Pregnant, Now what? The adoption journey - Part 1

Originally posted June 8, 2006:

In April of 2004 my (now ex) husband, E, and I went to Florida to visit my mom. I had no idea just how much that trip would change my life forever.

After returning from Florida, I discovered that I was pregnant on May 8th. I told one of my good friends that I was pregnant because I was severly high risk (6 miscarriages) and I needed someone to be aware of what was happening because I had not told my husband yet.

On May 8 my husband and I had a very serious conversation. He told me that he was thinking of leaving me because I was unable to have children and he really wanted to have a child. Secretly, I was thrilled because I knew I was pregnant. After his little "bomb", we went to dinner. As we were driving I asked him when he would want to have kids and he said pretty much immediately. At this point we had been married for almost 3 years and while our marriage had its issues, I didnt think it was too the point that it was ending.

On May 10th, I went to Walgreens got a bib that said "I love my Daddy" and a pregnancy test. As soon as I touched the test, it said "pregnant". I knew. I didnt need a stupid test. E was sitting on our loveseat watching TV. I approached him, knelt before him and handed him the bib with tears in my eyes. Did you ever see that episode of "Friends" where Rachel tells Ross its his baby? Ross has this stuptified look on his face for about 40 minutes...that was E. He thought I was joking. He looked at the pregnancy test and still didnt believe.

Later that night, I asked him what was wrong. He was not the excited "daddy-to-be" that I expected him to be, that the conversation we had had just days before had led me to believe he would be. His answer to me was that he wanted to have children, but not with me.

Holy shit. I am roughly 6 weeks pregnant and you dont want this pregnancy?

The next few days were hell....

**To Be Continued**

J and B begin their journey:
In April of 2004 we had been struggling with the decision to adopt ever since we lost the twins a year ago. Our heart was telling us that it was in God’s plan for us to adopt, but it was hard to let go and admit defeat to our 5 years of infertility after we were so close.

Oddly, when B and I were married we both knew that we adopt one day even though we had no way of knowing the events ahead of us. We still had a frozen embryo from our IVF that we became pregnant with the twins from, but we knew that there was another baby out there for us somewhere. So, we continued with the adoption process.

The adoption process is very involved. They want to know everything about you. They ask you about your childhood, your parenting ideals, and your background. They run a background check on you and they come out and visit your home and you have 3 interviews, all to be approved. Once you are clear to adopt you have to sell yourself. We had to make a family profile that talked about our relationship, our family, and write a letter to a birthmother. Then we wait to be chosen by a birthmother.

Birthmother, that was a term we were unfamiliar with. When we researched adoption we knew that open adoption was for us. We could never blindly take a child from a family and not think of the effect on them. It was important for us that our child never felt abandoned like some adopted children do. We always wanted the child to feel loved and accepted and know where she came from. We also knew that no one can carry a child for 9 months and not fall in love with the baby and just because someone couldn’t raise the child it didn’t mean that they shouldn’t have any relationship with the child. So although it would have been easier for us to have a closed adoption, it was so much healthier for everyone to have an open adoption.

The profile was actually easy to make once we got started. We wanted to show that we were young and had sense of humors and that we had great family support, so we made a picture collage that had family photos as well as a picture of B looking like he got knocked out by a Rocky statue, and a picture of our cat wearing shoes. We knew that some might see that as weird, but we knew that the right birthmother for us would have to share our humor. The letter to the birthmother was hard because we knew nothing about her. B did a great job he wrote from his heart and we knew that the birthmother who was meant for us would read the letter and know it was for her.

So May of 2004 we were approved, the profile was done, now all we had to do was wait for God’s plan to lead us to the right child….