Adoption Story, Part One

I've always been attracted to the idea of adoption. In fact, we tossed around the idea early in our marriage as something we'd like to do "after we have a couple of kids". It was always something of an ideal, floating out there in "maybeland", waiting for someday.

Then we didn't get pregnant right away. When we started looking into why, we also started tossing the adoption idea around again, but it was still purely theoretical.

October, 2006. Joe's aunt died, and besides leaving him a sizeable collection of whiskey barrel rec room furniture (no, I'm not kidding), he also inherited some money. By this time, we were pretty sure we had some significant fertility problem, so we decided to save that money in case we decided to pursue adoption in the future. I throw this in to explain why we were ABLE to make the decision to pursue adoption, meet a birthmom, prepare baby's room, travel to Neighboring State, spend 10 days there and pay our attorneys for all the extra work involved in interstate adoption...all within a 3 month period of time. We were blessed enough to be financially ready for the blow. God bless Aunt B.

Also in October, 2006, I had a laparoscopy and discovered that I did, in fact, have some pretty extensive endometriosis. Tubes were fused to ligaments, uterus pulled backward. Lesions that were causing my insides to look pretty screwed up. My amazing doctor removed all that he could within the limits of laparoscopy, and he said to give it six months before we pursued further types of treatment. Six months to see if laparoscopy alone would remove whatever impediment we had to achieving pregnancy. So we wait...

Being the impatient person I am, after about three months with no success, I started doing some serious adoption research. Now, I had not decided that pregnancy was out of the question. Quiet to the contrary...I was pretty positive that somewhere down the line, we'd find the cure to the infertility problem. But something inside me was changing...I guess you could say that I was feeling a calling or a tugging at my heart, moving me toward adoption.

After awhile, I let my husband in on these feelings, and I told him I wanted to attend a seminar that one of the agencies in our state was holding in a couple of weeks. I was really interested in gathering all the information we could.

March, 2007. We attended the agency seminar, which was mostly about domestic adoption. Later in the month, we attended another seminar for an international adoption agency. We discussed. I was leaning toward domestic adoption, at least for our first child. I was drawn to the idea of having a newborn, who would know me as her mother from her first days. My husband was a little more interested in international, but we were still rather undecided about even pursuing any of this yet.

April, 2007. I had an appointment with my doctor, who had me do a hormonal work-up just prior to the appointment. He decided that I wasn't ovulating properly. My hormones needed a boost. There are several ways to do this, but he picked the one he thought would be easiest for me and most likely to help, and off we went.

Well, after several months and some more tests, we decided that this treatment wasn't doing any good, so the doctor recommended the next option, more effective but a bit more difficult. This one involved hormone supplements in the form of an injection, which my husband was expected to administer. We were mulling over whether or not to start trying this treatment when...

August, 2007. My husband and I took a vacation and spent some time discussing the whole "adoption vs. fertility" thing. I asked him if he'd be OK with us pursuing both at the same time. He said "Well, yeah...I mean, don't you think it's time to start our family? We should throw our hat in the ring and let the chips fall where they may" Or something like that. At least that was the gist of what he was saying.

We had decided on the domestic avenue, and I was supposed to call the previously mentioned agency and set up a time to start our homestudy. I put it off for a few days because we had just returned from vacation and work was a little crazy. Then, the Thursday following vacation, I received a phone call...

A former coworker of mine who was currently doing some contract counseling work had met a young woman who was more than 6 months pregnant and wanted to place her baby for adoption. The baby would be biracial, which would make her more difficult to place, and as this counselor was thinking through her options for seeking out adoptive parents for this baby, she thought of us.

See, back in our research phase the previous Spring, I had approached this counselor to ask about local options for adoption. She knew we were interested in adoption, so she thought she'd go out on a limb and ask if we'd be interested in adopting this particular child...

Well, we decided that we were. It didn't take long to make this decision. We kind of felt like this was being placed in our laps. I mean, the very week we become open to moving forward with adoption, we get a call about a birthmother. That can't be coincidence, people.

We set up a time to meet with this counselor and the young woman who wanted to place her baby. The birthmom had to approve of us, of course, before anything else could move forward. Two weeks later, early September, we waited nervously to meet the woman who had the ability to start our family.

Stay tuned...