This past Saturday my husband and I spoke at an adoption informational meeting that is required for any person wanting to adopt from the agency we went through. I very much remember being at that same meeting myself 3 years ago and hearing other couples talk to us about their adoption experiences. How nice it is now to be on the other side of things.
Adoption is not an easy road for most people. It was helpful for me as we started our journey to hear other couples’ stories about their road to adoption. Even though the reality of adoption was hard to hear, it was nice to go into our adoption wait with eyes wide open. I hope our story that we shared on Saturday was helpful for the 16 people we talked to.
Our journey to becoming parents took us 4 years. We started off our journey getting pregnant in a short amount of time, only to end in an early miscarriage. What we thought was good news (the fact that we could get pregnant fairly easily) turned out to be the beginning of a very long road of frustration of failed attempts to have a family which included: post-pardom depression from a miscarriage; a couple years of disappointment as we tried and failed again and again to get/stay pregnant; 4 intensive months of failed fertility treatments; and finally taking the steps to get ourselves onto an adoption waiting list.
Once on a list for adoption our wait was 2 years. It was difficult to wait and not know when or if our wait would ever end. There were a handful of potential matches that came to us over those 2 years – one or two serious potentials and others that fell through the cracks. All of these possibilities required sole searching and brought up emotions in us that sometimes I didn’t know I was capable of feeling. (For instance sheer rage at one instance after hearing about a birthmom that was using illegal drugs in the hospital right before the delivery of her baby.) The longer the wait was the more we seriously began to consider living our lives child free.
In the end we did get our baby and now that the wait is over I can honestly say it was worth the wait. We have a precious child who I wouldn’t trade for anything in the world. We appreciate every moment with him so much – more than we ever would if our road to parenthood had been easier. We’ve learned early on not to take our “gift” for granted.
My husband, Scott, summed it up best to the group on Saturday when he said, “Basically…it really, really sucked for a long time. Then it was great.”