(This was our first application photo. #memories)
Today we’re excited to share with you how we came to choose adoption for our family and what the first eight (!!!) months of our process have been like. If you’re in the mood for a long post, you’ve come to the right place. Grab a coffee or a tea and get cozy. (this is all just from the first month- haha!)
One thing we’ve already learned is that the adoption process can look drastically different for different families, so keep in mind that we are just here to share our unique story.
I knew I wanted to adopt from a young age. I always assumed I would have biological and adopted children. It’s just how I envisioned my family.
The first (or maybe second?) year we were married we followed the story of Ashley’s adoption. She adopted a baby girl from China through the special needs program. Her daughter had an unrepaired cleft lip and palate that required a series of surgeries after they got settled at home.
It was our first time following a story like this and it MOVED us deeply.
Her story was unique. We watched the ups and downs. Watching the process leading up to her adoption, which isn’t easy at all. It looked painful. And then the beautiful weeks that Ashley and her family traveled to China to meet and bring home their daughter. Then, later on, the surgeries and milestones they went through together.
At one point I remember sitting in bed looking at an Instagram update from Ashley and Jeremy said he could see us adopting a baby with special needs. My heart exploded. After that we didn’t talk about adopting for a couple years, but it was kind of always in the back of our minds. It was like a little door in our hearts that always stayed open.
On our third anniversary we decided we wanted to start a family. At the time we felt equally open to pregnancy and adoption and intended to grow our family both ways. I looked into adoption through China and found that we wouldn’t qualify to adopt until we had been married five years (which I now now wasn’t accurate, but oh well) so we decided to try to get pregnant and then if we didn’t get pregnant by the time our fifth anniversary rolled around we’d start the adoption process.
We tried to get pregnant on and off for two years. I say on and off just because with travel, moving, vacations (etc) we didn’t try super hard (as in charting and all of that) for most of it. But we also definitely were not preventing pregnancy. I guess we kind of fell in the middle I know people who tried much more extreme measures that we did as far as planning, special diets and things like that. But we weren’t NOT trying. Ok… you get the point.
So two more years went by. Everyone close in our life knew we were trying. It started to get awkward.
Some of our family members were concerned, worried, asking us to see specialists, inquiring whether we’d be open to fertility treatments. I had some social anxiety when people asked me those questions, but through it all Jeremy and I never really stressed.
And the crazy thing is, I never cried, not once. And I cry A LOT (over television shows, medium-sad commercials, good things happening to my friends, bad things- everything- I’m a big cry baby!). When I finally realized I had never cried over not getting pregnant, not one single time, I felt really good about the potential of adopting. Maybe it was just meant to be? Maybe this was our story.
Like I said above, not getting pregnant in the time we were trying wasn’t devastating to us. It was disappointing each month, but when I read other people’s infertility stories I feel like there’s another level of pain that we just did not experience. Never for a second did we feel like it was important to us to have children that shared our DNA.
Honestly, once we really had the talk and decided we were both open to solely adopting, it felt great. It was a huge relief in a lot of ways.
As our fifth anniversary approached, and our home renovation was almost complete we both felt completely ready to become parents. Like, immediately. Like, yesterday.
The day after our anniversary, we had a long talk and we were so perfectly on the same page (something that doesn’t always happen in marriage- haha). We decided we would start the adoption process and that we wanted to adopt two daughters. We just knew.
We spent the next month doing lots of research, talking to people from different agencies and programs. At one point we talked to an adoption lawyer who specializes in (fast!) domestic adoptions. We could have had a baby by Christmas, you guys. But with every step we kept coming back to the China program and the beautiful story we had followed as newlyweds.
(side note) I cannot emphasize enough how different each adoption can look. There are a LOT of options out there. A lot of choices. Big picture, it’s amazing, because there are options for all different types of families and lifestyles. But in the moment, it was intensely overwhelming.
Even though we were being intentional to keep all options open, each conversation we had seemed to be end with China. We just couldn’t shake it.
Next, we received a referral from inside our family for a program that seemed like the perfect fit for us. We were done researching. The next day we sent in our first application.
I’m glad we explored all the options, but looking back we both feel like we always knew China was the right choice for our family. Once we made that choice it felt like things started happening in fast-forward speed.
After a couple short applications and a few phone calls we were officially in the China program! It was July and we were on our annual family vacation, surrounded by nieces and nephews, when we got the acceptance email. It didn’t feel real yet, but we HIGH off our excitement.
It was a dream come true. It was finally happening. I was crying CONSTANTLY, over everything. Happy tears on the DAILY. 8 months later, I still cry basically every time I get alone long enough to think.
Once the process began we became obsessed with learning, reading books, watching documentaries, reading other people’s stories and preparing our lives for this next chapter.
Jeremy warned me that it might take him a while to catch up to me emotionally. Totally fair. But a month later I was seeing his first tears I can remember (ever) and he was having dreams that we were parents (!!!!!) Our hearts have opened up in ways I never imagined.
A couple years ago my dad told me that the happiest time in his life was when we were all little kids. (Ouch- my heart!) And now I can see that our happiest time is just over the horizon. And there’s just nothing more exciting in the whole world.
Everyone keeps telling us to appreciate this last season of being a couple with no kids, the freedoms, the date nights. And we are thinking of that every day.
TO BE CONTINUED….
