My inspiration comes now because November is National Adoption Month, and I have been thinking about blogging my experience in adopting a child.
My first post about my adoption experience: The "Why" - Why adopt? Every parent's answer will probably be different. Here's mine.
I have always known I would adopt someday. Maybe that sounds strange, but I remember even in school knowing I would adopt. I didn't know if I'd ever get married, or have biological children, but I knew I wanted to adopt.
As a kid, I remember feeling empathy even for stuffed animals that no one else wanted - the one with a torn ear, or a head sewn on crooked. I always picked those ones, because I thought no one else would want them and they needed to be loved. I made sure all my stuffed animals had room on my bed to sleep, even when I was sleeping on the edge. I remember watching "Wednesday's Special Child" on the news, which featured kids who needed homes. I wanted to give a loving home to a child someday, and my biggest dream was to be a parent.
And I did get married. And around the 3rd year of our marriage, we decided to start trying for a child. We felt ready and we both wanted children. We weren't desperate or anything, so we just relaxed and hoped it would happen. And we hoped. And we hoped. And after a couple of years, I talked to my doctor, who determined I had hypothyroid. Then he put me on Clomid. And he tried Glucophage because I had some insulin resistance. Five years after we started trying, it happened. After taking about 50 pregnancy tests, losing weight, charting my temperature, and taking pills, I got a positive pregnancy test in 2003. I felt like it was my miracle, like I had waited for this, and that all the grief and effort was worth it because I was getting my miracle.
I wept, I slept a lot, I craved spicy food, I wished and hoped and dreamed. And then one day I had lower back pain. And I called my doctor's office, who thought I was just constipated. And the next day, I felt pressure. And my water broke. At 22 weeks, I went into labor. After 18 hours, I delivered a tiny, perfect, and stillborn baby boy on November 13, 2003. I share my experience here on my blog at: This is My Story, This is My Son.
Everything changed on that day. There's no word for the opposite of "miracle." Tragedy doesn't begin to describe how it feels to lose a child. I talk a lot about my feelings and coping and crawling out of hell on my hands and knees in my blog.
It wasn't long before I got pregnant again. And miscarried at 9 weeks in 2004. It took me over a year, maybe two, to recover enough to even think about taking the chance to try again. But eventually, the voice that whispered "motherhood" became louder than the voice that wanted to protect me from heartache.
So, in 2008, we decided to pursue both fertility treatments and international adoption and see what happened first. We had friends who had adopted internationally and we attended a seminar on adoption. We put in our application and paid our fee. And I underwent fertility tests - painful, humiliating tests, but I knew they would be worth it if I got a baby. Soon, we started treatments for IUI - Intrauterine Insemination. I won't go into all the details, but the process included pills, shots, vaginal ultrasounds every 2 days, and nothing covered by insurance. I was an emotional mess, my hormones were all over the place, and the last thing I needed was paperwork, so we put the adoption on hold.
By the summer of 2009, we had done 6 IUI attempts, and none were successful. We decided to move to IVF - In Vitro Fertilization. A lot of the prep was the same - pills, shots, vaginal ultrasounds. But instead of inseminating me, the eggs would be removed and fertilized, watched as they grew, and then the best ones put back into my uterus. We had to pay the IVF fee upfront. Once that was in place, we proceeded. As this cycle progressed, it was clear that I was not responding with enough viable eggs to do the IVF. So the cycle was "dropped" for IVF, and, so as not to waste the eggs that did grow, an IUI was done. And I got pregnant. And I miscarried again - this time so early that I would never have known I was pregnant if we weren't monitoring everything.
So, in March 2010, we decided adoption was the road for us. We submitted our application again and requested Kazakhstan. We chose to adopt internationally because, for me, it was a sure thing. I knew people who had adopted in the U.S. who had to give their children back when the birth mother changed her mind. Or had an open adoption where the birth mother was involved in the child's life. I just didn't think I could handle that. In addition, I've always felt deeply connected with the world, and so it felt very natural to adopt a child from another country, someplace where they might not have the opportunities children have here in the U.S.
People often ask why I would adopt from another country when we have so much need here. Those are my reasons. I've traveled to other countries, and I know that many countries do not have systems in place to care for children like we do in the U.S. And, after so much loss, I could not cope if a birth mother changed her mind.
Right after we submitted our application, we learned that the Kazakhstan program had been closed indefinitely. Because we were anxious to become parents, we were put into the Russia program since it was close in nature to the Kazakhstan program. And thus began our adoption journey.
For more on my infertility journey or on the son I lost, Eroll, click the labels "infertility" or "Eroll" on the right.
