Choosing Adoption After Infertility
It takes time and emotional toil to work through the issues of infertility to look at options beyond pregnancy. However, with persistence, the choice of adoption as a way of building a family transforms from a frightening and vague possibility to a reality of wonder and joy.
Making the Decision to Adopt After Struggling with Infertility
The emotional burden that accompanies infertility can sometimes seem enormous. Feelings of grief, anger, frustration, disappointment, and all the other difficult emotions associated with a severe loss place a heavy toll on those who are coping with infertility. Physical distress and emotional trauma associated with attempts to become pregnant only increase this emotional burden. Personal failure and the frustrations of being thwarted in the desire to become pregnant and have a family may seem overwhelming. Social pressure and expectations of family, friends and colleagues can compound conflicted emotions. And yet all of these issues must be addressed in order to become a good parent to your adopted child.
It is not uncommon for several years to go by as prospective parents struggle with infertility treatment and loss.
"Many single women face (the decision) about whether to go the insemination route or the adoption route. I did do both - two years of infertility, drugs, miscarriages, etc. - -- and then adopted... For me, the only advantage to my having gone through two years of hell is the fact that my daughter wasn't born until 1994 and those two years made me wait until "my" child was ready to come home." Maryann O.
For some, the struggles with loss issues related to infertility can take even longer.
"The topic of infertility is well known to me and I almost lost my sanity over it. After losing a son late term, I went into an intense depression that deepened when my husband left. That was almost 20 years ago. I fought my way out of that depression and sadness but felt an incompleteness that another marriage was not the answer to. Nor was surrogacy or artificial insemination or adoption of a child from the state agency I work for.... Now my adoption is first and foremost... Some of us have come a very long way to parent our children." Bernadette E.
| Table of Contents |
|---|
| 1. Choosing Adoption |
| 2. Connecting to adoption |
| 3. Adoption Fears |
| 4. Adoptive parents tell all |
| 5. Blessings of adoption |
| 6. The healing side |
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