Genetic continuity and conception with a life partner

So, the next two losses the author (Patricia Irwin Johnson) of "Adopting After Infertility" addresses are individual genetic continuity linking past and future
and the joint conception of a child with one's life partner. I had never thought to distinguish biologically-obtained children in this manner. I pretty much lumped it together in my mind- biological children equates with continuing my biolgical line and also blending it with my husband's. But I can see the value in the distinction and, surprisingly, the second is more of a loss for me than the first.

Our family is fairly matrilineal. Yes, the women have all taken their husband's names and gone the traditional route to the outside world, but in reality, it's really the women who are in charge and the men have been sort of insignificant and mostly absent. Hence, why I had very little connection to my maiden name as it was my father's. However, I feel a very strong connection to the great-grandmother I never met and for whom I am named. From pictures, I know I have her eyes (which none of my siblings or my mother or grandmother have) and from stories, I know I have her temperment. Will that connection end if my child is not biologically related to me?

The author describes this loss as "losing the expectation that we will continue the genes of our families in an unbroken blood line from some distant past into a promisting future." I have always assumed that my baby would have blue eyes- my entire family has some form and mine are so distinct, it was a given, especially when I married DH who also has blue eyes. For some odd (perhaps, vain?) reason this is truly the only "biological connection" loss that I can identify. DH has no difficulty with not knowing his own genetic connection and really could care less whether he is biologically related to his children. Of the six losses, I can rate this one as the least significant for me.

But a child of our union or "conception with a life partner," as she terms it, that is where I really feel it. Even before we got married, DH talked of our future children and how we hoped that a boy would have his enormous height and a girl would not, how they would likely have vision problems because both of us are blind as a bat, how much I hoped for a little blond boy just like his baby pictures, and how he wanted a little brunette girl with soft curls like I had when I was little. We love each other so much and I want a tangible expression of that love to manifest itself in a child. Can we still have a child who is the product of our love by raising a nonbiological child? Yes, I think so. But all those dreams and memories of "when" have to be laid to rest.