[DeafSiren]

It's been great to read all the replies to this thread...I love how much variety there is in all of our backgrounds and the different pathways we have taken on our adoption journeys.

For us, DH has basically the same fertility problem as his older brother and father. But his parents got pregnant with their first bio son naturally, five years later got pregnant with DH after infertility treatment, and then just a year later got pregnant again without treatment (a happy surprise). Older brother and wife had a miscarriage, then couldn't get pregnant, tried infertility treatments and got pregnant with DD#1. Since then have had another DD, twins (DS, DD), and a last DS all without fertility treatment. So the basic feeling among DH's family is that all we need to do is stick with the infertility treatments and something will magically happen and we'll be able to get pregnant. (We've been TTC for almost five years.) They are basically in the camp that we should exhaust all of our infertility treatment options rather than pursue adoption. In addition MIL works as a lobbyist for people with mental illness--she has a lot of fears about problems adopted children might have. I can totally imagine her always introducing our child as "my adopted grandson/granddaughter." If I hear her doing it, I'm going to squash that pretty quickly, believe me.

We decided to go the adoption route more than 2 years ago, and they've bascially accepted that this is how we are going to build our family. They've stopped pushing the infertility treatments/getting pregnant as much. I'm just so eager to have that DS or DD in our arms, so they can realize they'll love the baby just as much whether adopted or bio.

I've gotten the "noble" comments, too. I was so shocked that I didn't know how to reply! It was just baffling to me, "why do you think it is noble that I want to have children?"

L.