A BATTLE AGAINST BIOLOGY; A VICTORY IN ADOPTION

By Jill Smolowe

Months after I had given up on fertility treatments, I visited a new gynecologist for a routine exam. When he heard the diagnosis (premature ovarian failure) rendered by a specialist at one of Manhattan's pre-eminent fertility clinics, he scoffed, "You're awfully young for that." I told him my husband Joe and I were launched on an adoption search, but he ignored me. Instead he palpated here, suggested we snip a sample for a biopsy there, then asked, eyes glowing with expectation, "Would you do anything to have a baby?" His confident expression dimmed when I answered firmly, "No, I would not."

Would I do anything to become a mother? Yes. But to me that was a different question. Thus my foray into fertility treatment lasted barely eight months--an eye blink compared with the brave women who soldier on year after year. I found every moment of that battle against biology a nightmare. The first salvo was Clomid, prescribed by a gynecologist who, upon learning that I was 37 and Joe 50, warned, "Given your ages, you should proceed as quickly as possible." Eager to hasten a pregnancy that already felt long overdue, I swallowed the pills. But rather than stimulating more eggs, the drug plunged me into a deep depression that left me unable to sleep, eat or think of anything but babies.

As I obsessed 24 hours a day, I did not fantasize the imprint of Joe's and my genes on a small face; my thoughts dwelled on the imprint of a small hand on my cheek. By the time we had sat out the seemingly interminable three-month wait to see a fertility specialist, I was thinking I'd like to adopt. But with Joe not yet ready to consider that option, I proceeded deeper into the fertility labyrinth.

From the very start, I was irrationally--or perhaps it was intuitively--certain that we would not conceive. Not now; not ever. Perhaps because I lacked the faith, patience or need for a biological miracle, I was unable to revere the physicians as fertility gods. Rather than giving me hope, their ministrations only heightened my anxiety. I resented the hour-long trips to the clinic, followed by the hour-long waits for the needle, the stirrups, the insemination, any of which rarely took more than a few minutes. I hated being at the mercy of doctors, with their overbooked schedules and endless diagnostic tests, their pat expressions of sympathy and seeming incomprehension of what I was going through.

Throughout the months of treatment, I frayed Joe's nerves with my fretting over each test and procedure. What if I messed up again on the twice-daily urine tests, designed to pinpoint ovulation, each of which required an hour of vigilance as I transferred the specimen between three vials at precise intervals? What if my luteinizing hormone surged before we received the results of Joe's latest sperm tests? Would the doctor still proceed with the intrauterine insemination? Timing, of course, was of the essence; miss the narrow window of opportunity and I would be sentenced to weeks of worrying about whether I could handle another rocky cycle of skeptical hope and certain despair.

All around me, people murmured that I must be patient, that modern medicine would make it happen in time. But I lacked the fortitude--optimism? attitude of surrender?--required for indefinite treatment. Within months, even the act of entering a pharmacy and purchasing an ovulation-predictor kit had become a painful trial. As the disappointments accrued, each procedure felt less a celebration of potential life than a small death.

On the day our doctor informed us that even with all the advances in technology, our chances of conceiving were just 1%, I felt devastated, yes, but I also felt relieved. If her words provided the final tug on the noose that had been strangling my hopes, they also supplied the means to cut me free without guilt. I did not question the diagnosis. I did not want a second opinion. By now I knew that for me, becoming a mother was an imperative; conceiving a child was not.

Five months later, my husband agreed to pursue an adoption. As we chased down leads on four continents that repeatedly dead-ended, I never once regretted or reconsidered our choice. Fourteen months later, in a hotel room in China, a tiny hand reached up and touched my cheek. I was, at last, a mother.

JILL SMOLOWE is a TIME contributor and the author of An Empty Lap, recently published by Pocket Books.