Why adoption? This question has been asked to people choosing to adopt probably at least 80 million times (my husband has made me aware that whenever I want to imply a large number it is always 50 million or 80 million, so you can see that I mean a lot since I went with the larger of my two “go to” numbers). People who are considering adoption ask this question to those who have already adopted to have their thoughts and feelings affirmed. People who have never considered adoption ask this question to understand or sometimes to show their disapproval.
Luckily for us, most of our friends and family know the struggle that we have been going through with secondary infertility so they already know why. But for those who may not know us, we do have an answer to this question. My husband and I were able to get pregnant with our daughter within a normal timeframe. We suspected no issues and went on planning our lives on our own timeline. We decided to start trying for #2 when our daughter turned 2. We followed through with our plan and as the months ticked by with no pregnancy, I started to think that maybe there was a problem. I am a planner and I like life to go the way that I have laid everything out in my mind. So, when our daughter turned 3 I realized that my plan was now a full year off. Not good. I spent my time looking at infertility boards online, researching the problem our doctors had found, and searching for the answer to the question when will we get our baby #2? No matter how much I hoped for it, the internet never turned into the psychic with all of the answers about my future that I wanted it to be. All I could do was wait and see. For a control freak planner, waiting is about as easy as balancing an egg on your head while running around the block. In July of 2011 the waiting finally ended. Our doctors told us that there was nothing they could do to increase our chances of getting pregnant that we were willing to do (we would not do IUI or IVF) and our chances of getting pregnant on our own were very low. I grieved the opportunity to have a biological baby for a short time, but since I had the experience of being pregnant once already and adoption was something that I had always thought about, adoption came to me as an option quite quickly. My husband did not accept adoption as easily as I did, but agreed to the process and is getting more on board every day. Adoption to me was the option that ended the uncertainty and allowed us to take control of our lives again. I want a bigger family to experience life with. I want my daughter to have a sibling to go through life with. Whether or not our baby #2 has our DNA is unimportant.
