What I Wish You Knew About Adoption and Infertility {Part 3}

We’ve spent the week engaging the conversation about adoption and infertility; the pain that comes with infertility and how others add to the pain. As an adoption consultant, I work with families every day that let me into their story; they share their loss and heartbreak. They share their struggle. And today they are sharing here about their choice to adopt.

Adoption is not something that everyone that is infertile is called by God to do. It is something you need to discern just like a fertile person would discern it. – Lisa

Adoption doesn’t cure infertility. It cures childlessness. – Stacey

Despite what your doctors, close friends/family, and much of society will recommend, you don’t NEED to pursue every treatment for infertility before turning to adoption. Adoption is not a 2nd choice or plan B. Your adopted child will be “your own.” – Meagan

If you did seek infertility treatments prior to adoption, you really need to fully grieve the loss before committing yourself to adoption…adoption is NOT a plan b, but one can feel it is if they don’t free themselves from the pain of infertility first. – Carrie

I…wish people knew that when a family decides to pursue adoption, they have discussed it in great detail. They didn’t think “let’s just adopt” they prayed, they had long conversations and prayed some more. A family’s infertility will never go away just because they have chosen the path of adoption…the loss and hurt will always be there in some way. – Amy

For me, adoption isn’t about replacing my son (as some have been bold enough to say). It’s about feeling such a depth of love that I had never felt before, such a passion, and knowing that love could be shared with another child. Our capacity to love was shown to me through our son. I knew my son would want for us to love another child, and that it was meant to be through adoption. – Andrea

After our infertility struggles and miscarriages, we felt God leading us to adoption. We waited until we knew that we knew it was God and not us trying to “make” parenthood happen for us. We didn’t really hear Him with clarity until He had helped us heal from our painful previous endeavors. Once we heard Him clearly, we had mourned the way we thought we would become parents, which helped us quickly see how adoption was NOT a Plan B but God’s original plan for us all along! – Debbie

It’s such a hard road – we were never able to get pregnant regardless of pills, shots, and trials…Painful to remember, yes- but one day it WILL NOT DEFINE US. We have been defined for almost 10 years as the poor [family] who can’t get pregnant – little did we know we couldn’t because our perfect family was not created from my uterus, and I am now a-okay with that! – Kristin

With infertility, you may never lose the desire to wonder what being pregnant would be like even if you are mommy thru the miracle of adoption and that is perfectly normal. Also, it is ok if everyone in your life does not understand your decision to adopt, it is not their journey to make sense of, it is yours. – Amanda

We did not have a long infertility battle, but it was intense. [After completing four IVF cycles] we did not know if we wanted to go through the financial, physical, emotional, and spiritual journey again. We decided to put it on God’s shelf. He will either tug our hearts back to try again, or He will not. We put it all in His hands. We decided to concentrate on our adoption journey, knowing we were going to adopt no matter what. God gave us a very strong desire to have children, and we know He is not a cruel God. We know that He would not give us the desire if we were not going to be parents somehow. We know it is not how we become parents that matter, it is that we become parents. I don’t guarantee that we will not try again at some point, but I know God has given us the strong tug in our hearts to adopt right now. I can’t wait to see His plan for us. – Heather

I wish I would have known that it was ok to take the time to grieve our story not turning out how I thought it would. I wish I had known that it’s ok to feel the hurt of secondary infertility just as much as the first time. I felt so guilty for wanting another child when we already had our son. But a friend told me, “your family is incomplete whether it’s by one child or two children, it’s still incomplete.” – Ashley

The heartache was so overwhelming in the middle of our IVF treatments and the final negative pregnancy test was one if the worst days of my life…. It all seems like such a distant memory and such a small part of my life since we brought our [daughter] home ! There are still a few times of sadness , but I am shocked how all consuming the sadness was and how quickly it vanished once we held our [daughter] for the first time. – Becca

We would not have [our daughter] if we didn’t have our infertility and our losses. If we had been pregnant either naturally or with IVF first, we likely would not have opened our hearts to adoption. So I would not exchange our infertility battles for the world because they brought me my most perfect first daughter. So in that vein, while difficult, those hard hard years were the best thing that ever happened to me and my husband. – Carrie

My friend, Lily, summed up her thoughts on their infertility and adoption journey so perfectly. Infertility is complicated. Often those on the outside want to reduce it down to a simple “just.” Just do IVF. Just relax and it will happen. Just adopt. It’s easy to miss that infertility is often a catalyst God uses to redirect and refine those going through it, but there is no “just” that will wrap everything up with a neat bow. It’s emotional, messy, and everyone’s story is unique. Not everyone struggling with infertility will do IVF or adopt. Some will do both. We loved the idea of adoption long before we dealt with infertility. But God used infertility to direct out path at the right time for us to adopt our son. Even with the diagnosis of infertility, we never tried IVF because the call on us to adopt became so great and so imperative. Praise God for the timeline he put us on! But we also received some judgement for the way we did things and why we hadn’t “explored every option” before adopting. Even from our fertility doctor. Now, as an adoptive momma, I can tell you that adoption is emotional, messy and everyone’s story will be different. But I also know firsthand the beauty of being part of something that God knit together, and knowing that our infertility was part of a bigger plan He had for us and our son. What was once something I asked God to remove from our lives, is now something I have thanked Him for many times. God’s ways are not our ways.

I can’t think of a more beautiful way to talk about adoption and infertility. The beauty that God can make from brokenness when we see our story as a part of His.