I’ve stolen T’s laptop (I so HATE not having my own laptop) because my mind is swarming with thoughts from posts I’ve read about adoption to my sessions with #5 about depression, grief, infertility, cancer survivorship to the sermon at church today about fear and I have to write. I actually tried last night to “journal” on paper but there must be something about typing that I need in order to write because I just had mental block.
I keep thinking about adoption and the grief it causes primarily the mothers but also some fathers who relinquish their children. I know not every mother who relinquishes feels the way Nicole does or Jenna or Jana or Claud or Kim. I have no idea how L feels about having placed Widget- she may be “just fine” with it, she may wish she had never heard of adoption, she may actually be happy about it. We don’t talk about it. I wish I knew but then there is this tiny piece of me that doesn’t want to know because if she told me she wishes she were parenting Widget, I’m not sure I could keep myself from actually considering transitioning Widget to live with her. I’ve never said that to T and I have no idea what he would even think about it. Raising Widget has been so amazing, wonderful, crazy and there is no describing how much I love her. I cannot imagine having her here or knowing life without her. Seriously, it would probably *kill* me emotionally even contemplating whether we should, whether the stability of staying with us is better for her than L raising her -obviously I wouldn’t contemplate it if I thought there would be any danger or I had any qualms about L’s lifestyle, which at this point I don’t.
Plus I don’t feel like our family is complete with just Widget. I really feel like there is at least one, if not two (or more if I can persuade T), yet to come. And I have no other way to build a family except through adoption of some sort. Even if it ended up being adoption through foster care, there is no guarantee that the parents weren’t trampled on by the state’s caseworkers instead of by an adoption agency or attorney or facilitator. I do think there are instances in the foster care system where children are removed from homes for unfounded and false allegations although I’m sure that is not very often because I do know that most of the time, there are very, very valid reasons for removal and sometimes removal doesn’t happen when it should.
I feel like adoption is so selfish and self-centered on the part of the adoptive parents sometimes, particularly infertile adoptive parents. We have this intense grief about not being able to have children, at least mine is. But we really want to have a family. We say okay, we will build our family through adoption where someone else has to make the extreme sacrifice so we get what we want. Sounds a bit selfish to me. I know, I know. Not every woman is going to feel it is an extreme sacrifice or whatnot, but really I have no doubt in my mind that they all go through some form of grief. And grief can be living hell while you are in the thick of it.
I feel like I’m in this catch-22 because I really do want our children to come to use as infants. I really treasure and love that infancy/baby stage (toddlerhood, at times, well… 
). But it is so likely that the women who end up placing a child with us are going to be women who would have parented well if they had chosen to.
I know we will chose an ethical agency that really persues parenting options first, and makes adoption plans that are very, very contingent. I’m very sure Widget’s adoption coordinator’s agency she runs is very much a parenting first one but still the outside pressures when a woman is in that place where people think she “should place” are hard to get away from.
But still I hate the heartache that is inevitably involved in this process….
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