[jessc098]

We adopted without any fertility problems. Some agencies wouldn't take us because we were not infertile. Some wouldn't because of our age. We found a really great agency that didn't have a problem with either. (We're just 25 and 26). We had our placement within 1 month of completion of our homestudy. We adopted our daughter at age 7.

We have had a little bit of a hard time with people asking us about presumed fertility problems (I wouldn't dream to assume/presume or ask someone about their fertility or reproductive habits--I'm shocked at how many people have felt entitled to ask me).

We had no difficulties at all with our agency because of our age or lack of infertility. They recognize "feeling called to adopt" as a legitimate motivation to adopt.

I hope that's helpful,
JW

[mom2justynsarah]

I am one of those adoptive parents who was led to adoption mainly due to infertility. But I think it's wonderful you want to adopt without fertility problems. Good for you!

It's been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. I shudder to think that I would never have my princess if it wasn't for the miracle of adoption. Your little prince or princess is out there waiting for you. GO FOR IT!!!!

[linsybyster]

As the PPs said, thanks for starting this thread! My DH and I had our first bio daughter, in Dec. 05. As many others have described, I have felt "called" to adopt since I was a child. DH and I talked about it before we got married and he was always open to it. We had never decided how many kids we wanted but now that we have our DD, we agree that two will be plenty for us. So, since I definitely want to adopt, I won't be getting pregnant again. I'm relying on Mirena IUD for that! Maybe I'll have my tubes tied in the future. I just don't feel ready for that yet. But, we are starting to think about adoption now and have talked about doing an open adoption. This will be a few years down the road, as actually, our DD was a surprise and we weren't planning to have any kids for another year or two from now. We've been together 6 years, married 2, and I'm 24 and he's 28. We have agreed at this point to not aggressively pursue anything; we believe the universe will lead us in the right direction. There is another baby out there for us somewhere, we'll be brought together somehow!

I'm glad to hear others' success stories.

~Lindsay (mommy to Neko, 4 mos.)

[jaenelle]

DH and I have never tried to get pregnant. I have PCOS, but from what I can tell, I *do* ovulate on a somewhat regular basis, so I assume I might be able to get pregnant. The problem for me is going off the birth control pills to get pregnant. They are the only thing that keeps my PCOS symptoms at all under control, and when I go off them, I feel miserable -- I really didn't want to go through that month after month and so we decided to adopt.

[DeafSiren]

It's been great to read all the replies to this thread...I love how much variety there is in all of our backgrounds and the different pathways we have taken on our adoption journeys.

For us, DH has basically the same fertility problem as his older brother and father. But his parents got pregnant with their first bio son naturally, five years later got pregnant with DH after infertility treatment, and then just a year later got pregnant again without treatment (a happy surprise). Older brother and wife had a miscarriage, then couldn't get pregnant, tried infertility treatments and got pregnant with DD#1. Since then have had another DD, twins (DS, DD), and a last DS all without fertility treatment. So the basic feeling among DH's family is that all we need to do is stick with the infertility treatments and something will magically happen and we'll be able to get pregnant. (We've been TTC for almost five years.) They are basically in the camp that we should exhaust all of our infertility treatment options rather than pursue adoption. In addition MIL works as a lobbyist for people with mental illness--she has a lot of fears about problems adopted children might have. I can totally imagine her always introducing our child as "my adopted grandson/granddaughter." If I hear her doing it, I'm going to squash that pretty quickly, believe me.

We decided to go the adoption route more than 2 years ago, and they've bascially accepted that this is how we are going to build our family. They've stopped pushing the infertility treatments/getting pregnant as much. I'm just so eager to have that DS or DD in our arms, so they can realize they'll love the baby just as much whether adopted or bio.

I've gotten the "noble" comments, too. I was so shocked that I didn't know how to reply! It was just baffling to me, "why do you think it is noble that I want to have children?"

L.

[StorkWatcher]

We'd been married for almost 10 years, no kids, no diagnosis on why no kids.

Most applications we saw asked about infertility. With our agency, we didn't have to provide any medical proof that we're infertile, but they do ask if you get pregnant while on the waiting list to tell them.

We explained in our profile our reasons for wanting to adopt and noted that we'd always wanted chidlren, didn't have any yet, and thought this was a great way to start a family...

[Canadamom92]

We have three bio daughters (13, 7, 1.5). We know we could have more children, but have decided to pursue adoption. We did our adoption training seminar in January of 2004 and did our homestudy in February. Right before our last home visit we found out we were expecting and they agency closed our file - it would have been nice if they would have told us that this was the policy, considering we told the worker that we were not infertile and planned to have more bio kids. We reapplied as soon as they let us (our youngest dd had just turned one). Our worker was surprised to hear from us again so soon, and asked when we started considering adoption again. Uh... you closed our file, not us! We told her we were just waiting until they would let us apply again.

Our friends and family don't understand why we've decided to go this route, considering we can have more children. We're looking to adopt a sib group from the public system - between the ages of our oldest and youngest girls. DH wants at least one boy (poor man ). For us it just makes sense. I would prefer not to try giving birth to older children, as I imagine it would be somewhat uncomfortable We're looking to try to close the age gaps between the kids we already have, and we're not wanting to start over with more babies. Maybe more babies later - through international adoption. I'm was a grumpy, gestational diabetic pregnant woman, and had such high blood pressure last time that they were worried I'd have a stroke. Not willing to chance that again.

Dawn H.