Hoping to Adopt

Both the American and British foster systems initially seek, in my experience, to enable birth parents to regain custody of their children. There are cases in which it seems clear to me that there is no hope for parents to change the circumstances that caused them to lose access to their children, but I am no professional. I'm just a mom, and being a mom, I'm glad that foster institutions do their due diligence to understand and help the entire family instead of jumping to conclusions. In case you're unfamiliar with foster care, it is the institution of placing a child temporarily within a family that has been vetted and trained to care for them. These children have had to be removed… [more]

I'm a single mom. I choose to involve others in the community in raising my kids, from their teachers to their godmother to family friends. When it comes to making the right call as a parent, two (or ten) minds can be better than one. I'm a big believer in raising my kids within a village of love and support. That said, it's important to respect children's privacy boundaries and need for confidentiality. Before I speak to even my closest friends to seek advice about my daughters, I get their permission. At age 7, my twins are old enough to tell me whether they're comfortable with me talking or blogging about their experiences. It gets a little tricky when they ask me to… [more]

Getting custody of Alan, the little boy I'm hoping to adopt, became a real option for the first time earlier this year. Alan's mother was in crisis, and something was going to have to be done to ensure his well being. I originally put myself forward as a kinship carer in the hope that we could keep him out of the non-kinship foster system. His mother and father would rather have me care for him than a stranger or another family member. While I would have always preferred to adopt him outright, I agreed to foster Alan for up to two years while his biological mother, to whom… [more]

Seven years ago, the first ultrasound of my only pregnancy showed me in no uncertain terms that I was about to become the mother of identical twins. My first reaction was elation, but it was edged with a tinge of sadness. I had agreed with my husband at the time that ours would be a two-child family. The double miracle in my womb meant that our plans to have a biological child first and adopt a second were going to have to change. Embracing our biological twins, we waved goodbye to the adopted child who might have been ours. When my daughters' father and I divorced last year, part of me was excited about the prospect of being able to make decisions about… [more]

Adoption is the legal and/or social establishment of a parent-child relationship where that relationship is not the natural result of marital sexual intimacy. Yet it seems that within this rather straight-forward definition, there are some who have a heart for traditional adoption and worry that anything that doesn’t match up on every single point is not worthy to be called “adoption”. In general, when people hear adoption, they imagine a baby or perhaps an older child who has been orphaned, and they imagine one or more adult strangers taking it upon themselves to make the child a part of their family.  Newborn domestic adoption as well as international adoption and foster care adoption all fall into this category. However, there… [more]

For years, my husband and I were big proponents of openness in adoption.  From the first attempt at adopting, we sought out situations where the birth family was interested in maintaining contact over the years, so that the child would have a sense of continuity, get their questions answered straight from the source, and we’d avoid “the search”. When all doors to traditional adoption closed and we turned to embryo adoption, we carried the same mentality with us.  We got to know a donor family who ended up choosing us for their embryos.  We met several times, and we started to settle into having an “extended family” type relationship.  Granted, the genetic mother’s and my personalities weren’t very compatible.  Had it… [more]

Many people who come to adoption after infertility already know that there is a grief process involved once one realizes that one will not have genetic children.  I never considered this as a big deal during the first several years of trying to adopt.  My genes were not all that great, what’s the big deal?  My husband and I are not related by blood, yet we love each other more than anything!  So what if our children won’t have the same DNA as us? But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve started to notice things and reminisce and develop a whole new appreciation for my family.  Recently, I had passport photos taken.  When I looked at the finished product… [more]

We pursued older child adoption for over a year.  After over a year of trying to adopt a newborn independently, I began to question my motives.  I realized that newborns were much more “sought-after” than older children, and I wondered if we couldn’t adopt an older child. I made a list of pros and cons for both newborn and older child adoption.  I thought of the loss of sleep and regular crying that naturally comes with parenting a newborn baby.  As much as I loved cuddling wee-babies and getting a whiff of their new-baby-scent, my patience runs thin in the face of noise, especially when sleep-deprived.  I managed to get through the Army’s basic training on irregular and minimal sleep… [more]

My soon-to-be three-year-old nephew is staying with my parents for a few weeks.  When I went to visit with them the other day, he was as I remember him from nearly a year ago – cuddly, adorable, all smiles.  As we played together, he started calling me “mama”.  My mom was quick to inform me that he calls all women that right now.  I guess I didn’t hide my surprise very well. Three years ago, we were preparing to adopt him.  For three months, we hung out with his parents, talked about how the birth would go, and finally we all met with our attorney.  Just days later, I received a text saying his mother had changed her mind. I… [more]

Until quite recently, a couple turning to adoption because they are unable or unwilling to utilize fertility treatments to conceive a mutually biological child also had to make peace with not experiencing pregnancy and childbirth.  Today, it is possible to give birth to one’s adopted child.  For some, this is the best of both worlds. Adoption law does not extend to children until they are born, so there is some controversy over the terminology, with some preferring the phrase “embryo donation” over “embryo adoption”.  However, since I believe that the fetal period of a human being’s life is simply our first stage of development, and that birth is merely a change of scenery, embryo adoption is the phrase that I… [more]