Stahlke Adoption

Peeling an Onion, Part I

The decision-making process in adoption is endless. Once you make one difficult choice, the next one presents itself. I finally resigned myself to working through it methodically and not dreaming too much about the final outcome.

The first big decision for an infertile couple is whether to stop medical treatments. Most adoption agencies will not allow you to proceed unless you have completed all assisted attempts at a pregnancy. Some agencies even make you sign an agreement to this effect.

It's a huge step to close the door on having biological children. We found a book by Patricia Johnston to be especially helpful--Adopting After Infertility. It outlines the various losses that a couple faces when they decide not to try anymore for a pregnancy. Adopting children to form your family only assuages one of those losses. In addition, a husband and wife usually face infertility very differently, depending on personality, gender, which partner is infertile, the cause of the infertility, and other factors. Johnston's book has an exercise where each spouse rates the various losses, which makes for meaningful discussion about what each partner is going through.

I could write about our infertility and treatment, but this blog is focused on adoption instead. The length of time for the first stage of our journey: over ten years.

posted by Stahlkes @ 1:52 PM