Give Up on Fertility, and Get Pregnant?

Nearly a year passed since we logged-in our paperwork.  I was diagnosed with an abnormal cyst on my right ovary.  I finally said to my daughter, who had yearned for a sibling since the time she could speak, “You know, this may not work out, and, in the end, and it might just end up you, me and Dad”.  To my surprise she responded, “I might actually prefer that.” With her easing up on the request for a sibling, and in light of my recent gynecological development, I launched a mass purge of all remaining baby items haunting the basement.  Gone were the Moses basket, Baby Bjorn, Bouncy Seat, and Swing, but I held on to the clothes in the off chance our adoption might materialize some day.  Along with all the baby stuff, we pitched the condoms.  I was infertile, so what was the purpose in practicing contraception?

Ideally I wanted to provide my daughter with a sibling, but she was getting pretty comfortable with her status as the center of our little trio.  My experience as a mother had proved to be so fulfilling that I had this kind of primal yearning for another, but now that my daughter was almost 5, I was beginning to enjoy personal freedoms again.  I had arrived at the nirvana of infertility: I no longer hungered for what seemed to elude me. I was very content to focus on what I had. 

It was with this complete feeling of contentment that I found myself staring into the window of that pregnancy test.  Utterly unaware of there being even a minute chance of a fertilized egg making it’s way down my fallopian tube, I thought I had a bladder infection when I felt an extreme urgency to pee.  My initial reaction to the positive test was not one of euphoria, but rather of colossal disbelief.  

The minute we began the process of adopting, an inordinate amount of folks said to us: “Now you’ll get pregnant.”  I can’t begin to recount the many stories I heard about this or that couple who adopted after years of trying, and then: SURPRIZE!  I’m convinced mental interference can affect one’s ability to become pregnant, and probably in direct proportion to the desire to breed.  The problem is, knowing this doesn’t always enable you to alter your psyche in order to allow sperm and egg to find each other.