[jalapeno]

If you have the option, would you want your next child to be biological or adopted?

My DH and I are pretty busy with our three very young kiddos. And we may very well be done with three. But its still fun to fantisize about having more. I'll be 34 this year. Not old certainly but old enough to feel like the clock is ticking on my option to have another bio child. I'm not sure I would want one but just feel a little sad at seeing the opportunity slip away. My DH and I also seem to be getting more and more attached to the idea of adopting an older child someday when our kids are in their late teens. And then there's the constant itch in the back of our minds wondering whether our kids' birthmom will have another baby. She had our daughter and son about 13 months apart. Our son is now 12 months old and we don't know anyone who's had any contact with his birthmom in 10 months. I truly don't know what we would do if we got THAT call tomorrow. So I'm just not sure where we're headed. I suppose I should wait until more than one of my three kids can walk to put more serious thought into it.

[devildogwife]

Definitely adopted. I have no desire for pregnancy and a biological child.

[dragonfly1234]

This is such a personnal decision that only you can make for you and your family. Wishing you the best.

[jalapeno]

Originally Posted by dragonfly1234

This is such a personnal decision that only you can make for you and your family. Wishing you the best.

Oh sure, you're right. I'm not really looking for advice. Just thought it might be an interesting topic. I've thought a lot about the "process" of having a child. A friend of mine made the comment recently that she thought it would be "neat" to adopt a child from China someday. It struck me that she must think adoption is relatively easy as compared to pregnancy and childbirth (not to get on my friends case as she had twins!). But in my experience, there is no "easy" way to have a child. In my own case, the adoption process was emotionally devastating at times. I often think there's no way I could go through that again. But then I look at my children. And there's nothing I wouldn't do for them. At any rate, it's just a mental exercise at the moment. My two baby boys have started crawling in the last couple of months and I've discovered I can't actually be in three places at once (weird). So I don't know how we'd fit in a fourth child just yet!

[dragonfly1234]

jalapeno....I realize my answer was brief but we all have such personnal feelings when it comes down to whether we should have bio children or adopt. So my response was by no means to make your question any less....KWIM.

I feel that I have been blessed to have been able to have a bio child (my oldest). There are so many others who cannot have children and I hate to admit but I loved every day that I was pregnant with my oldest son. So my loss of not being able to have others was a shock.....but knew also that adoption was right for our family. I wish that we could adopt again!

It doesn't matter how our children join our families....just that we love them.

[karla-k]

We have 3 bio children: 9 yr. old DD, our sons are 4 years, and 19 months. Out of 5 pregnancies, we have had one full term healthy child. We are adopting right now from Kyrgyzstan, we have requested a healthy baby boy, so we'll have 3 boys under the age of 5

I loved being pregnant with all 3 of our kids, but honestly have no desire to go there again.

We have thought about adopting a little girl to fit between the 9 and 4 year old in the future. That seems like a big gap in age and just a perfect spot for a sister for our 9 year old DD

Karla
3 bios and waiting for our Kyrgystan baby to join us...hopefully soon.

[mommy2fiveplus]

I gotta say, I would definitely like to adopt the next one. We have 5 under 6 years old and the middle three are bios (all girls) the two adopted are boys. I am afraid my man's boy swimmers have broken tails and I am about estrogened out at home, so if I want another boy it looks like I'll be adopting. We adopt through foster/adopt though so who really knows what we will get.

I could live w/o being pregnant again (9 mos of worshipping the porcelian god, and 3 preemies will do that to you) but daddy-o wants one more bio sometime in the future, he's in no hurry though.