Although I've posted about my health/fertility problems, I don't know if I've posted about my desire to adopt. I've spent the last two years trying to get my body to behave so I that I might be able to conceive a child, but I’ve felt like such a fraud. I’ve given a great deal of thought to why I even would want to try to conceive a biological child. And the reasons I’ve come up with are more about what I think other people want / expect from me. (i.e. To give a biological heir to my grandparents/mother/husband, etc) And I’ve had an epiphany – I’ve never given a shit about what others think or want from me. Why should I now? I want to be a mom. I am not sure why I should subject my body to the rigors of trying to conceive under such circumstances, if I just want a kid. Not a biological kid, but a kid. I am not doing this for my grandfather's pride in seeing his genetics live on (and our genetics aren't that great anyway.) So, that is my secret. Suffering from PCOS and endometriosis pisses me off because I hate than my body doesn’t work. (And I am a little bit of a control freak, but that is beside the point.) But in the end, I’m ok with nothing working properly, because I know that there is more than one way to make a family. And that is what I want – a family. I think I have finally convinced R that we should skip the biological child process and move onto adoption. But I have issues with adoption. And I need to sort through them. Here are some of them:
· My grandparents got pregnant at the age of 16. Pressured by their parents they got married, had the baby, and gave it up for adoption. The adoption was arranged by the delivering doctor (very sketchy) and the baby (JK) was given to the doctor’s sister. My grandparents ended up staying together, and had my mom almost 2 years later. My grandfather went to school in the evenings and landed quite a nice job. Things were tight, but they built a small house and my grandmother was able to stay home with my mom. My grandfather went to his father and asked that they try to get JK back, since he was established, had a home, and could support his family. Of course, this was impossible. JK remained my grandparents’ secret until about twelve years ago, when he searched out for his family. Then the truth came out and there was a reunion. He had a great life, with a great mom and dad and a brother. He went to good schools and traveled. And never watched his father beat the shit out of his mother, which is more than my mom and her other brother and sister could say. There was so much resentment, on all ends. My mom was resentful of growing up in such a terrible environment while JK lived in a very nice one. JK was resentful of being abandoned. My grandfather was resentful because he didn’t want to give up JK and didn’t want to be thought of as an abandoner. My grandmother was resentful because she had hidden this secret so deep inside her that she never wanted to see it again. She didn’t want her friends to know what she had done. I don’t want to be a part of an adoption like that. In this case, adoption was a permanent solution to a temporary problem. It would have been easy for my great grandparents to assist my grandparents until they were established, but they didn’t because of “what people would think.” But, on the other hand, it saved one child from being witness to a terribly dysfunctional family. To being beaten by a drunken mother or father. It seems like there is no perfect solution.
· I don't want to be involved in a situation where a birthmother is coerced.
· I am trying to convince R that open adoption is a good option for us because of my fear of repeating the pain of JK’s closed adoption. This has been difficult, because there are a lot of misconceptions about open adoption.
· I am afraid no one will pick us. I feel that we have a lot of love and care we can give a child, but not a lot of money. I know that placing a child for adoption is not always entirely economic, but I feel very insecure about this. I am the girl that was often picked last in gym, so this just might be middle-school-based fear.
· We have also considered international adoption – specifically Haiti or Ethiopia. This may take the open adoption option away from us, either because the parents have passed away, or the parents are unknown. But there was one adoption I read about with an agency we’ve looked at, the adoptive mother was allowed to travel to the birth mother’s village and meet her and establish a way to continue communication with her. This would obviously be an ideal situation, as it gives the child a direct connection with their extended family.
· My Family – Part One. At Christmas time we spoke with my mother about adoption. Specifically transracial adoption. We were met with a less that enthusiastic response. The general theme: “It is so hard! There are so many problems with those kids! And you don’t know what you are getting into! And open adoption is the worse thing ever!” My mom, who is an educated woman, suddenly sounded like a moron. My response: Parenting is hard. All kids have problems. Having biological children does not guarantee we won’t have problems. (My family tree is riddled with alcoholism and manic depression and R’s has alcoholism and schizophrenia.) It’s simple biology. Nobody knows what they are getting. As far as open adoption - it sounds a little scary, but closed adoption sounds scarier.
· My Family – Part Two. My grandparents are somewhat racist. My mom again thought this would be a terrible idea and basically said that although my grandfather loves kids, he would probably never accept a child of another race. I am seeing my grandparents next month and I plan to ask them this myself. If it is true – and I hope its not, I will be very sad. We have very little family, and my grandparents would definitely be a big chunk of my kids’ extended family. I’d hate to not have them along for the ride. But, it is a risk I am willing to take.
· But….is it fair to children to put them in a home with no extended family? I don’t know!
· I don’t want my children to ever think they were my second choice. My first choice is kids. My second choice is a bunch of dogs. I don’t really feel like biology is forcing my choice, because technically we could give TTC a real go. I just don’t feel like it. Why put my body and emotions through the ringer when my when I don’t want pregnancy per say, but a child. But, I feel like the adoption community, especially anti-adoption people are really obsessed about this “first choice” thing. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life defending my choices to anyone. Is that part of adoption? Will I have to compromise on that to go through with this?
· Will my dog like the baby? Or will he try to eat him or her?
· Do I over-analyze things?
· With transracial adoption, I think it is important to find good cultural/race role models for your children. How do I do this? I am going to be honest; R and I do not have a lot of friends right now. I picture us with a great social life, with tons of friends, but right now we are so focused with school that we don’t socialize at all. We will soon be joining the UU church which is a pretty diverse crowd, so we are hoping to find ourselves a community of friends there. Is that enough? Or should I actively seek out more opportunities?
· Although we hope to join the UU church, we are not religious. I consider myself spiritual, but not particularly Christian. I was raised Mormon and I appreciate the strength of community that exists in organized religion. I just don’t agree with most of the beliefs of organized religion. But, I want my child to be educated about all religions (this, I think, is where UU is really great) and I want them to be able to make their own choices. R is an atheist. He agrees about the power of community, and allowing our children to make educated choices about religion, but he is very vocal that he hopes they choose atheism. We need to work on this, because I don’t want to push them in any direction.
· I don’t want my child to ever feel abandoned. I know this feeling well and I want to do whatever possible to prevent it. Is this possible?
I think this is it for right now. I need to sort this out and search out some opinions from adoptive parents and adoptees. Please comment if you’d like.
