Adoption: How did we get here?

I have always known Darin and I would be parents.  I just didn’t know our journey was going to be one with so many twists and turns.  After years of fertility treatments and the delivery of our angel, our fertility specialist told us that my eggs are no longer viable.  Our next step was to try egg donation.  So, I started research egg donors.  But something just didn’t feel right.

We had talked about adoption but frankly, I was scared.  I knew California was an open adoption state, one in which there is an open relationship between the birth and adoptive families.  At first, I couldn’t imagine there being another woman out there calling my child her son or daughter.  I also was scared of the possibility of another child being taken away from me.  I have heard the horror stories the media likes to tell about a child being ripped from the arms of the only mother they’ve known to be returned to a birth parent, though some incredible loophole in the legal system.  Looking back, I can now admit that I was completely ignorant about domestic infant adoptions and open adoptions (and I look forward to sharing with all of you what I have learned through this process).

Meanwhile, I kept hearing updates from a dear family friend on how her nephew had adopted three adorable children domestically.  I was surprised to hear such positive stories about a domestic infant adoption and was interested in getting more information.  I searched online, found him on Facebook, and sent him a note.  Within hours, he and his wife were on the phone with Darin and I telling us about the amazing experience they had with Bethany Christian Services.  We spent two hours on the phone with them talking.  We discussed the process they went through, what an open adoption entails, challenges they have encountered, and the fact that they don’t think of their children as their adoptive children … they are simply their children.  I hung up the phone and knew that that one phone call was going to change the rest of our lives.

A few weeks later, we had lunch with a friend who selflessly made an adoption plan for her son a few years ago.  It was extremely helpful to hear about domestic infant adoption from a birth mother’s perspective: the motivation behind the decision, the process she went through, her feelings towards her son’s adoptive parents, and her interactions with her son.  This conversation did two things for me: 1) it gave me a sense of peace regarding the open adoption process, and 2) it made me want to work with an organization that would really counsel and take care of their expectant mothers.

By the end of these two conversations, we were excited to start learning more about the domestic open adoption process.  The next step?  Getting started with the agency, orientation sessions, applications, paperwork, and so much more!  We’ll introduce you to the process coming up in our next post…  Thanks for reading and we’ll see you all again soon!

If you have any questions that you would like for us to answer or include as we continue along our journey, please let us know!  Leave a comment below or send us a note on the Contact Us page.  Throughout this process we have been asked some really good questions.  We will try to answer them in our upcoming posts.