Let's Try Something New

Picture this: Michigan, 2023.  A 38 year old woman sits at her dining room table writing a blog for the first time since high school.  

Yeah, it's a bit weird, but it's time to try something new- It's time to adopt!

I've been thinking about having kids since I was a kid.  I played baby dolls with my friends.  When I played with Barbies, my brother's 3 1/2" GI Joes were my Barbie's kids.  I just knew I'd grow up to be married and have children and a successful career and a good home.

Well, at 30 I was still single and working a job that I really enjoyed, but wasn't going to allow me to grow in the ways I wanted.  I had a condo, but it wasn't one I thought I'd want to live in for much longer.  I made a five year plan to change careers, move to a new place, and have a kid.  Easy, right?

In 2015 I got into a new career, and in 2020- two weeks before COVID officially hit Michigan - I moved into a new house.  

I dated, but never felt a connection with a guy that made it worth continuing to struggle with online dating sites.  More, I realized that I was okay being single- I don't feel like my life is incomplete for not having a boyfriend or husband.  

It was incomplete for not having a child.  There were pretty much two options as I saw it: have a baby without a man in my life, or adopt.  

Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS) makes it a more challenging for me to have a baby even if I tried- and from everything I was reading, it's expensive and there are, of course, no guarantees, particularly when my reproductive system doesn't run all that well.  

On the other hand, adoption was something that friends had success with, and the internet was full of great success stories.  So I started to really look into it.

Silly me- I guess that I thought it was going to be simple.  Just sign some paperwork and someone will bring you a baby, right?  

First of all, no.  No, it is not that easy.  First issue- I wanted an infant.  I want the joy and stress of raising a child from as early as I possibly can.  Yes, there are infants in the state adoption system, but it's much harder to find them.  It's possible to foster to adopt of course, and I may have had better luck that way... but I don't think I could handle bonding with a child and then returning them and never having certainty that I would one day have a child of my own.  I haven't outright rejected that idea, but it's certainly been tabled for now.  

So, onto adoption agencies and placement facilities. 

I ruled out international adoption because I've heard too many stories of how poorly it can go.  And I also feel like there are enough babies in the US who need help that I would rather look closer to home.   That meant domestic adoptions so I started looking.  

It was pretty discouraging at first.  The number of agencies out there who won't talk to anyone who isn't married or with an established partner is devastating.

Enter Lifelong Adoptions.  They caught my attention because they are open to everyone, and so welcoming.  They accept families who are LGBT or straight or those who are multiple person families, or single men or single women.  

I signed up with them in early 2021, and they've been awesome about helping me on my journey.  They've guided me through the process so I have my home study done, they've explained the process, offered resources for learning about some of the birth mothers who are out there, they made me a profile, put me out on the internet, presented me to birth mothers.  I made a video, I updated my profile, and I'm still out there being presented.

But I'm about to hit my 2-year anniversary with them and still no baby.  It's really, really hard sometimes to think about that.  

The first 18 months or so I was sure it was a matter of time- for a long time I was afraid to go anywhere without my phone, sure that The Call would come in anytime.  I was answering everything, even the ones that were pretty clearly spam calls, just in case it was The Call.  For a while I even turned off "nighttime" mode so I'd hear the phone ring in the middle of the night if they called.  (Don't do that.  It's horrifying how many noises your phone makes at night, even when you aren't touching it.)

About six months ago, I really started to get down about it.  Lifelong has been great, talking me up and encouraging me, but... it's time to try something new, which is why I'm going to share this journey with anyone who finds it.

And, bonus, one day the baby that I hope to adopt will be able to know all about how they came into my life.