[old and tired]

I'll say upfront that I don't "get" the intense pain infertile couples often feel. But then, we've never had a problem with infertility, although some of our children -biological and adopted - have. I really don't see why adoption is not an alternative. I read articles like this one and I see so much self absorption. I wonder sometimes if it goes side by side with JPII's Theology of the Body? Please, I don't mean to offend, I really just can't empathize.

I saw on Bettnet an adoptive mom compare the fascination of some couples with having a biological child with looking for a pedigreed dog. I'd never thought of it that way before, and was about to post my agreement when Bettinelli's wife called the post cruel so I backed off.

Back in the day it used to be acceptable to wonder why a Catholic infertile couple didn't adopt, but more recently it's become insulting, or at least insensitive.

[old and tired]

oops. Meant to add that there is no difference in my feelings for my children, whether they are biological or adopted.

[lsucat]

Of course I can only speak for myself, but our infertility pain was not due to the loss of a biological child. For us, it was more a loss of the "way things are done." I never got to tell my husband I was pregnant. I never got to be pregnant. I never got to do all the things that everyone else does. It may sound silly, but at the time, that was the pain. It was also the fear of the unknown. Would we ever have children?

Having said that, we chose to skip all medical interventions and proceed directly to adoption. We decided that we wanted children. Period. The pregnancy turned out not to be so important to us. Thank God for all that, because the children I have mean the world to me.