why adoption? the first steps

This is one of my favorite super personal questions. ;) You never go up to a pregnant lady and say, “why birth???”, or maybe you do, then shame on you! Then again, there are people out there who without provocation say to adoptive parents; you’re baby stealer's.. You’re second best. If God wanted you to have children you could give birth. You just need to relax and you will get pregnant. Adoption is soooo much easier than giving birth (we will touch on this later). Your children are so lucky (don’t ask them this question when they only get one packet of gummies!). We really wanted to adopt, but then we got pregnant! We are totally going to adopt, how much does it cost? Theses are just a few, i have heard many, MANY more. Anyone who has gone through adoption PLEASE leave some of your experiences for others to read. Let’s take away the power of “offensive adoption speak” and educate in the process :)

Back to it.

We decided to adopt for a simple selfish reason, we wanted children and we couldn’t have biological children. We’re not the type to say we are somehow “saving” a child and though I thank God everyday for the 5 beautiful faces smiling or yelling, I will not post scripture to stengthen the simple fact, “I want to be a mom”. Now comes the super personal question that I hear a lot, don’t act surprised people you have all wondered, “why can’t you have children...which one of you can’t?”, this answer I give total credit to my husband. I have heard him say this to people, “we can’t have biological children. How is your sex life? as long as we are free to ask personal questions?”. Reason 345 why I love this man. And this is the answer I am sticking to.

Like many couples wanting to have children we researched. We looked up different adoption agencies and their philosophies toward birthparents and adoptive parents. We made phone calls and waited for the information to arrive in the mail and we got drunk, because we could. Then, we made more phone calls, bought books, some we read...some not. And decided on Catholic Social Services in Ann Arbor. No, you don’t have to Catholic to adopt from them or to receive any of their services. in fact, one of our favorite social workers is jewish, the other one gay. We chose them for a few reasons:
1) They only do open adoptions (for those of you who don’t know what open adoption is I will fill in soon).
2) They have birthmother/father counseling for as long as the birthparent needs/wants it, free of charge.
3) They do everything possible to keep the birthfamilies together, shelter, help locating jobs, therapy, parenting classes (all free of charge)
4) The birthparents chose the family in which to make a plan to place their child for adoption. They choose, the decision of where their child goes who becomes their forever family is their CHOICE and they have control.
5)The social worker made me laugh. Which as you know in a time of stress is something you NEED.

So, we signed up! We enrolled in the madatory 6 weeks of classes needed before we could be considered for the “pool” (the “pool” is the group of families waiting to be chosen by the birthparents). We went to our first class naive, scared and overly caffinated. We were youngish (this was over 10 years ago), there were people in the classes that were older, bitter, angry and desperate. This is not to judge them, it was and still is an observation. We left the fist class...scared, naive and in need of alcohol.

We were told by a social worker during this time that, “when you become an adoptive parent you become an advocate for adoption”...and I am proud to say that we have and will be until they shove my bedazzled ass in the ground!