a social worker after an adoption home study.
Uncertainty still lay ahead, but for the first time they were certain that they would be parents.
The joy was welcomed after so much loss.
Discernment
Margaret’s parenthood journey began with her father’s dying. Most of her life she was unsure if she wanted to have kids and she spent a couple years earnestly considering the question. While caring for her dad, and saying goodbye to him, she decided: yes, she wanted to be a mom.
This decision was highly influenced by having an amazing husband. “I’m not someone who would want to be a mother on my own,” she said. “But knowing I had the chance to bring more Oliver-like molecules into the world was part of my motivation.” She wanted to have Oliver’s baby.
Oliver was similar: for him parenthood was contingent on having the right partner. He was certain he’d be happy to make a family with Margaret once they were in a committed relationship, and he was ready when Margaret arrived at her decision. Many of their friends were starting families too. “It was like making popcorn,” Oliver said, “You know that moment when suddenly most of the pot pops at once—all of our friends were quickly becoming parents. We assumed that we’d be a family soon just like all of them.”
The fertility journey
And so they began to dream of a family and tried to get pregnant at home the good old fashioned way. With no pregnancy after nearly a year, Margaret visited an endocrinologist and was diagnosed with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS). Despite the news of this infertility diagnosis, multiple different doctors would attest that we are young (only 32) and that they had every confidence in the world that I could get pregnant.
What followed was a very long journey filled with a lot of different interventions.
Oliver remembers thinking “Science can fix this,” as they followed doctors’ guidance. The second Intrauterine Insemination (IUI) resulted in a pregnancy, which ended in a miscarriage at 7 weeks. They were distraught, but carried on. After the following IUI was unsuccessful, doctors recommended beginning In Vitro Fertilization (IVF). Oliver remembers trying to make sense of the language. The doctors would say things like, “Evidence shows you can get pregnant” so they’d continue on to the next phase.
After a third IVF cycle, they got pregnant! Woohoo! However, a deep disappointment would soon follow: Margaret miscarried again, this time a traumatic 12-week long miscarriage. The pregnancy tissue just wasn’t fully clearing her body. Twelve weeks of miscarrying.
Meanwhile, friends and family continued to have babies; meanwhile, another birthday, Christmas, and New Years Eve passed.
Coincidentally, or maybe ironically, Margaret shared the entirety of her story with me on Mother’s Day 2019 (we both happened to have the availability for a long conversation). She reflected that this would be her fifth Mother’s Day trying to become a mom, and it was painful.
Keeping on with work and life while all of this occurred was wearing on Margaret and Oliver, and they decided to get away to digest everything and get perspective.
The price of the fertility treatment journey
Oliver remembers that they went on a trip to Cape Cod in October. It was chilly and quiet, and they took many long walks both in silence and deep conversation. Over a few days there were realizations and a shift in perspective. He became more fully aware of the price of the process—on Margaret’s physical and mental health, and on their relationship.
“I’m kind of stubborn” he says, “and I might have just kept going along with the medical advice for years thinking it was bound to happen sooner or later—just as they said. But I wasn’t going through what Margaret was going through.” Shots, blood tests, drastic hormonal changes, getting wands put into your vagina so you can see that they can measure ovaries and follicles, and all other sorts of indignities, all while being a friend, co-worker, and general active participant in society. In fact, Margaret’s career was growing throughout all of this, and she has an outward-facing job, which she excels at. Some people in her life knew of her struggles; many did not. “Facing forward with a smile and dying inside” is how she describes many of those days.
They were on the windy dunes of Wellfleet when Margaret told him, “I’m not sure how much longer I can do this.” For the first time he doubted the unrefuted mantra of the fertility journey, “It will be all be worth it once you have your baby.” Now he wondered a taboo question: how much health and sanity is too much to pay for the shot at genetic offspring?
“The default mode,” Margaret explained, “Is to just keep trying and keep trying until a doctor tells you it’s not going to happen.” She said that the doctors were clear that some people will not be able to get and stay pregnant no matter the intervention, but they did not see Margaret in that category. They believed she should be able to get pregnant and they wanted her to keep trying. But her complications from PCOS meant that, even with lots of medical assistance, she was only able to have a pregnancy attempt a few times a year. Was the wear on her body and heart, and all this lost time, worth it?
Later, when Margaret would announce to her community via social media that she and Oliver were adopting, she shared about the hidden struggles: “If you have seen me in the last five years, it is likely that I was either waiting to start or undergoing some treatment, or grieving a miscarriage. If I have been a little less bright or a little more brittle, it could be because of taking shots of progesterone or hoping and worrying that this next cycle will give me enough eggs or a viable embryo.”
“The trauma of that long miscarriage was a turning point for me,” she states. “No matter what we did, the time passed anyway.”
For the first time she started to separate the desires of being a mom and giving birth.
Beginning the adoption path
Margaret reflects that for her, letting go of the dream of giving birth while pursuing the dream of being a mom might have been easier than for some women. She wasn’t a girl who grew up playing House and dreaming of being married and being a mom.
She vigorously—and holistically—threw herself into adoption research. The holistic part is important because it wasn’t just about googling the adoption process, costs, and agencies nearby. It was about working with her therapist on grieving the loss of her dream of physically having Oliver’s babies. It was about understanding an adoptee’s experience and listening to adult adoptee voices. It was about reaching out to adoptive families. She fully understood that she was grieving and needed support, and that the new path would have challenges too.
Finding hope and joy in community
When I asked Margaret and Oliver how they moved from the grief of their infertility struggle to joy in the path of adoption, they both cited the importance of meeting adoptive families. Oliver remembers that in an early adoption class an adoptive mother and child came to visit. Seeing this family, feeling their joy, he saw how that could be them. They began to learn the stories of other families on the path of adoption, both peers in their class and families they’d met through Margaret’s outreach efforts.
“Once we were in a community of people pursuing adoption, we heard so many stories of struggles, some like ours, some different, and some much more traumatic,” Oliver said. “These are not stories people are sharing around the dinner table or on Facebook, but so many of us are carrying them.” It was a relief to not feel like they were on the outside looking in on all the perfectly formed families. They were now in a robust community of people who built their families through adoption.
A more rewarding process
Besides the hope that meeting other families brought, the adoption process is much more rewarding than the medical fertility process. “For one thing,” Margaret says, “We could actually make progress. After months of prepping for a cycle, having a retrieval, creating and implanting an embryo, getting pregnant and even nurturing a growing embryo for weeks, when I miscarried, it was all over. We were not one step closer to having a baby.
“But in the adoption process we could actually check boxes. Yes, it took us three months to fill out the very comprehensive and personal application, but then it was done. We were a step closer to being parents.” With that in mind, Margaret showed me her camera roll with photos of moments like mailing the application. “These are like our maternity photos,” she said.
Our portrait session
This is when I, as a portrait photographer, enter Margaret and Oliver’s story. After surveying the options for adoption (see below) they had decided to do private domestic adoption with the agency Adoptions with Love. They were taking their classes, they had just completed their home study, and they had two big tasks ahead of them: a soul-bearing letter to an expectant parent, and a photo album of them, their families, their home, lifestyle and—of course—their puppy dog. My role was to help them “market” themselves with authentic environmental portraits.
We interrupt this story for an educational moment:
* * * * * * ADOPTION 101 * * * * * *
Types of adoption
There are three general ways to adopt a child (in some places there is a fourth option, which is an attorney can fully broker a domestic adoption).
- Adoption through the Department of Children and Families. This is a program run by the state that finds new homes for children who were not safe in the care of their biological parents. Children can enter the foster system from 0 up to 18 years old and their stories vary widely. I wrote about one such adoption in a post last year. There’s a high risk that a child who comes to live with you for an extended period may return to their parents or a relative. Social workers are explicit that they first work to reunite families, and adoptions occur when it cannot be safely done. Margaret described feeling “risk averse” after all they had been through, and so they decided this was not the avenue for them.
- International adoption via an agency. Many folks are familiar with long operating adoption agencies that work in various countries around the world to match infants with families in the United States. International laws and protocols and our relationships with other countries can change often, which made this option also feel nerve-wracking and would potentially take a much longer time.
- Domestic adoption via an agency. There’s always risk in adoption, but for Margaret and Oliver’s situation they felt the most assurance with this path. They applied to an agency, were accepted, took a class and finally sent out 15 pairs of letters and photo albums to expectant parents. The expectant parent may choose the adoptive parent(s) at almost any point in a pregnancy. Some adoptive parents become part of the picture during pregnancy, some become involved toward the end. In all cases the birth parent can change their mind after the birth. “The rights of birth parents are really strong,” Margaret explains, “as it should be.” As a result, some matches between birth parents and adoptive parents fall through, otherwise known as a “Failed Match.“
AFFIRMATIVE LANGUAGE
Collaborating with Margaret and Oliver on their portraits, I reviewed many guidelines from the adoption agency and listened closely to all they had learned. The importance of affirmative language was a learning moment for me. Socially, it’s common to say that someone “gave up their baby.” But those working in this field are careful to say that the birth parent “made a plan” for the baby. No one desires to be in the position of making a plan for a baby that involves someone else raising the baby, so fully supporting the bravery of that parent is paramount.
“All adoption starts with loss”
There is much to be said about this truth, from the varying perspectives of all involved. The basic truth Margaret wants to illuminate is that at the very least the biological bond of mother and born infant is broken and never fulfilled. Often there are more involved who are experiencing loss. For Margaret and Oliver, the truth is adoption was not their first choice. Loss led them there. This truth needs to be acknowledged for their own healing, and the healing of their future child.
For this reason Margaret and Oliver are committed to an open adoption, in which their child will have a relationship with his or her birth parents. Many personal stories and studies show that not knowing birth parents can be detrimental to children’s well being and so agencies try to facilitate open adoptions when possible. For some adoptive parents the idea of it can feel like a burden, but people are coming to see it as important for the child’s understanding.
Margaret and Oliver’s favorite resources
Support for infertility:
- Resolve: National Infertility Organization: https://resolve.org/
- Resolve New England: https://www.resolvenewengland.org/
- Adoptive Families: https://www.adoptivefamilies.com/building-your-family-infertility-adoption-guide-table-of-contents/
Understanding adoption:
- Transracial Adoption: Book titled In Their Voices.
- PACT an adoption alliance has a great resource library on their website: https://www.pactadopt.org/resources/resource-library.html
- Angela Tucker’s blog and podcast
- Affirmative adoption language: Adoption council
- Adoptivefamilies.com
* * * * * * * * * * * *
When I received Margaret’s inquiry I was so moved. She told me in that first email about their fertility struggle, and how they were now excited about adoption. She understands the power of photography and was searching high and low for someone she could trust to come into their home and tell their story. People make decisions emotionally, and we both hoped we could create a portrait for the album cover that would lead an expectant parent to feel—in an instant—that Margaret and Oliver were the right people to become Mom and Dad to her baby. A tall order, but we jumped into planning a portrait session that could make it happen.
Driving down to their shoot I felt a great responsibility. In the coming months these portraits would play an important role in connecting Margaret and Oliver with their future son or daughter. Yet, I always think about the full life of a photograph. I knew that in the shorter term viewing and choosing among these photographs would reflect something of their journey so far, and I hoped it would be an affirmative experience. My wish for them was that the photographs would help them see and savor what they do have, even while on a journey to become more together.
As a portrait photographer, the future is also my realm. Someday their son or daughter will see these photographs and know this is what it looked like when their parents were dreaming of them. My wish for that child is these photographs will help them feel how much they were wanted.
Margaret too knew that the photographs would mark the moment. A “before” and also a nod to their grieving process. Still, she was surprised by how moving the viewing session was (that’s when they sat and watched a slideshow of all the photographs large on a screen, then began to discern their favorites). After months of effort she fully felt how they had almost everything in place to grow their family.
All three of us had the same favorite photograph—which doesn’t happen all that often.
What I love about it is that it shows how warm and full their home is, but there’s also plenty of space, space for someone to join. I’m often drawn to photographs of couples where they are physically apart, yet connected. Margaret gazing at Oliver, who is gazing at puppy Bingo, making the love as dynamic as any formal aspects of composition.
What Margaret loves about this photograph: “It reminded me that life happens in little moments. We are living our lives even as we are waiting.” I would add that they are living their lives quite well—mindfully, and with compassion for themselves and others.
The letter and albums are out in the world, to be seen by expecting parents. Now, they wait. They could receive a call about a baby any day, or in coming months, and that baby could be due any day or in coming months. After years of effort they pause, expectantly, waiting for their lives as parents to begin.
Many paths
If Oliver could send a message to anyone struggling with infertility, it would be: there are many paths to parenthood, and be open to find joy.
As he reflects on the journey, he wishes a clinic or hospital would have been caring enough to mention the basic fact that some people who start on this path build their families through Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART), and some will sooner or later choose to adopt. “I think we would have been open to the idea much sooner if someone had planted the seed of the adoption option. But once you’re working with specialists there seems to only be one path. Adoption may not be right for everyone, so at the very least maybe a doctor or counselor—or anyone in the fertility world—could ask the question: how important is it to you to have a biological child?”
Margaret, Oliver and I prepared to publish their story in June 2019. But, they got a little busy when a call came in from their adoption agency. They were told to pack their bags for a potential match…
A happy ending beginning
The story of being matched with their child is one that they consciously hold close to their hearts. It will be for their child to decide to tell someday. I’ll leave you with this photograph so you can know their happy beginning arrived.
Thank you Margaret and Oliver for offering your story. May it create understanding and hope wherever it’s needed.
(Enjoy this gallery of photographs made for their adoption application album.)
I’ve written about my own family’s struggle to come into being, including a 3 years long fertility struggle. Let’s keep telling our stories!