When the doctor pulled me aside and asked me if I’d secretly had a vasectomy.
My wife and I weren’t succeeding in getting pregnant so we headed to the doctor. She asked about our backgrounds, etc. and decided that there “might be a problem”. Since males are biologically simpler in this regard, they started testing with me. The results came back with ZERO sperm. Not low count. Not poor motility. Absolutely no sperm.
I was referred to the head of urology at a local university medical school and after a couple of tests he determined that it was genetic. I never had and never would produce sperm.
In six weeks we went from “there might be a problem” to “you’ll never produce biological children”. That was quite a plot twist. Most couples assume that they can have kids whenever they want but roughly 20% have fertility problems.
I’ll skip over the details but we eventually adopted two boys. Our oldest is in the US Army and our youngest starts college this fall.
Sometimes I still wonder what sort of child we might have “produced” but I have no regrets and I wouldn’t trade my sons for any number of bio-children.
Update———-
I really wasn’t expecting the response I’ve gotten to this. I appreciate the kind comments about what a wonderful guy I must be, but I wasn’t trying to do anything spectacular. I was just a married man who wanted to be a dad and unexpectedly found out that I had few options. I love my boys and they love me but I’m probably a fairly average dad (well, maybe a LITTLE above average).
Let me address a couple questions and then provide some details on the adoption process.
First, you can be born with genetic infertility. However, without digging up medical records that are over 20 years old I don’t remember the specific diagnosis and it’s possible that it’s congenital without being genetic. Second, as several have pointed out, sperm is a very small component of semen. Everything appeared to function fine for the first several years of our marriage. We had no warning that anything was wrong before the lab results came back.
I skipped adoption details because I didn’t think they fit the “plot twist” topic but here goes…
Once we got over the shock we had to figure out what we were going to do. We attended a Resolve conference (www.resolve.org) that helped us think about our options. Following the conference, many deep conversations, and a great deal of prayer we decided to pursue adoption.
The problem is that the US has far more infertile couples looking to adopt than available babies. Waiting lists were years long and required significant costs up front. Then you had to live in the same state - in some cases the same county - while waiting. I was in graduate school and we’d almost certainly be moving in a couple years. That meant we’d lose our spot on the list and our money.
We looked into special needs adoption in our state. Unless we were ready to adopt very severe needs the waiting times weren’t much shorter. Once they found out that I was in graduate school and my wife was a college teacher, they went out of their way to discourage us from starting the process.
We were about to give up when one of our contacts heard that Holt International had a temporary window for couples to apply to adopt minor special needs children from South Korea. If everything worked out, we could get a child within a year. We were approved to adopt a boy who had just turned two. In the adoption world, simply being over two years old made him “minor special needs”. Otherwise he was healthy. We got him in April and moved from Kentucky to Indiana over the summer.
That was 1996. We had been married 11 years, we’d never had children, and we started with a toddler who spoke only Korean.
The adoption wasn’t finalized when we moved but once we had him in our possession a move was OK. Since we changed states we had to use a different local adoption agency to finalize. This introduced us to Bethany Christian Services. When we decided to adopt a second child, we worked with them and again found a minor special needs boy from South Korea. This time the special need was premature birth. He was 10 months old when we got him and our doctor saw no signs of prematurity. He was developmentally right on schedule.
That was 1998 and we ended up moving to Wisconsin in 1999 where both boys grew into impressive young men.
Read other related questions on Quora:
- What has been the biggest 'eye opening' experience in your life?
- What are tips for making easily understood plot twists?
- Outside of having kids, what have been your biggest life-changing experiences?
from Quora http://ift.tt/29PS8Nl
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