[JoanneFromNYC]

...decide to start or expand your family through adoption?

[JoanneFromNYC]

My husband & I have always wanted to adopt. We adopted my brother when he was 5 years old, my husband has a cousin that was adopted at the age of 7 and my closest friend was adopted at birth. We aren't infertile and if I get pregnant along the way, so be it. I'm pushing 40 so I kinda hope that doesn't really happen. LOL!
We considered adopting an infant through a birth mother for a short while but changed our minds. We've decided to adopt older siblings through the state instead. We're looking at 2 girls right now, ages 5 & 7 but I'm not going to get my hopes up yet. We're at the end of our homestudy, it'll be approved right around the holidays.
We feel really good about what we're doing. These are children who have no parents, no family. I give a lot of credit to the foster families who open their home to these children and try to help them heal. We want to give these children and chance to have parents who love, respect and will protect them, not harm them. We've seen lots of cases of abuse and neglect and I just wish I could adopt them all.

So...that's our story...what's yours? What made you decide to start or expand your family through adoption?

[SuburbanMom]

Many years ago, I was deeply moved by all the images on my TV of the terrible conditions in orphanages in the Eastern Bloc countries when "communism fell". My mother's family is from E Europe and I dreamed of going over there some day and "rescuing" at least one baby.

Years go by and I get married and pregnant. And when I am 8 months pg, my DH has to spend nearly a month in a rural part of Russia for work. He hires the former English teacher as his translator and is really touched by her stories and the conditions he sees (and is more sensitive since I am pg). He returns and we talk about adopting our Russian baby. I get pg again, but we still joke about our Russian baby - only I'm not joking. We even call our savings account our "Russian baby fund"

I keep bringing up adoption and then one day, DH says that maybe we could give a home to a child with a special need. I feel like I've got him hooked, so I run with it. Start researching, still thinking in the back of my mind about our Russian baby. And I quickly realize that the Russian adoption is not going to work out. DH can't get the time off work, we don't want to leave our children for so long (or take them with us). But domestic special needs adoption really intrigues us. We research more, and decide to go for it. So, here we are. My dream of "rescuing" a Russian baby isn't completely dead, but I do feel I am making the right choice.

[JoanneFromNYC]

I enjoyed reading your post. Thanks for replying. I'm looking foreward to reading everyone else's 'story'.

[stynx9000]

Well, My Wife and I can't have children the "old fashioned way" - and we're really, really looking forward to starting and having a family larger than the two of us and our three neurotic cats.

Ben

[JoanneFromNYC]

LOL!! That's funny about your cats! I have a dog and an iguana myself.

[alpacamom]

My husband and I have always talked about adopting. I have 3 bios 28, 29 and 30 and 3 grandchildren 1, 2 & 3. After the youngest bio left, we had 2 teenage boy foreign exchange students for a year that are still close to our family. Now I am a widow, but my dream of adopting has always been there. I am in the process of adopting 2 girls, adoptive sisters, both 12. I think this time around I have more patience and more time to give them. I also have a Great Dane, a cat, tropical fish, a rabbit and 3 alpacas. The girls are reading Animal Farm in school. It almost sounds like our house with the animals running things.

[JoanneFromNYC]

That's so great that you're adopting older siblings.

[JoanneFromNYC]

Bump

[Supersport]

My husband and I were not infertile to the best of our knowledge. We decided not to start a family "the old fashioned way". We have choses adoption of a child in the foster care system as the best way to start a family. We are both so looking forward to it. Our MAPP classes will be starting the end of this month and we are both very anxious.

[ajjhmf]

When my husband and I were dating we knew we wanted to have a family. We said then that we'd probably adopt and have our own. Four years have past, and we tried the old fashioned way for a couple years, it didn't work though we never really looked into why. Being parents was the important part to us and we moved our focus to adoption.

Now we're starting our homestudy with our county and hope to be parents of a toddler sometime soon.

[leannh]

my husband went to mexico during his college days and the children begging for money, just broke his heart. he's has talked about that and wanting to adopt since i met him. so we always knew we wanted to adopt, but we also wanted to try for one of our own since my husband has no bio children. unfortunatley the years and cost of IF treatments put adoption on hold for waaay too long. so when i Finally after 4 years of being poked and prodded, we both said why are we doing this?!? well what i really said was...i'm DOne!
we had been saving up for an IVF and we had the $$ so we just put it towards adoption instead.
that was last sept and now we are searching for a birthmom

Leann

We are having trouble getting pregnant, when I do get pregnant, it will be *high risk.* After some conversations about whether we wanted to "have a baby" or "start a family" we realized that the latter is what most interests us.

We're interested in adopting a child from 2-8 years of age. While neither of us had an idyllic childhood, we can't imagine how painful it must be to not have a family of your own.

[DianeS]

When I was growing up I was friends with a girl who was one of 40 (yes, 40, four-zero) adopted children in a family. All but the couple oldest had special needs of some sort. All but the couple youngest had bounced around in foster care for several years.

So I spent my teen years hearing first hand what it was like to not have a family, or for the temporary family to see you as a charity case and not a family member, or to have to change temporary families every year or two.

So when I got married, my husband and I had agreed that we would either do foster care (the right way) or possibly adopt after our bio children were grown and out of the house.

Then we discovered we couldn't have bio children--none who lived long enough to be born, that is.

Lots of grief with that, but when the crying was over, we knew we still wanted children. Lots of children. And that our plan of providing foster care or adopting from foster care was still viable--we just needed to move that time frame up 20 years or so.

So here we are! We should be finished pushing paper and move into classwork late this month. Our "dream" is to adopt a sibling group between the ages of 1 and 8.

[ellia3]

Well after seven years of trying, two first trimester miscarriages, one ivf cycle and a pregnacy that resulted in a second trimester miscarriage, leaving the hospital feeling empty with only the finger/footprint statistics, a funeral and a grave to visit. We realized that for so many years we had focused on a pregnancy. At this moment God placed adoption on our hearts and we focused on starting our family and being the joyful parents that God had promised us to be. We are sooo excited about that new little bundle of joy joining our family. Adoption is truly a miracle from God. Our new baby will be one of the greatest gifts God can give. We can't wait for those chubby cheeks, tiny little fingers and little arms of love to join our family. Sorry for going on and on, we are just so excited.