Advice from Adoption Veterans
To mix up Testimonial Tuesdays, we’ll be popping in with Advice from Adoption Veterans whenever we see a topic worth covering! This week, we’ve got adoption veterans’ thoughts on moving from infertility to adoption.
Many of the adoptive families we work with try to have children naturally before they turn to adoption. While this decision is harder for some couples than others, in the end adoptive couples find that being a parent is what’s truly important to them!
“I kept miscarrying, and I thought, ‘I don’t want to spend all of this money and not end up with a baby in the end.’ We knew adoption would eventually lead us to a baby.” –Nikki
“We thought, let’s take that money where there’s a better change of us becoming parents. So that’s what we did… Honestly, after then years, you begin to think. I think my one regret is that I didn’t do this sooner.” –Silke
“If we hadn’t pursued this option, we wouldn’t be parents. And in the end, that’s what it’s really about, becoming parents. That’s what it’s all about.” –Mike
“To me, the adoption is going to happen. Whereas fertility, there was no guarantee of anything. You could just be heading toward a brick wall. So with the adoption, you knew.” –Jim
“It taught me that if one thing in your life doesn’t work out, don’t give up. I really thought I would be able to have my babies biologically and everything would go according to plan But it’s just an amazing less to even teach my kids that everything is not going to work out. You’re going to have some challenges in life and things that aren’t fair at the time. But just hold on. It’s like my testimony to people.” –Robin
“I wasn’t devastated at all. I always knew it was going to be difficult and chances were that it probably wasn’t going to work out, so I wasn’t all that surprised by it. I had always wanted to adopt anyway.” –Sarah
“There are a lot of emotions with [infertility]. Actually making the decision to adopt was easy. I don’t think we even gave it a second though. Our biggest question was: How do we do it?” –Nancy
“We had always talked about adoption, and it was something we were interested in doing. We wanted to have a couple of children biologically and then adopt a child. Things worked out a little differently though. Some people really struggle from having children biologically to adoption, but we didn’t have that. Adoption was something we were always planning to do anyway.” –Eric
“It took us about a half of a second after we did have some fertility tests done. The doctor called us in, sat down and told us that pregnancy was not likely to happen, but there were other options. We kind of looked at each other, shrugged and said, ‘I don’t think so, but thank you!'” –Heidi
“We talked it over and felt that if we did the adoption route, we would be about 100 percent guaranteed to receive a child. I guess for us, having a biological child wasn’t a big deal. It wasn’t as important to us as it is for some other couples.” –Bruce
“We always felt very excited and comfortable with adoption even before we knew we were maybe not going to be able to have a baby as easy as everyone else. We didn’t think that was a coincidence. We felt that we were definitely called to adopt.” –Shannon
“I was so beaten down from all of the infertility treatments. There was never an ‘adoption thing’ I had to get over. We just wanted to be parents. I just wanted to do something that would end with a child in our lives. I read a book, Adoption After Infertility, that said the person you love most in the world is your spouse, and you picked them with no relation to you. Your friends are the same way, and the same is true with adoption.” –Anne
“The hardest part of the whole process for me was deciding to adopt. I was opposed to it at the beginning. After going through everything with Cheryl in terms of reviewing American Adoptions… it actually became a lot easier for me and I was able to accept it. It’s the greatest thing we ever did.” –Craig
“Adoption was something we knew that we could always choose if we had problems getting pregnant. It was our ‘Plan B’ after IVF, and it was something we were looking at even before we got married. We were comfortable with adoption because we had so many people in our lives touched by adoption, and that was totally fine with us.” –Mary
“We looked into other possible fertility treatments, but it was just something that we never really felt at peace about doing. My dad is adopted and adoption was always talked about in our family. We knew it would be a pretty easy transition, so it was a growing process to mourn the loss of not being able to have more of my own kids and moving to adoption.” –Nikki
“You may find another way. Becoming a parent is in your soul, if that’s what you really want to do.” –Silke
“If you want to be a mom or a dad, just getting pregnant and having a baby isn’t the only way to be a mom or dad. This is just amazing.” –Ashley
To learn more about moving from infertility to adoption, check out the Infertility to Adoption section on our website!
