We came to adoption as many couples do, after having experienced infertility. However long you deal with infertility and whether or not you pursue infertility treatments like we did, infertility, to put it plainly, sucks. It consumes your entire life and throws you onto the world’s worst rollercoaster you didn’t ask to ride. Once you decide to pursue infertility treatment, your whole life revolves around appointments and pills and shots. So much of your life before infertility can fall away as you deal with the pace of the medical procedures—not to mention the mounting costs and the emotional devastation when the procedures fail.

Long before we even knew infertility would be part of our story, my husband and I had discussed adoption and both decided it was something we would both be open to in building our future family. Often people ask me if deciding to stop IVF and switch to the process of adopting was hard, but truthfully, it was the easiest decision we have ever made. The second we made the decision that we were definitely ready to switch courses, I felt an enormous weight lift off of my shoulders. Adoption gave me hope and, for the first time in a long time, something to be excited about. Though the adoption process is time-consuming, it didn’t feel as fraught as infertility treatment. I knew that if we stayed the course, we would be parents. It was no longer a question of if, but when. I was able to enjoy doing all the things expectant parents get to do. We decorated the nursery, registered for baby gear, and told our closest friends and family that we had begun the adoption process once we went “live” with our agency and our profile was available to expectant mothers. I flew into a flurry of nesting activity almost immediately: doing SO MUCH LAUNDRY (which is normally my least favorite domestic task) and filling our freezer with food. I even packed a “go bag” of baby stuff, which my husband scoffed at as being unnecessary.

At least until we got the call. A whopping 13 days after we went live. The call went like this: you’ve been matched, the baby was born yesterday, it’s a girl, she’s several states away, can you be here by tomorrow afternoon? This was my first lesson as a parent that your kid will NOT do what you expect. Our daughter was several weeks early and came into the world with a bang. She has kept us on our toes ever since. As we got more information during the call, we learned she had been born 90 minutes from my hometown, where my parents and sister still lived. As we drove, we periodically got check-in calls from our agency, where we learned there were even more coincidences, things we had in common with her birth mother, and things that seemed like little nods from the universe saying “this is it, thanks for being patient.” Adoption started to restore my faith in the idea of good things happening for people who deserve good things. I’m not religious, but I can’t discount the fact that there are just too many moving pieces to our adoption story that are more than a coincidence.

Within 36 hours of getting the call, we were parents. It was amazing to be able to share my daughter’s first few weeks of life with my family, not to mention having help as we settled into our new roles as parents. Like most first-time parents, we had absolutely no clue whatsoever what we were doing, so we relied on our family and friends to help reassure us that yes, we could keep this small human alive. I had another wonderful source of support, then and now, that I would not have had unless we had chosen adoption. After we signed with our agency, I created a Facebook group for people using the same agency because one hadn’t existed previously. Shortly before my daughter was born, I had recruited a few other women to admin the group with me, and they have become my “village.” Beyond new-parent questions, we have developed an incredibly strong friendship that feels more like a sisterhood than anything. I can’t imagine not having these ladies in my life, but had we not chosen adoption, I never would have known them. Even now, over two years later, we have a running group chat where we talk literally every day. I have befriended many other adoptive parents as well and have found a sense of community in the adoption world I don’t think I’ve felt anywhere before in my life.

As time went on and my daughter grew, I found myself feeling the pull toward adoption advocacy. I found myself being the go-to person for people in our Facebook group as well as in other areas of my life. Your sister’s hairdresser is interested in adoption? Have her call me! Your cousin’s mailman has 3 adopted kids? Awesome! Let’s hang out! I began to find myself spending much of my free time talking to prospective adoptive parents about how to start the process and how to make the best choices for their family and find ways to manage the stress adopting can create. So much so that on a girls’ weekend trip, one of my friends asked, “Explain to me again why you aren’t doing this as your job?” I was an elementary school teacher before my daughter was born and had been a stay-at-home parent up to that point. After that weekend, I started the process of forming my company, The Adoption Mentor, and since then have been thrilled to provide guidance to couples in all stages of the adoption process. As with many small businesses, it has been a labor of love and not necessarily an overnight success. I am the CEO, CFO, Marketing Director, Webmaster, and all-around ringmaster all by myself, but it is incredibly fulfilling. Around the same time, I also wanted to find a way to combine my love of writing with my love of adoption and began crafting adoption-related stories for online parenting publications. I’ve recently become a staff writer for several adoption-focused websites as well.

With all of that said, the most obvious and profound way my life has changed is that I became a mother. I know everyone thinks his or her child is exceptional, but my daughter is just a remarkable little person, and I constantly find myself thinking “I can’t imagine her not being my child.” It matters not even a tiny bit that I did not give birth to her. If anything, it deepens my appreciation of the privilege of being a parent. Before you become a parent, you hear parents say the same things over and over again: the whole world is different to me now, I never knew I could love someone like this, it is like having my heart walking around outside my body. All of this is true. The list of things I would not do for my daughter is a blank page. Beyond me and my husband, she has brought so much joy to all of our family and my closest friends that it is hard to remember a time without her. She is very different from my husband and me in many ways, but she just fits perfectly with our admittedly crazy family and friends. Adoption has changed my life in so many ways, but she will always be the biggest and best way.

The post How Adoption Changed My Life Forever appeared first on Adoption Point | How to Adopt, Place or Parent a Child.

Parents these days have more resources than ever before but more pressure. Everyone’s social media seems flooded with clean, happy, well-behaved kids who seem perfect. Timmy got straight As. Susie is a first chair violinist in the school orchestra. Look at our perfect family vacation to an interesting place, and none of our kids are crying or complaining about being bored. It can be tempting to compare our own daily grind to other people’s seemingly perfect lives, but odds are if you talked to these people in real life, you’d hear about their bad days as well as their good. It’s just that no one broadcasts the bad days and, frankly, people can place excessive importance on the good ones.

We are friends with a family of ten children. TEN. 5 times 2. As many kids as there are fingers on my hands. As the parent of one child who often feels frantic, I can’t imagine parenting TEN children, several of whom were adopted internationally and have complex medical needs. I asked them once what their secret was and they said their strategy is to keep it simple. Not every day needs to be a grand production. So often these days, we feel responsible not only for the basic things our kids need but also to provide them with entertainment and intellectual stimulation and “experiences” every minute. When it comes down to it, though, children on a day-to-day basis have very basic needs: you have to feed them, you have to give them a roof over their heads, and you have to let them know that they are loved.

There will be days when it seems you are only able to accomplish the bare minimum, and that’s okay. Maybe you ordered a pizza instead of cooking an elaborate healthy meal. Maybe you let your kid watch one more episode of his or her favorite TV show because you desperately needed 30 minutes to drink your coffee and attempt to feel human. Maybe you raised your voice after your kid did that thing you have told him or her specifically not to do 900 times. It’s okay. Parenting is not about perfection. You don’t have to be a perfect parent to be THE perfect parent for your unique child. If you find yourself overwhelmed or feeling like you just can’t win on any given day, focus on the basics and lean into the chaos! Some day when our children are all grown, we will laugh at the days that make us want to pull our hair out now. Know that you are doing your best, and if you have to, step away from social media. Don’t compare your worst day ever to someone else’s highly curated and probably exaggerated highlight reel. Take a few deep breaths and know that you can always give it another whirl tomorrow. And if tomorrow isn’t perfect either? That’s more than okay.

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This may seem obvious, but the #1 reason for considering adoption is that you want to parent a child or add another child to your family. While people adopt for many reasons, the vast majority of them have this simple motivation behind their decision. Often people who have had trouble conceiving or had other issues in starting or building their family question if they were “meant to be” parents. In my mind, if you want to be a parent, you are meant to be one, regardless of any obstacles that have been placed in your way.

2. You feel a “calling” to adoption

Often, people who adopt say that even at a young age, they always felt an interest in and a calling toward adoption, even before they were aware of how adoption actually works. Whether you are religious or not, this “inner voice” that put adoption on your mind and heart did so for a reason! My husband and I talked about adoption long before we were married. Early on in our relationship we said that we would love to have adoption be a part of our family’s story someday. Now we are the parents of one wonderful daughter who we adopted domestically at birth, and I work as an adoption consultant, writer and advocate. Adoption is more than how we built our family—it’s a huge part of our lives.

3. You will find a wonderful community of like-minded people

One thing I didn’t realize I would gain when I considered an adoption is a wonderful group of friends, both locally and nationally. Some of my dearest friends are people I have met online in adoption discussion groups, and I have a running group chat with 4 other adoptive moms I talk to every day about everything from parenting to marriage to cooking. I have also met adoptive parents in public in random and unexpected ways, and I have been lucky to have friends from other areas of my life adopt as well and share that experience with them. I gained far more than just a daughter when I adopted—I truly gained a village.

4. Your life will be full of pleasant surprises

Often I find that people who have biological children are quick to assign their children’s characteristics to genetics. As soon as a baby is born, people tend to compare the child’s features to family members’, and as he or she grows and develops talents and interests, he or she also finds reasons for those by looking at the family tree. With children who came to your life through adoption, every interesting attribute or skill is uniquely his or hers. Though I have a relationship with our daughter’s birth family and can definitely see physical attributes that she shares with them, it is nice not to feel like I am superimposing my own traits, good or bad, on my child. She is 100% herself and 100% unique.

5. You understand that family is more than just the people who you are related to

So many of us have created families that consist of more than just our blood relatives. Our partners/spouses and their families become our family even though we are not biologically related. We develop deep friendships that feel like family. Even pets, who aren’t even human, can become our family. Sharing DNA is not required to love someone wholeheartedly and unconditionally.

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