Hi! My name is Faith. I am the proud mother of a six-year-old boy named Nicholas, who joined our family through adoption after 4-1/2 years of infertility treatments and a grueling adoption process.

I offered to guest blog over here because I remember the pain of my infertile years all too well. (I am the Hoping to Adopt blogger over at adoptionblogs.com.) In fact, I am still infertile. Adoption cures childless, not infertility. There will always be a part of me that grieves the loss of the ability to experience pregnancy and to meet the child who has my nose and my husband's eyes.

But I can't complain because I have made peace with the way my life has turned out. I have a wonderful kid who is truly a gift from God, and I would not change anything that would prevent me from being his mother. I have grieved the loss of my fertility, so it does not hurt very often any more, although the pain will occasionally bubble up at the most unexpected times.

I would like to start out by sharing my story with you. Let's begin with the decision to start a family. My husband and I married in our mid-twenties. Our plan was for both of us to work for five years and then have a baby. We would have a second baby two years later.

My sister had a baby about three years into our marriage, which started my biological clock ticking. So, when we had been married exactly 4 years and 3 months, I told my husband that I was ready to start trying to conceive. Have you ever seen a deer in the headlights? That is what my husband looked like. We started quibbling over whether the plan was to have a baby after 5 years or to start trying to conceive after 5 years.

I look back now and have to laugh at our arrogance of believing that we had any control over when a baby would enter into our lives. I was so confident that we would conceive as soon as we started trying. I had a plan after all, and making a baby right away was in my plan. My entire family was fertile, so I had no reason to think that there would be an issue. When we threw away our birth control pills and decided to become parents, I had no idea that I was beginning an emotional marathon.

Related Topics:

• Beyond Barren: Perceptions of Female Infertility Through Time
• First Things First