The Decision

I already had a son from my first marriage — now in his 20s, finished university, out in the world — but my husband and I wanted a child together. That wish is where this story really begins.

We tried IVF. The process itself wasn't the hardest part — it was what it asked of my body. After one unsuccessful round, in our mid-40s, we had to ask ourselves a harder question: not just whether to try again, but what we were really asking of me to keep going.

My husband had always carried the idea of adoption with him. And it wasn't foreign to our family, either — my aunt was adopted, quietly, the way it often was in her generation. Once we looked at it, adoption felt less like a fallback and more like something already woven into who we both were.

So we made a decision: one attempt at IVF, and if it didn't work, we would move straight into adoption — shaped also by the fact that we were both in our mid-40s, racing not just a fertility clock, but an adoption age-limit clock too.

One round of IVF. It didn't work. And from there, we moved, clearly and without looking back, into the adoption process.