I still remember the biggest fight Aaron and I have ever had as if it was yesterday. It was the one time I almost uttered the word “divorce”, something I swore I would never do unless I was serious. We had only been married a year and we had been trying to have a baby for that whole time to no avail. While that did not seem to bother Aaron, it was heartbreaking for me mostly because somewhere inside me I knew that our baby would not share our DNA.

So without discussing it with Aaron, I started researching adoption. I knew many people who have adopted and they all used the same agency so I started there. When I clicked on the programs and saw Vietnam, I knew we were supposed to adopt. I printed out the forms and started filling them out right away. I was ready and Aaron had never said no to me for anything at this point in our relationship, but he said wait for a bit. I was not prepared for what happened that night or the next morning.

Because I did not know many of the answers pertaining to Aaron I knew I would have to complete the paperwork with him. We were going to my parents house that night and since it took over an hour to get there I figured that would be the perfect time to fill out the paperwork and get started. I was wrong. I was about to drop a huge bombshell in my husband’s lap and I didn’t even know it. He had no idea I was going to say let’s start an adoption and he was in no way prepared.

The first thing he said to me  was “No way” followed by “how am I supposed to love a child that is not even mine.” I think the lawyer in me kicked in and I pointed out all of the fertility issues we were aware of at the time, we would learn later that we only knew about 1% of the fertility issues we really had, and that this was the road we would be on in the end anyway. Yet Aaron kept asking that one question.

By the time we arrived at my parents house I was not going to get out of the car, I didn’t, actually neither did Aaron. I called my mom and told her we could not make it.  Aaron and I turned around and drove home, continuing the fight. He felt like I was completely ignoring what he had to say and that I was not hearing him that he would think about it. All I heard was “how am I supposed to love a child that is not even mine.” Before we fell asleep, worlds apart on our king size bed, I said to him “then I guess we will never have children because I cannot ever adopt a child wondering if you will love that child.”

We both woke up and pretended as if we had never had that fight, moving through months of infertility treatments and one major surgery for me. Then Aaron heard the words that changed his heart – “If your wife ever gets pregnant there is a 50% chance that she AND the baby could die.” Now that is not exactly what the doctor said – the chance with all of the right medical treatment is actually closer to 10% but that is what Aaron heard and seven months after that first conversation about adoption he came back to me with a lot of questions. Somehow we both agreed to let that fight go and see what happened.

The next 20 months were absolutely crazy and filled with some amazing ups and downs, but I will never forget the love on Aaron’s face when he picked up our son and our daughter for the first time and said to them “I will love you forever.”  Or how he cried when we met them for the first time or how over protective he can be of them now. I guess the answer to his question, which what he was doing asking a question that I never answered, was right in front of us the whole time: love is a choice and once that choice is made there is no turning back. Also, Aaron would fight to the death anyone who tried to tell him these are not his children.

You can find Carissa rambling over at My Everyday Miracles.