Keith and I made a momentous decision today. We decided to go ahead and actively pursue adoption.
I am ambivalent about pregnancy itself. We could keep trying to get pregnant indefinitely and who knows what would happen. In the meantime, time keeps going by. I want to have a family, I don't care if I have given birth to my children or not. I simply want my children in my home.
Maybe during the adoption process we will get pregnant. That's fine; that can't be any harder than ending up with twins. I'm willing to try hormone therapy, up to a point. I don't want to try IVF. There are many complex moral issues there for me personally. Maybe at some point I will change my mind. But I doubt it.
I keep going back over in my mind about whether or not it matters to me to get pregnant. But if it did, wouldn't I be highly motivated to pursue every avenue in order to achieve that? My lack of motivation seems a clear sign to me that as a woman, it simply is not a make or break kind of deal.
Not that I wouldn't love being pregnant if it happens. It's profound and life changing. If it happens to me, I will embrace it whole heartedly. But I don't feel bound to wait for it to happen to start my family.
The other defining factor is that I have longed to adopt since I was in elementary school. There was a story on the news about someone finding a new born in a trash bin. I wanted, with every fierce fiber of my little being, to find any babies who had been discarded. I prayed to God to let me find one, a tiny castaway, and take it home.
That desire never left me, I just changed location. First I wanted to adopt from Eastern Europe-Poland or Romania, for example. And, later on, from China. Just lately, I have been looking closer to home, realizing that many American children need homes. I thought about becoming a foster parent. I still dream about a little South American girl, which chocolate brown eyes and latte skin. (I half dreamed of this little girl, one night when I was wordlessly offering up the whole mess to God and felt immediately peaceful afterward. Maybe we will end up adopting a newborn of hispanic heritage. Who ever God has in mind for us will be just perfect.)
I thought for sure Keith would say no, this morning. I'd been bringing adoption up pretty often lately and he would talk about it for a while and then say that he wanted to keep trying for a biological child. Which I don't in the least judge him for, it's perfectly natural to want a biological child, it's the way we're made.
Even so, I kept going on line and looking up agencies and wait times and costs and home studies. And this morning I just asked him, as I was in the middle of scrubbing the tub, my jeans rolled up, bleach in hand. I asked how about we just start, just adopt our first child and if we get pregnant later than we get pregnant. But for sure we have a child, our own child.
And he said yes. I was stunned. I kept checking in to see if he was for sure. He is. He's reinlisting and has decided not to spend any of the money, but to use it to pay off the small remaining debt we have and to save the rest, "We'll need the rest," he said meaningfully.
He wants a boy. He still wants a newborn. I don't care what age my children come to me, I just want them, but to have a chance to parent a newborn! Their soft little heads and that new baby smell and dear little froggy legs... We're going to put "either" instead of requesting a specific gender and just see what happens.
I've contacted three different agencies. I called Bethany, but it was close to five, so the operator gave me the Kentucky office number. I'll call them tomorrow. I have to find out if they even accept military families before I ask for the info packet. Some agencies don't, because a move can happen right in the middle of an adoption process. I hope they do, because I really, really like Bethany.
We know a move is coming up in a year. Maybe we'll just choose to work out of the Georgia office, or maybe it can be started in KY and then moved to GA when we do. I have to find out.
This is going to be a very long, emotional and at times difficult process. We will wait months to be picked by a birth mother. Even if she does pick us, she could stop the adoption proceedings at any time. Disrupted adoption plans are fairly common. The child doesn't legally become ours until forty eight to seventy two hours after birth.
But the end result will be a child of our own, my very own little newborn. I don't care how hard it is or how long the process. I'm in for the long haul. I want to buy things, soft little swaddling blankets and onesies and little shoes.
I'm going to. I'm going to start stocking up. I've also started the process of getting my birth certificate and divorce certificate. We have to get all that stuff in order. I'm not going to worry overmuch about the Dear Birthmother Letter or the home study; I'm just going to be myself.
