When do I get mine?

It was eighty degrees yesterday so my coworker and I stole borrowed our boss's Miata and drove ourselves to the park near the Ballard Locks to eat lunch. My coworker likes to watch the seagulls and the odd representative of the wildlife faction (she swears she saw a water rat and really, I don't want to know), but as you know, I am anti-Nature and all that, so I prefer to people watch. The people watching is not so good at this park, mostly because it's a bit out of the way and not many people seem to drop by around lunchtime. But I couldn't take my eyes off one family playing nearby- a Caucasian couple in their mid to late thirties and their three (THREE!) Asian babies.

Okay, it's true that I am just assuming that the babies were theirs. They seemed crazy in love with the three-, two- and one-year-old (I swear they were that close together), taking pictures and rolling in the grass and walking up and down the steps and taunting seagulls. My coworker and I smiled the big-wattage smiles you give to little kids who have just walked up fourteen very large steps by themselves, and then my coworker started telling me all about her friend's two adopted children, from Vietnam and Korea. We talked about what my kids might look like (Hispanic! South American!) and the dumb things people ask about adopted children. Quoth coworker's dumb friend to her friend with an adopted 9-month-old, "Is he having problems with the language?"

Sometimes I think I should ditch the whole let's-get-pregnant idea and go straight to the adoption agency. This has no basis in reason, of course. Not sound reason, anyway. I have never particularly wanted to experience pregnancy (childbirth, I hear, is quite painful) and to be honest, the adoption process, with all the paperwork and red tape is, to my lopsided control-freak mindset, much more sensical and emotionally bearable than attempting to force Nature to produce what only has barely a 25% chance of occuring each month anyway. I am not fond of Nature (have I mentioned that?) while I'm excellent at paperwork. However, I'm not fool enough to think that all adoption entails is going back to my Chinese orphanage and picking out my girl. People, I read the Internet, I know few statements are un-true-er than "adoption is easy".

Even so, if it were an easier (and less expensive) process, I'm not sure I'd be waiting to adopt. For a while Phillip and I have thought that we will have the babies we can make by ourselves first, and then when they're older and we're a little better off, we'll adopt a couple more. We talked a lot about the when and the how, but not so much about the why. The why feels like a given. I don't think it's a misplaced sense of charity, or doing our part for population control or even worried that we might not be able to have biological kids- it's more like we just want them. It's like one day we thought it might be cool and God was all "Right on!" and then we met our orphanage babies and it was a sealed deal. Something like that.

Whenever I see adoptive families I can't help thinking about what my own family is going to look like. I know that God has been trying to teach me patience about this kind of thing all year. Even more than patience, I am supposed to be surrendering these dreams, letting go of my control over Nature and timing and all that stuff I don't like to acknowledge, much less give up. I see these families and feel a little sad, because GOD I want to be holding my two-year-old's hand while he climbs stairs. But then sometimes all I see is my own kid and I'm so incredibly excited.

Comments

[Antonia]

I would be really interested to hear more from you as to why you feel called to adopt, as opposed to have your own biological children..

Although I too share your love for the concept of adoption, I can't imagine adopting *over* having my own biological children! What a wonderful feeling it must be to see the very own fruit of your womb; a physical icon of the love you and your husband have for each other and an entirely new person that you and your husband have co-created with God Himself!

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on a semi unrelated note & just because this is actually a favourite medical topic of mine...

"....attempting to force Nature to produce what only has barely a 25% chance of occuring each month anyway..."

actually, that < 25% conception-rate per menstrual-cycle statistic applies to normally-fertile couples who have intercourse randomly throughout a menstrual cycle.

Women only every ovulate once per menstrual cycle and so are only fertile for a finite 'window' during any menstrual cycle.

Couples who have intercouse focused especially during the woman's fertile window (as identified by cervical mucus changes) have up to a 75% conception rate per menstrual cycle.

If couples are normally fertile, then with fertility-focused intercourse they have,
at the very least, a doubled rate of conception within the first 3-6months of trying, compared to couples who just have random intercourse and hope for the best.

Just for your interest!

[maggie]

I think this is the first time the word "intercourse" is on my website. Shh- don't tell my mother!

As for adoption, I can't say I feel called to adopt INSTEAD of having biological kids- if I should be so lucky I'll have both! I agree with you about how wonderful it would be to "co-create", but for me, an adopted child is an admittedly different yet equally wonderful and singular gift. Even though he's not born to me, my adopted baby will be a miracle in his own right. I know a lot of women feel very strongly about the biological tie, but I'm pretty sure I'm not one of them. That's a post in and of itself, I think.