Monday, May 24, 2010

To adopt or not to adopt.

Today, my best friend Ami found out she was having a little girl. I am so excited for her. And I know with all my heart she will be a great mother. I am so supper excited for her.

It does though, make me think. Makes me think if it will ever happen for us. Or how much it will take. If it will happen on our own, or if we will have to see a fertility specialist.

And then you have the commercial. Three times today when I was getting into my car I heard a commercial for fertility help and it makes me wonder if it is a sign and if I should look up the website if even just to see what they have to offer.

Jake and I did talk again about adoption tonight at dinner. It started with Jake saying something about how you can pay so much for fertility treatments, tens of thousands of dollars, and for years and years with no guaranteed results. So I mentioned that lots of couples adopt because they cant get pregnant and then end up having one of their own naturally. I'm sure stress and the pressure we put on ourselves has a lot to do with it.

I found out tonight that Jake is afraid that if we adopt and then have one or more of our own that the adopted child will not feel the same as our biological child. Almost like the didn't belong. I can totally see how this could happen (not that I feel that way at all,) but couldn't it happen if we had 2 adopted children? Or even if we had all biological children?

Food for thought I guess. I do know that I will go to the website from the commercials and see what they offer.

1 comment:

Carrie said...

Just felt the need to chime in on this post...

Adoption is not for everyone and you need to be very honest with yourself about your ability/desire to parent a child that enters your family through adoption. Many prospective adoptive parents feel like they're doing this gloriously generous act by "saving" a child from a destitute life (either in the US or abroad). The idea that "love is enough" is gravely mistaken - any kind of parenting (adoptive or otherwise) takes a lot of work.

HOWEVER, what I will say is that good adoption agencies (of which there are honestly few) will prepare you and ask the tough questions that need to be asked of adoptive parents. If you decide to explore this route of building your family, ask lots of questions of prospective agencies. This is not something to do the fastest, cheapest way.

We're excited to be building our family through adoption. It was always something we planned to do. For purely convenient, logistical reasons, we had two children by birth first (I only had maternity benefits while in grad school) and are now adopting. Our hope for Brayden and Gavin is that they will come to view our family not as us vs. her (their sister entering the family through adoption). All three of them have different stories of how they entered the family - Brayden's birth story is very different from Gavin's, and Abby's story will be different as well. At the end of the day though, we're a family.

There are many routes to becoming a family, and we look forward to following your journey to your little one!