So I’ve been quiet because I have a big decision. One that is causing a massive freak out. One I couldn’t even decide about whether to post about, let alone how. I think I’ll stick to the bullet point approach.  Feel free to jump to the end to read my burning question….

First off my dreams in a pretty obvious order:

1. Have a family – primary options for this premature ovarian thirty year old are adoption or egg donation.
2. Live where health insurance doesn’t mean you MUST work full time so that hubby and I could share childcare duties by each cutting back our work week a day or two and then only need day care 1-2 days a week.   I spent 3 years getting to NZ in order to make this reality a possibility. Bonus prize – I get 2 publicly funded donor egg cycles (must bring own donor though or wait and wait and wait) here as  NZ resident – yahooo!!!! minus the crushing experience of having cycle one not work and no real plans for finding donor for cycle two, but hey that is a pretty amazing bonus prize!  Honestly want a donor cycle in a great place, check out the skilled shortage list and think about moving here:)  just kidding… sort of…  it nearly worked for me.
3. Live abroad in a place that does not speak English – this dream was thwarted a bit by the fact that I married a local boy who had no overseas relatives or prospects and that I picked a profession that demands the highest level of language proficiency – fluency is not enough.  I really would have to be a native speaker to have a chance in my field,  and well I only speak English.
4. Get  PhD researching the niche in my field that I am passionate about
5. Live in beautiful places with ocean and mountain opportunities that are equal to or better than Oregon, my home state which I compare all other possible residential options with very harshly, not that that has stopped me from living in a lot of places.
6. Rowing – because it is fast and calming and awesome and the water gets me through

Now there are some compatibility issues with these dreams, particularly the need to chase donor eggs or adoption and its  impacton  dream number 1.  Suddenly things like the laws of my current country and how much we earn really really mattered. It also is trickier to do adoption if you switch countries all the time.  I could go home and do a donor egg cycle, but that would screw up dream number 2.  I had basically given up on dream 3 in order to fret about how to do the PhD thing but not permanently screw up goal 5 by having to take a tenure track position where ever it cropped up once I did get my PhD, even if it did not meet my standards for goal number 5.  There are only so many universities with programs in my field in my current (and deeply loved) city or in my home state…

And then we got an offer out of the blue…   ITALIA.  I have 2 weeks to decide whether to move to Northern Italy to do a PhD in a field sort of related to mine and that I only know about because, well, its my husband’s field and when he talks, he often talks about it.   He’d get a dream job and  I’d get a PhD that I probably can shape to be sort of related to my field.  I’d get a chance to live abroad even though I don’t speak the language at all (yet).  We’d have several months to plan the move.  I am pretty sure Italy is beautiful, though New Zealand and Oregon do set a very high bar.  I know people row in Italy, it just is hard to figure out if they take on first year rowers who are 30.   I think I can afford health insurance there or have it covered by the state.. and really as a PhD student you pick your hours and get basic government health insurance, isn’t that  part of the low pay deal?

But that brings me back to dream number one… even if I can sort out the other goals, how do I determine whether moving to Italy for 3 years would  delay or potentially eliminate our chances of having kids and all the regrets that could cause?  Or how much would I regret not going if we stayed here and still never made any head way with the kid dream?  Plus I am pretty sure my parent friends’ envious reactions to my opportunity suggests that this is one of the few lucky things about not being parents….  Really though, if I had kids I wouldn’t think twice, these types of opportunities are why I plan to have passports for my kids long before they can even walk!

So lovely readers, do any of you know anything about the donor egg options in Italy or the rest of Europe for that matter?  What about adoption? I don’t know quite how to research this given my horrible lack of language skills… I put all my energy in learning how to teach kids with autism how to communicate with English speakers and teaching kids who can’t speak at all to do the same, and now what I really need is to be able to google in Italian like a pro.

So again, I beg with you.. does any one out there know anything about family building options in Italy or Europe in general?  I can trade you a lot of great information on how it is done here in NZ 🙂