Why Don't You Just Adopt?

"Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans." -John Lennon

While I was in my twenties, other girls my age were working on their careers, dating, getting married, and busily popping out kids left and right before I'd even had a chance to pee on a stick.  I met my husband fresh out of high school when I was seventeen.  We took a good long five whole years of dating and living together before tying the knot.  I was twenty-two, and it felt like we'd already been together forever.  So, by that time we felt ready to "settle down" and have a family.  When that didn't happen right away, we began what would become a long near decade of studying and research, trial and error to discover why we couldn't get pregnant.  Without even realizing it (okay I realized it a few times) I had literally spent the rest of my twenties--something I'll never get back--trying to have a baby.

Though I didn't get pregnant, I did gain something else; a wealth of information about this new found focus in my life that I learned was called "infertility".   Never question the knowledge of an infertile couple!  Seriously, they should hand out degrees for the amount of boring, mind numbingly nonsensical junk you learn just from being infertile!  You so desperately want to stop trying to learn about it, but you don't because you have to know it.  It's the only thing you can do.  Nobody is going to walk over to your house and tell you what to do.  Or do they?

SCREEEEEEEEEEEECH!!!!!!!!!!  Hold everything!  I was trying to make a point, but I just realized something.  That's right, everyone and their mother's uncle is telling you what to do!! 

"Just relax, and it'll happen when it's supposed to happen!  You're still young!" say a thousand and one well meaning loved ones.

And then there's my all time favorite said by a witty young dad already with 3 kids and another one on the way, "You guys need me to help you or something?  I can show you how it's done, man!" as if trying to not so subtly make the point that my husband is somehow less masculine than he is because we are unable to conceive.  Sure wish I could invite him to be a fly on the wall of our infertile bedroom!  Enough said.  Probably too much said, but oh well...

When we first tell people we are undergoing fertility treatments to try and get pregnant, people give us that sad concerned look, and then out pops the ultimate question.  You know the one I mean, because it's the title of this post.

"Why don't you guys just adopt?"

Now, before this gets too much farther, let me just state for the record that I have absolutely nothing bad against adoption.  In fact, I would love--read my words--LOVE nothing more than to just adopt a baby!  But the answer to that question is not as simple as one might think when asking it.  Adoption is anything but easy.  You cannot "just adopt".  You first have to understand that adoption is a long, emotionally draining, expensive legal process to undergo.  Believe me, being infertile for nearly 8 years, I actually have done my research on adoption!  We've read whole books on adoption, looked into several different adoption agencies and attorneys, had consultations and went through all their welcome packets and informational DVDs.  But it all boiled down to one very minute detail:  Money.

My dear friends, adoption is expensive.  It's not 1950 anymore.  And it's not $35 anymore.  What we learned is that adoption costs roughly the same as or actually, more often than not, thousands of dollars more than fertility treatments.  So, before you decide to throw out the next of the most cringingly popular adoption comments my husband and I get, "The world is already overpopulated.  Why do you want to contribute to that? Just think of all the poor homeless children waiting for a family!" consider this: Adoptions have fallen rapidly from 23,000 a year in 1974 to 6,500 in 1990 while demand has soared. It is a strange irony that while more and more couples cannot conceive naturally, some 170,000 pregnancies end in abortion and a generation that would have been offered for adoption after birth are no longer available. Therefore IVF for many is a last chance.  

So here is your answer to the first question, "Why don't you just adopt?":  My husband and I do not qualify for adoption.  Believe it or not, there are actually qualifications to meet before you can just pluck out your favorite homeless kid and take it home.  You don't just write your name down on a list then sit back and wait for someone to hand you a baby.  There is such an overwhelming amount of qualifications, in fact, that in no way could I list them all right here.  It would bore you to death.  They'd make you squirm.  It's everything from the balance of your checking account, your neighborhood, and your psychological health, to your religious practices, your age and your body mass index!  I have the utmost respect for people who successfully adopt children, because in my mind it must feel like winning an Olympic gold metal when you're finally done!

What I am trying to point out here is simply that adoption is not easy, and people really need to understand that before they decide to use it against you.  Especially since they probably all have either no children or a nice brood of their own, self conceived, biologically genetic children running around their feet as they preach the all righteousness of humane choice adoption.  Nothing makes me crazier than that very fact.  If you are so against our well thought out and logical, yet extremely personal decision to turn to fertility treatments in order to have a child, instead of adopting one, then for God's sake, why didn't YOU just adopt?!"

You wouldn't believe the comments people have.  Maybe you would, but you probably wouldn't believe just how many times we hear the same ones over and over and over again. "What makes a biological child anymore your own than one that's adopted?"  First of all, the answer to this question is nothing, but there are in fact preferences in certain couples.  Be it religion, or family tradition or beliefs.  For many, blood of the family is everything.  For others, the desire to experience pregnancy and childbirth is a right that all women should experience.  And don't laugh, because I'm going to go on a little "biological child" tangent, so bear with me.  A biological child is something special that you and your partner created together out of love.  (Remember the "love child" of the 1970s?  Hey, I am one of those!) It is a combination of you both.  For many couples, this biological child is a living symbol of your love.  The extension of your marriage.  Your mark on the world, or however you want to say it, it's yours.  No other soul on earth had a say in the creation of this little piece of you that you carried in your womb but you and your man.

My desire to be a parent is so great, I would give all that "love child" nonsense up just to be one, and just adopt  if I could.  That's not to say adoption is any less special.  If anything, an adopted child is probably ten times MORE special, judging by all the adoption nonsense you go through just to get them!  After trying everything medically possible that we could afford to do, before we opted for IVF, Michael & I turned to adoption.  We were declined, we were not applicable, we were not qualified to adopt.  Why?  Because we don't make enough money.  And you know what?  Fertility clinics don't discriminate against you based on whether or not you are financially sound enough to become a parent.  So, if you must know, that is why we don't just adopt.