The fact that while I'm typing this two toddlers tearing down the living room, screaming with laughter, doesn't really make any sense from a medical point of view. My husband and I had wanted a child for years before their arrival and did our best to get it, but to no avail. There was nothing wrong with his sperm, the cause was mine.
Or more precisely, with my endometriosis, a condition in which the lining of the uterus grows outside your uterus – which not only causes a lot of pain, but often also infertility.
Because our desire to have children continued to be great, we finally decided to sign up for adoption. We were sure we were going to love a child who hadn't grown in my womb just as much, and we weren't deterred by the fact that for many years only children with so-called 'special needs' were eligible for an intercountry adoption process.
Those 'special needs' could be anything from a missing limb or a baby with HIV infection, to mothers who had used drugs or alcohol during pregnancy. We learned all about it during the compulsory adoption course that every aspiring adoptive parent in the Netherlands must follow. Six half days in an impersonal office, somewhere on an industrial estate, with about five other couples who also hoped to hold a child in their arms through adoption.
That course was not the only requirement to qualify for an actual adoption process. Our finances were checked extensively, we had to undergo a medical examination by an independent doctor to check that our risk of death was not too high to allow us a child, we had to fill out 1001 forms and had three conversations with someone from child protection who had to determine whether we would be suitable parents.