Journey to Motherhood
by Kim Davis Guerra
We recently celebrated my son’s 4th birthday, and it gave me reason to reflect. It has been five years since we decided to adopt. While it seems like an easy enough decision—you either want kids or you don’t—it took me a long time to make that choice. Now that we have gone through the process, we find that many friends and family members are wondering why we haven’t chosen to walk that path again. Here are my thoughts:
Do we tempt fate?
Adoption is like a grab bag—you never know what kind of prize you’re going to get. If you’re lucky, you wind up with a wonderful, happy, intelligent little boy, like my Bodhi. However, I have heard horror stories from other adoptive parents with less happy endings. If we go through the process again, what kind of child will we bring home? What effect will the presence of another child—especially one with behavioral, physical, or emotional problems—have on Bodhi? Right now, he has our full attention and is the sole focus of our home’s resources. If we bring home another child, those resources will be divided in half…
Finances
…which brings us to the financial burden. Private adoption is expensive! Not that it isn’t worth it—I wouldn’t trade Bodhi for a million dollars. (Well, most days.) However, times are hard lately. The economy has taken major hits in the last five years. Do we dare take on that huge expense again?
Private vs. public
When we chose to adopt, I knew I wanted to adopt a newborn. I wanted to raise him or her as our own from Day One to test the “nature vs. nurture” theory for myself. (In our experience, nurture won, hands down. Our son has picked up our characteristics to a T! Some of these make me so happy – others, not so much!)
Now that we have experienced the process once, I am considering adopting an older child, which brings me back to the question of “tempting fate” all over again. Older children have already been shaped by any number of external factors; they may have any number of lingering problems and difficulties caused by trauma in their early lives. This means the decision to adopt will require an even greater leap of faith on our part.
The process
I recently visited Depelchin to attend a seminar on the requirements for participation in their adoption/foster care programs. This is definitely an eye-opening process, and a scary testament to the state of children who find themselves “in the system.” Most of the children have experienced sexual and/or physical abuse and are suffering from the physical, behavioral, and emotional aftereffects of those abuses.
Many families choose to foster children before they adopt. This increases the likelihood of finding the right child to adopt and of being approved for the adoption. This, however, is the part that terrifies me the most. How could we bring a child into our home and then potentially have to let that child go? I think that might be tantamount to torture for all involved! Despite that, I know that the risk is just part of a process that many other families have undergone.
Progress
At the end of the day, we have chosen to complete the paperwork required to participate in the Depelchin adoption/foster care program and booked ourselves a place in one of their follow-up seminars. My husband will attend this one with me to absorb all of the details and learn about the choices available to us. The next article I write will be an update on where we are in the adoption process. Who knows—next time, I may be recounting another happy ending!
