Here's the thing.
Our agency will put your application on hold, if you become pregnant during the course of adopting. Basically as soon as we tell them, we are out of the game, though not permanently; if something goes Horribly AwryTM, we're back in and we don't have to repeat the things we've already done. Mollie's description of her agency's reasoning (in yesterday's comments) is very much like ours:
I think the reasoning was based on the idea that it is indeed overwhelming to have two babies at once, and in the interests of the child who would be placed, the parents should be as long on resources as possible. The agency advocates for the child, not the would-be parents. And my agency felt is was definitely a detriment to have a bio kid stealing the thunder, and the resources.
I have to agree with them. From our standpoint, it would just be exhausting beyond measure; also, if I were a birthmother, I would have a very hard time placing my child with someone who was either already the new mother of a bio kid, or about to become same.
That part is not the hard part. The hard part is deciding where to draw the line: when to throw our lot in with the sea monkey, when to tell the agency, when to be put on hold knowing full well that anything can go wrong at any time. There is -- not discord, exactly; let us say there is a range of opinion, in the House of Leery Polyp, on where exactly that line ought to go.
Sean, a reasonable, rational, scientifically-inclined person who is equally deep-feeling and emotionally well-rounded, is of the belief that it would be best to go to our Thursday class, see what next Monday's ultrasound reveals, and if it should happen to be a beating heart, well, then we have to fess up. We don't want to waste our mental energy or that of our social worker or the other couples in the group; it wouldn't be fair to anyone. Plus why keep shelling out? We ain't exactly rollin' in it.
I am also a scientist, and according to an article I recently published in the Mid-Atlantic Journal of My Chocha, things are VERY SCARY up until the end of the first trimester, and then SLIGHTLY LESS SCARY after that, and so why not just wait? Until potty-training?
Marriage is compromise, and so we are doing pretty much what Sean wants, since I am able to recognize that it is indeed the sane and reasonable thing to do, and we don't lose anything but time that way if, you know, Horribly AwryTM.
Still, though. It's hard, and it does feel like loss.
But look at me, counting my chickens before I see their little heartbeats on the ultrasound! Not cool. Not cool at all.
P.S. I should add that we were going to use birth control, honest. It just never occurred to me that I could actually get pregnant. In fact I am still not entirely convinced. Heh.