Questions about adopting?

Question

Adopted persons or adoptive parents:

My husband and I have been trying for over 2 years to have a baby.

I'm 33 and he is 35, soon to turn 36 in DEC.

We have had so many treatments and seen several GYN's.

I have spent many days and many nights in tears wanting a child.

We have highly considered the possibility of adoption. We want to give a child the opportunity to be loved and cared for as if it were our own< since right now it seems hopeless.

BUT>>>>I'I'mhave concerns that I can't let go of.

1. Im scared to death that even though we adopt, I will never be fully satisfied in motherhood, not being able to give birth to a child of our own.

2. Will that child grow up caring more about finding out about its real parents and wanting to be with them?

If anyone could give me some insight into this.

Im looking for straight up reguardless how they may be.

Feel free to toss more info into it

Thanks yall and I hope you have a great day.

Answer 1

This website has too many anti-adoption group members.

Go to adoption specific website&quot; www.resolve.org, www.ivf-connections.com, www.rubber-ducky.org were my fav on my path to adopting my baby.

Answer 2

Love is a verb, not a condition and so is parenting.

I think that it is wise of you to recognize that you may not be ready to jump into adoption, it is not right for everyone. But some degree of trepidation is normal and important.

I was adopted. I grew up knowing what it feels like to be a part of a family that was formed through adoption. Choosing to adopt was very easy for me, in fact it felt more natural than the idea of giving birth!

But my husband had to get used to the idea and he was unsure at times. When you grow up outside adoption it is very easy to get the wrong idea. The media continues to draw adoption in a very negative light and the only time adoption makes the news is when something goes horribly wrong.

You grew up in a biological family, so when you see horrific abuse cases on the news you don&#039;t think for a second that that&#039;s what will happen if you have a baby right? Well don&#039;t make that mistake about adoption either!

The vast majority of adopted people never even consider searching for biological relatives. We have familes and just aren&#039;t interested. But it is very important that you consider your child&#039;s possible interest before you decide to adopt. Your child may feel very curious about his biological family and want to search or maintain a bond with them. Don&#039;t be afraid of that, it doesn&#039;t make your bond any less it is just an additional relationship.

If you contact a couple of agencies they can usually give the names of some of their families who are willing to talk to interested parents. I do this fairly often and find that people just want to know what our family is like. When they see that it&#039;s like any other family, that seems to help a great deal.

A good agency will also have classes and materials to help you completely your journey with infertility BEFORE you pursue adoption.  

Answer 3

I think Jennifer L made some really good points.

To add to that from an adoptee&#039;s perspective, if you do decide to adopt, please bear in mind the fact that adoptees HAVE had to lose everything in order to be adopted, and for some this is very painful, for some, not so much.  You never know how adoption will affect the child or how the child will process the grief of losing an entire family, a culture (if internationally adopted), an entire life that was meant to be.

And add to that the knowing that they are &quot;second choice&quot; because you had really wanted to have one of &quot;your own&quot;, and only came to adopt after years of fertility treatments, well, maybe you can see how being adopted is not always an easy thing for any adoptee, child through adult.

Please also try to understand that if an adoptee decides to search out their biological family, it most often has nothing to do whatsoever with their relationship with their adoptive parents or how much they love them.

It is more a function of needing to know where they came from, WHO they came from, of needing closure or some type of understanding of WHO they are as a person...things that non-adopted people take for granted because you have always known where you get your looks, your personality, your love of music or art or other interests.  It is no easy thing to grow up with NO genetic mirroring, with NOBODY in your immediate family who is &quot;like&quot; you, many adoptees express feelings of not &quot;fitting in&quot;.

This is not a reflection of how much love there is in a family; it is simply a function of two gene pools in the same household, one can&#039;t love away differences in DNA.

If you truly love and want your adopted child to be happy, healthy, and a whole person, I would hope that you would support his/her decision to search, and support him/her in the reunion process and not put up roadblocks or play guilting games...this is a HUGE mistake that I see many times, members of the adoptee&#039;s a-family putting pressure on the adoptee to not have relationships with their biological relatives, and in the end, it only bites them in the hind end.

Do some research into how adoption affects adoptees.  Try to put yourself into the place of a child who has lost her family, lost perhaps her entire culture, language, heritage, etc., and been replaced by a new family.  Would you want to find out where you came from?  Would you still love the family you grew up with?

Of course you would.  And so do the vast majority of adoptees who search.

Answer 4

My husband and I want to adopt as well, and I&#039;ve asked people I know who have been adopted.. As far as I&#039;ve learned, once you hold that baby and it&#039;s yours, that&#039;s it... it&#039;s yours and you will love him or her and most likely forget that he or she didn&#039;t come out of your womb - that is if you are a decent individual.

As far as being only concerned with finding their real parents, there is a stage in life (around the early teens) when all kids are hateful towards their parents (adopted or biological).  The only difference here is that the child has an extra fact to hurt you with when you won&#039;t let them stay out past 9pm... &quot;You&#039;re not my REAL mother!  My REAL mother would let me!!  I wish I would have stayed with THEM!&quot;  But any child could say something similar about running away and all that.. it&#039;s just how you deal with it.

A common rule I&#039;ve found with adopted parents is, &quot;your parents gave you to us because they couldn&#039;t take care of you.  Once you&#039;re 18, you can go find them if you want, but until then, I am taking care of you and you are my responsibility whether you find your birth parents or not&quot;.  By the time they&#039;re 18, they don&#039;t need parents anymore and they&#039;re more worried about college and their own future to worry about their birth parents anymore.  And IF they still go out to find them, they usually find it so awkward that they prefer their adoptive parents anyway...

Answer 5

Hi!

I&#039;m an adoptive parent.  We had secondary infertility, went through some treatments, grieved our loss of fertility, then adopted two school age children from overseas.

The questions you are asking are very good ones and very common concerns that people have, while they are considering if adoption is right for them.  I&#039;m glad that you are thinking about these things NOW, instead of waiting until the adoption has already happened.

1.  I think one of the most important early steps in considering adoption is truly taking the time to grieve for infertility and move on toward acceptance.  You and your husband really do need to find a way to resolve this and make your peace with it.  Only the two of you can decide how best to do that. It might mean taking a year off and do some of the &quot;couple&quot; things that you won&#039;t be able to do with children.  Once we decided &quot;Enough!&quot; with the fertility treatments, it felt like a huge weight was off my shoulders.  Imagine, no more counting the days on a calender and no more &quot;prescribed&quot; s*x!  No more drugs or shots and pelvic exams were back down to once a year!

Adoption does not cure infertility.  A child from adoption is not going to replace the image of a child born from your body.  It&#039;s easy to intellectually &quot;know&quot; these things, but it&#039;s important to internalize and accept them.  

2. You&#039;ll learn a lot about this from the adult adoptees on this forum.  Adoption starts with a loss (this was the first statement made in our first adoption education class).  A child loses his/her first family (regardless of how the adoption came to pass).  A mother and father lose their child.  Adoption loss is something primal and intrinsic.  Many adoptees express this feeling of loss, even if they had a perfect life and perfect adoptive parents.  As an adoptive parent, I found this hard to get my mind around: Adoption loss is not about the adoptive parents.  It&#039;s not the fault of the adoptive parents and it doesn&#039;t mean that their child doesn&#039;t love them.  The need to find one&#039;s roots is a pretty common human need and society expects adoptees to simply ignore that.  Included in this, is the desire many adoptees have to search for their original family.  It is possible for an adoptee to love two sets of parents, for both sets to be &quot;real&quot;.  An adoptees love for their adoptive family is not diminished by the adoptee&#039;s love for their first family.  

Otherwise, please do a lot of research on the different kinds of adoption (foster, domestic, international).  There are great resources out there, especially books that address adoption from the perspective of the adoptee.  Adoption is not something to enter into lightly or without arming yourself with knowledge.

Best of luck to you and your husband.

Answer 6

Seacoral what great questions you ask my friend. I honestly don&#039;t have a answer since I have not been in this situation but I have a friend who adopted   They love this baby the day it was placed in there arms and have given him a loving and wonderful home. They go though every thing we natural parents go through. When our baby&#039;s are born we are all nervous and we learn from our baby . No child is the same. You just learn to read your child and there needs.

I think you would be a wonderful mother for any child.

You would be surprised what adoptive kids say.

A Friend sent this to me. So beautiful.

Teacher Debbie Moon&#039;s first graders were discussing a picture of a family. One little boy in the picture had a different hair color than the other members. One of her students suggested that he was adopted.

A little girl said, &#039;I know all about adoption, I was adopted.&#039;

&#039;What does it mean to be adopted?&#039;, asked another child.

&#039;It means&#039;, said the girl, &#039;that you grew in your mommy&#039;s heart instead of her tummy!

I wish you the best my friend and If you need to talk please email me .

I will pray for you and your husband. (( HUGS))  Sugar bug

( Mom of 2 boys)