They warned us this could happen

As we made travel plans for our for adoption training this past weekend, two unexpected things happened. First, we received our full certification to adopt. This means an expectant mother could place a child with us at any time. Second – an expectant mother had chosen us.

Our adoption agency said that because our profiles were very open and because we presented young, that we may not have to wait long for an expectant mother to select us. So, be ready. Indeed, they told us this selection was the second fastest on record! We had a little less than three months to prepare for the child’s arrival.

So, we went to our training with a new-found purpose. Most of the training was very good, and we learned from adoptive parents, a lawyer, and birth mothers. Given our new situation, this training brought out more emotion in me than expected, especially from the birth mothers.

They warned us this could happen

We thought that because the paperwork, training, and this selection all occurred in about a five day span that truly, this baby was meant for us. The expectant mother, however, changed her mind. She wants to parent this child. We are disappointed, but realize that this baby is for the woman carrying it to parent until she says differently. If one were to look for a bright side, a weekend of lost hope is less painful than three months of it with heartbreak only to come upon delivery while standing in a hospital. This situation is called “adoption interruption.”

What is hard for me is this: in a way this situation is like announcing a pregnancy and then having a miscarriage. The higher chance of miscarriage in the first trimester is why many couples refrain from announcing a pending birth. Adoptions have no such reduced odds of an interruption with time. Also, because things like filling out paperwork to take leave from work must happen on a reduced time scale, withholding the announcement of a pending adoption is not possible. Thus, the pain of a lost opportunity to parent is public.

What isn’t public is a physical sign that one wants to expect a child. With pregnancy, a woman carries the outward sign of pending parenthood with her. Not so with an expectant adoptive couple. This couple has no outward physical sign of waiting, and those around you might (I imagine) treat you differently because they don’t see the impending birth themselves.

One of the couples at this training said they told almost everyone they wanted to adopt because they didn’t want to miss a possible connection to an expectant mother questioning whether she wanted to parent the child she carried. I still feel hesitant and a little embarrassed to do this. I don’t want to enter into conversations about infertility and receive XYZ advice on how to conceive. While having a child from my womb would be wonderful, we’re going to adopt. We want to adopt, and we don’t see it as a second choice. So, no we wait for selection, this time likely longer than a day or two.

Shannon

Questions

If there is a theme that I have noticed in this process, it has been questions. All sorts of questions, from all manner of sources. In fact, further consideration suggests that questions are the major framework upon which this whole process is built.

There are the structured, legalese, background questions which as one might expect are tedious, but ultimately straightforward; full legal name, date and place of birth, employment and occupancy background going back several years, physical characteristics, and or defects, etc. These are of course understandable, and not particularly challenging. Essentially, we have to apply for the privilege of undertaking this process.

Then, there are the more complex, adoption specific questions. These are a bit more challenging and require days of thought and discussion; with ourselves, with each other, with the adoption specialists. They range from the obvious; would we prefer a boy or girl (yes), would we accept multiples (yes), would we consider an immediate birth (yes)? Into the very detailed; what if the birthmother smokes or drinks or does drugs, or has psychological issues, or medical problems, and to what level of each might we consider; what about the birthfather, if he is even involved; what about the child and any unexpected complications or disabilities. There are long lists and ranges of options. Speaking of birthparents; how open of an adoption are we willing to consider, that is, what type of relationship with the birthparents (typically just the mother…) are we willing to accept or pursue?

What about race? And if you think this is not a huge question, please just stop and think about it for a bit.

We opted for any race because we feel that people are people and that such a decision is the only real option for us given our values and philosophies. But there is a lot to consider; what will the child have to face in regards to where we live; how we live? What sort of role models could we be or, be able to offer down the line. How will any of us face those people who do not understand? We are all human, we are all the same, but we are all very different and in this current world we live in, where will this discussion end up? Trust me, we know we have no real idea what we might be getting into.

And this brings up some of the other, more complicated questions. The most resounding one posed recently was, “Why?”

Why indeed.

Difficult enough question as it stands, but in the case of adoption, there are layers of complexity. Or not. The simple answer, I suppose, is “Because.” When Shannon and I first started dating the question of parenthood was a prominent one and we both agreed that we wanted to have a family.

Which, truth be told, is a relatively new position for me. I did not always entertain the idea of being a father as an option. There was the gloom and doom reasoning of, “with the way the world is, why bring another child into it?” There was the selfish reasoning of not wanting to take on that level of responsibility. There was the self-loathing reasoning, of “I’m not fit, or deserving, or capable enough.”

But we all change and hopefully grow a bit, as we stumble through life. I get the why question still, that is, I understand it. Since it was posed most recently, I have been mulling it about and in trying to understand it for myself there has been a lot of additional self-questioning.

The approach I have found myself taking in confronting this, is to examine what I have been calling “the human experience.” On the one hand, the simple side of this suggests procreation is a fundamental facet of life on this planet; thus it is a somewhat basic aspect of said “human experience”. But, it would seem, this particular facet is not available to us. At this time. Perhaps ever. Which, I would hope you can see already, brings up a lot more questions. Or at least this brings up a lot of the previous questions again, just in a slightly different light.

So we consider adoption and the questions come tumbling in. Which brings us back to the beginning of this discussion, but now with the background noise created by the issue I just described.

If we “can’t” have children, “should” we have children?

And then the adoption people want to know about our faith and our priorities and our childhood and our family histories and our past and current relationships. They too, want to know “why”, although they never quite come out and ask it directly.

But I do. Or at least, now I have to. Or perhaps it is not really me that is asking it, but the question is there nonetheless. It is floating there behind all of the other questions we have to consider.

But then, that is life, no? This too, is all part of the “human experience”, and in this case we are choosing to steer experience in a different way; for ourselves, and if all works out, for a human yet to be, and that human’s mother. A possibly scared, possibly confused, but either way genuinely human, mother.

Christopher