The key to any good "Step" program is clarity. Order. Follow the steps and work the program and enlightenment will ensue.
I'm a reasonable person, really. After 13 years of high-quality suburban public school education, 4 years of university schooling, 4 years of medical school, 3 years of medical residency training, and completion of a one-year fellowship, I must confess that I even consider myself to be well-educated. How hard could adoption be, really?
Compared to vomiting my way through a pregnancy and taking a two-week maternity leave, I reasoned that the adoption process would be simple. Well, maybe not simple...but, certainly it would be straightforward. Orderly. Right?
You can probably guess where this is leading. Step 1 is usually admitting that you have a problem. I had a problem. Perhaps there was a component of arrogance, but I think my issues had more to do with ignorance. I didn't know what I didn't know. And what we don't know that we don't know...it most certainly can hurt us.
The things I didn't know (and the things I still don't know) would fill volumes. So, ultimately, Step 1 for me in the journey to international adoption turned out to be this:
Embrace humility. I have a problem. I know nothing. I am the Jon Snow of international adoption.
The Origin Story
I was about 13 or 14 when I first thought that I would like to adopt someday. My thinking was (and still is) that all children deserve to grow up in a loving, stable home with parents who care for and protect them. As a teenager, my worldview was obviously simplistic, but a little bit of that idealist still lives inside my cynical adult self. As I grew, the desire to parent grew as well. Endometriosis meant that fertility was not guaranteed. A family is a group of people bound by love and commitment, and those traits are not necessarily linked to shared genetic code. All of these thoughts tossed around inside my brain for years while I pursued an education, marriage, and a career.
Fortunately, my husband (let's call him "Angry Driver" since anyone who knows him will immediately recognize the moniker) supported the idea of growing our family through adoption. We began learning about the adoption process even before we got married and we started looking into various avenues of adoption: private infant, foster to adopt, international, etc. We were reading about adoption agencies when we found out I was pregnant with our son (let's call him "Bean" since that was his womb-name).
Having Bean was a true blessing, and I am in no way trying to minimize my gratitude when I say that my pregnancy was awful. My delivery experience was decidedly Not Good. My postpartum experience was Certainly Not Fun. The endometriosis pain was a Decided Negative. By the time my gynecologist recommended a hysterectomy, I was ready on every level. I reasoned that I could keep the factory equipment in the hopes of possibly manufacturing a future bean (No guarantees), or I could raise the beautiful Bean I already had. When your not-quite-two-year-old stands next to your bed every day and asks, "Mommy hurt?", the decision is actually quite easy. Angry Driver and I agreed that the Bean was everything we ever wanted and hoped for. If we decided to have children in the future, adoption would be our path.
The hysterectomy happened. I took two days off of work to recover (The road to ignorance is paved with ill-advised bravado and wonton disregard for the advice of experts). I completed my medical training and started my first job as a Grown Up Doctor.
When Bean was about 3 years old, we felt the time was right to formally begin the adoption process. Families are created in many ways and they are all valid. For us, private infant adoption was not the path we wanted. We did not like the idea of competing with other families for a baby, and we did not want to be in the emotional position of worrying that a birth mother would change her mind and want to keep her baby. The ideal state is one in which parents raise their children. We wanted another child, but we wanted to offer our family to a child who would otherwise not have one.
We began by exploring foster care adoption through our County Social Services Department. Let's just say that this was a Subpar Life Event. We attended the training class. We filled out the Magna Carta of applications and we heard...nothing. Angry Driver and I took turns calling the County, but all we ever heard were lamentations regarding the evils of the Governor and the horrors of Budget Cuts.
After 6 months of such exchanges, I asked the County worker to call us if she ever wanted to talk about our application. Meanwhile, I frequently passed a highway billboard that poignantly asked me to consider adopting a child from the foster care system. Irony is a witty mistress, indeed. For people who believe in fate, I imagine the experience would be summed up with the words "Not Meant To Be".
Two years and one move later, we agreed to try again. Angry Driver did not want to repeat the foster to adopt fiasco, so we agreed to explore international adoption. I couldn't argue with his reasoning. And so we took another step in the 1,000 step program.
That, however, is a story for another day.
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