Does it still hurt that I can't have a baby?

January 31, 2011 was one of the best days of my life. After a whirlwind three weeks, we brought my daughter home. She was four months old. Wed just walked through an adoption story I couldnt have written up myself if I tried.

I quickly entered the world that all new moms with babies know - the exhausting world of translating looks and grunts, cries and smiles. The world of praying the swaddle holds and changing shirts every few hours so you dont smell like spit up. The tiptoes out of the bedroom once you finally get the baby to sleep. The 100 pictures of the same pose on your phone and the struggle to not keep and post them all.

The blessings (and sometimes what feels like curses) of parenthood have filled my life for almost seven years. Now, were in the days of school lunch, Girl Scouts and spelling tests. As I watch the curves on my babys face turn her into a mature-looking girl, I rejoice. I dont ever forget the day in the doctors office colon cancer took away my fertility and nearly my life.

Fortunately, adoption became the redemptive path for my dream of parenthood.

Yet if Im honest, there are still some days I wish I could have had a baby.

There are days the grief of an empty womb hits me. Days I wonder if a biological child would have received my freckled skin, or my husbands laugh and smile.

These days dont hit as often as they used to, in fact the moments of grief sparked by infertility are few and far between. Some of its because life keeps us busy. But most of its because over time, the wounds have healed because Ive peeked into the pain and gone there.

Ive let myself feel how badly it hurts to be barren.

For years, both before and after we first adopted, I tried to brush the lingering sting of infertility off. I felt like mourning my fertility would prevent an agency from working with us, or a birth mom from choosing us. Even after everything was final with our adoption, I felt my infertility struggle was a disservice to my daughter - as though it meant I wasnt grateful for her. Id feel grief sneak up and quickly tell myself to stop, echoing some of the ignorant comments Ive received from well-meaning acquaintances. I held back the tears and replayed a series of familiar thoughts in my head,

At least youre a mom now! Look at your beautiful girl. Be grateful youre alive and get to be a mom, and get over it.

But the script that forbid me to face loss and pain eventually ran out of lines and proved ineffective. I gave up the fight and admitted the truth of my infertility: I would have chosen differently for myself if I had control.

I think it took me admitting what was hiding in the depths of the pain for it to not sting so much. I accepted my lack of control, yet in that acceptance, the heaviness lifted. The swelling pain in my chest from infertility that used to sit there for days has now become a small pinch that comes very rarely and quickly moves on.

Do I occasionally still wonder what my biological child would have looked like? Sure. Do I sometimes mourn because my husband and I didnt experience bringing a child into this world? Of course.

But would I trade the opportunity to be my daughters mama for it? Never in a million years.

The mystery of adoption is that I can carry both loving parenthood and mourning fertility at the same time, and its absolutely beautiful and wonderful.

November is National Adoption Month! If the call of adoption has been placed on your heart, go for it. Empty arms can be filled and broken hearts healed through the power of adoption.