How did you get there?

[ivparker]

I'm so sorry about your losses.
Our story: I have always felt in my heart that I wanted to adopt to give a home to a child that may not have one. When my dh and I decided to start having children, I mentioned it to my ob and they did some test on my dh and they said that it was going to be very difficult for us to get pregnant. We knew in our hearts that adopting was something we always wanted to do, so we started the process for an international adoption. On our first meeting, the social worker mentioned that for their agency they wouldn't allow you to adopt if you had a child under 1. I asked what would happen if you got pregant while going through the process. She said that we would have to stop the adoption. We still handed in our first payment but that night I couldn't stop thinking about what she said. I decided to take a pregnancy test at 3am and it was positive. So.... 5 kids later we are done having biological kids but still have our heart for adoption. We started looking into international adoption again and our pastor at church was doing a sermon about adopting and caring for others and we felt strongly that we should go up front to get prayer. Well, during that prayer time we got to talk more indepth with one of the woman at our church that works for a foster agency. She talked to us about foster care, something that we never really had thought of because we had young children. She told me that htey had a need for parents to foster young babies as well. It felt perfect for us as we really want to do something to help kids in need but don't feel that we have to adopt. Foster care gives us both. We are open to adopting, though, if reunification doesn't happen with the baby. We do have 2 others from our churhc that are doing foster to adopt because of infertility issues and they both got newborn babies from the hospital soon after getting licensed.

[britsuz90]

I am really sorry you are going through this.

I knew as a teen I would have trouble getting pregnant. DH and I discussed infertility and adoption prior to getting married. We tried and I got pregnant 4 times and lost each of them early on. After the second miscarriage we started the adoption process through our Church's agency. DH wasn't ready to push through for adoption, but eventually wanted kids, so agreed at that time.

ODD has a lot of medical needs. She was suppose to be a "healthy" newborn, but as you experienced rare genetic disorders happen to somebody, it just happened to be her. Since she ended up being special needs, the agency waiver all other fees. She has a monthly stipend and Medicaid until she is 21 and then she will get SSI.

After that experience we opted to do foster care because if you are going to get a special needs child you might as well going through the state and at least get support for them. We were placed with 2 boys 21 months apart. They were days old. They were surrenders (left at the hospital) and had to be placed with a foster family, although they were private adoption (minimal fees). Last October we were placed with a 6 month old girl as a foster placement. We expect to finalize her adoption sometime in 2013.

Two of our kids had cocaine and alcohol exposure in utero. They do not have signs of fetal alcohol syndrome. Cocaine is one of the "milder" drugs and does not have the devistating effects of meth or alcohol. They will likely be DX with ADHD at some point and may have learning difficulties, although the older one was starting to read at age 4.

I don't have bio kids so I can't compare the love I had for them to the ones I have now. I began to have love for my kids once I started to think about them. I still mourn the ones I lost.

If you want infant AND to adopt, do not be discouraged by SW saying that there are not babies, there are!! Because so many SW told parents that they scramble to find placements for young children because people go in thinking they will never get one and aren't ready if one comes along. My BIL and his wife have adopted 5 under a year from foster in another state and now they do infant foster care. One was suppose to only stay a couple weeks and they had her 9 months because they couldn't find a placement.

[EclairAngst]

I kind of always knew I wouldn't carry my babies and after several losses, it became apparent that the emotion and physical cost of continuing TTC was getting too high.
DH and I took almost a year to heal and just live our lives and then visited what, at the time, I thought would be a new doctor that would help us on our path to TTC. I had a total meltdown, full on ugly crying, at that doctor visit. When I got home, I had a random email from a friend (who knew nothing of our TTC troubles) with a link to a beautiful adoption video on YouTube. I had a bit of an ah-ha moment and sent it on to DH.
We both mulled it over for a while, doing a little research here and there and continuing to try and heal from our losses. A big question that kept coming up is the one you ask - about grieving the loss of the hypothetical bio child. And while I can't believe how in love with my son I am, I still sometimes feel that twinge of a loss - of the hypothetical and the LO that we never got to hold.
In the end, we both felt strongly about wanting to be parents and came to understand that adoption was our best path to get there. After so long of hitting our heads against the wall with TTC, it was incredible how the obstacles just disappeared when we made the decision to adopt. From decision day to the day our son came home was 5 1/2 months!

[anne_josh]

Originally Posted by mmbreb This leaves me wondering how did you get there yourself? What lead you to adoption or foster care and were you worried you would not love a non-bio child as your own?

First, I am so sorry for your loss

I've literally never worried about not loving an adopted child as much as my bio children. For me at least, bonding isn't affected by genetic relationship. It's not quite the same, but I have friends to whom I am much more attached than many of my family members. And we've all known enough terrible parents to know that biology doesn't make you a good parent, right?

We won't be having any more bio kids because we both feel strongly about zero population growth, and because ds2's birth was early and complicated by a placental abruption. If we'd planned to have more, that would have changed our minds anyway. I've always wanted to adopt, also--we'd thought it would be international, but that's out of reach now for a few reasons.

[NaplesMom]

My husband was adopted as an infant and even before we got married or had bio children, we both agreed that adoption was definitely in our future. We had 2 bio daughters (1997 & 2000) , numerous miscarriages, a 3rd trimester pregnancy loss and then I ended up with an emergency hysterectomy at the age of 27. We started the process back in 2006 (international) but then changed our homestudy to domestic. We had a couple of failed situations that were very painful but our son was born 2 weeks ago and I can tell you that when I saw him and held him, it truly felt no different to me than when I first held the children of whom I gave birth to. My heart swelled with love for him. I am his mom, he is my son and I can't imagine my life without him.

[lil Roos mama Bear]

I'm so sorry your going through this. I can't imagine never having met our son.
I always knew I wanted to adopt. My family situation wasn't the best and all I remember wanting was someone to tell me I was amazing and that they loved me. So in middle school I got assigned a project on adoption. The timing seemed Heaven sent since my horrible situation changed to a better one. I remember thinking how amazing it would be to be able to help someone like me.
My Husband wasn't so excited about adoption so it was a dream I started to see fade since I knew I would never do it without him and I didn't want to. However after a tough pregnancy, rough delivery, and bad PPD I have been extremely hesitant to get pregnant again. Our son is amazing and I am so glad he is in our lives but I also have accepted that I'm not sure if I'll feel comfortable doing it again. My husband went to visit a church member and it turns out he works in Foster care. He spent 2 hours asking him and his wife questions and listening before coming home late and telling me he wanted to foster and adopt. He told me that as he was talking to the man and his wife, he felt strongly this was something we should do. We did a lot of research and have prayed about it a lot. My husband even set up to start the process without me. I Love that he is so excited about it. I Love that it is something he came to on his own. I'm nervous about starting the classes in OCT. because I've been told a lot of scary things since we announced we were doing this to our friends and family. We will only be taking 18 months and younger since our son will be 2 in Oct.

[bug2003]

So sorry that you have to experience the loss of a child.

My DH is a quadriplegic and was when I met him. His injury was lower in the neck than say Christopher Reeves was, so he has a lot more functionality. Because of his injury, we didn't know if we would be able to have children as some people who are paralyzed cannot. So, we went into our marriage knowing that adoption may be the only route possible for us to have children.

We were pleasantly surprised when we conceived our first. We then experienced a twin miscarriage the year after our first was born. I have endometriosis, so that throws another wrench in things. I had surgery to treat the endo the same year I had the miscarriage and got pregnant with our second son the same cycle as the surgery. We were overjoyed at being able to have two biological children. When we decided to ttc again, things didn't happen. I had fertility testing done and found out that I also have a uterine septum on top of the endo. I also have a short luteal phase which can make things harder. We've had a few very early miscarriages (chemical pregnancies) since my son was born.

I felt led by God that we should go the route of adoption instead of fertility treatments. While DH and I had discussed adoption prior to marriage, after having biological children, he just wasn't ready to adopt when I wanted to. I waited another year before he was ready. Our younger son was just about 4 when we submitted our paperwork to begin the adoption process. It wasn't until a few months before he turned 6 that we were blessed by a wonderful birth mother placing twin girls into our arms for adoption. DH was worried about the money to start with, but we stuck with the agency run by our church, so it was lower cost than a lot of adoptions. We had saved and put part of the costs on a credit card with the interest free for a year check things they send every now and then. We paid off the amount before the year was over, so we were never charged interest on it. Things work out how they are supposed to even if it's not how you have it planned out in your head. We now have a beautiful woman in our lives that we would have never met had it not been for the gift of the twins. While it was not an easy road to travel with the secondary infertility and waiting to adopt, I wouldn't have it any other way.

Take the time to grieve your loss and take one day at a time as you go forward, whether that's ttc while fostering, just ttc, or only fostering/adopting. I'm not sure if you believe in God, but if you do, let Him be your guide through this. He knows what path is best for your family.