Adoption

Adoption has been on my mind a lot lately. I'm torn by the way that I feel about it. In most ways, I think it would be wonderful and I know I would love an adopted baby just as much as one I had given birth to.

In some small ways, I don't think that I am yet ready for it. Don't ask me why; I haven't quite figured out the logic of that one. It just seems like it would bring more responsibility. Many adoptions nowadays are "open adoptions" where the birth family are apart of the child's life. I don't think I would like that very much. I don't know, it just seems like it would take some real thinking and pondering before I could adopt a child.

Since Derek and I have been married, we often have conversations about raising kids, what we would do in certain situations, who we want to parent like, who we don't want to parent like, and so on. We've never talked about adoption. We never talked about when or how you tell your adopted child that they were adopted. How you handle those moments where they hurt because "their birth mom didn't want them." I just think it would be harder. And, that makes me feel like I'm not ready to start that process and look into adoption just yet.

But, then I think about how Derek and I waited to try and have kids because we weren't ready. If we had gotten pregnant that first month of marriage, it would have been scary! So, we waited, just in case it would happen really easily. Well, I know now that it wouldn't have happened easily and if we had started right away, maybe we would have a child now, we would have gone through this process earlier. But we knew we weren't ready, so we made the right choice.

I'm feeling that way about adoption. I know that if our other options don't work and we aren't able to conceive our own child, adoption will be a blessing and a welcome opportunity. I also know that it can take a LONG time to be chosen for adoption. If we wait until all the other options have run out, and then we start the process, it could be a couple of years before we were chosen. If we start now, it still might take a couple of years so we could try our other options while waiting to hear, but then again, what happens if we are chosen quickly? (As Derek put it, "We're pretty awesome, so maybe we'll be in high demand!") Would we be ready to adopt this soon? That, I don't know.

So, we are in the same dilemma. Do we start now, or do we wait?