Dreaming a new Dream

As I mentioned every girl has their fairytale life they dream of. Those dreams don't usually include infertility, because of that they usually don't include adoption either. Adoption was never a bad thing to us, I actually had a good outlook on adoption, and it was something that I thought very highly of people who did adopt. I just had to adjust my dream of my family. I had always looked at pictures of me and Spencer as we were kids wondering what our kids would look like.

I had actually started thinking about adoption before we were even married. When Spencer was on his mission I had a dear friend, I remember the day I talked to her. It was her 20 birthday and I called to wish her a happy birthday. As we were talking she told me that she was pregnant and that she had decided that she was going to place the baby for adoption. I was in basically the same position that she was, unmarried, living with my parents, but I wished that there was some way that I could adopt her baby. I knew that it wasn't right, and I am sure that he is in the family that he is supposed to be in, but it really opened my eyes to the possibility.

After my first round of fertility treatments, I was ready to just move on to adoption. Spencer wasn't sure it was the right thing yet, so we kept trying. For him it was a much slower acceptance that adoption was the right choice for our family. He had a few very personal experiences that bore witness to him that this was the right thing for us.

Like I mentioned in the last post, it required much prayer and tears to get us to the point that we finally contacted LDS Family Services. I was so scared that I was going to be judged, I already felt like such a failure because we were "giving up" that I didn't want anyone else to make me feel like I was a failure. Everyone at LDS Family Services were so great. They were so welcoming and made us feel like this was an exciting adventure, and it was. They light the fire under us.

We had all sorts of paperwork to do, interviews, we even had to have friends write letters to say that we were okay people. We were required to take 6 education classes, this was the greatest thing that they could have done in the process to become approved. The classes were nothing like I expected. During these classes we were able to meet other couples who were on the same journey that we were. It helped me to realize I wasn't alone in this. They had a birthmother panel where we were able to meet birthmothers and see that they were not they steriotypical teenage girls. They were smart, fun, some older, some younger, and they all had one thing in common, they had all placed a baby for adoption.

Then they had the adoptive couple panel where they had 4 couples talk about the journey that they had taken and their adoption stories. There was a couple that had waited just over 3 yaers and I remember thinking "That is so sad, I can't even imagine. I think I would go crazy if I had to wait that long."