Congratulations....It's a Girl!

Today, I found out I'm going to be a mom....in two months! You guessed it. I'm adopting.

This is my first child, and it will be a girl. Ever since high school, I've always imagined and hoped my first child would be a girl. Adopting is one of the best and least expensive ways of ensuring that, so my husband and I looked for a girl from the beginning. 

My husband has his own reason for wanting a girl....of his four kids, only one, the eldest, was a girl, and she died in 2002 when she was only 24 years old (leaving a granddaughter and a grandson for him, at least). He would like another chance to have a daughter in his life.

My Young Marriage, Complete With an Array of Step-Children

Ah, yes. My husband's kids. When I got married at 22 years old, I had a ready-made family, with four step-kids, and the first step-grandchild on the way. Today, I have three living step-children and five step-grandchildren (I've been a step-grandma since I was 23, actually). 

All of those step-kids except the middle step-son have had kids before me....even the youngest, who I met on his 8th birthday, now has an 8 year old son of his own. I'd be lying if I didn't say that irked me for a long time. I've mostly gotten over it, though. Did I mention, I'm going to be a mom?

The Mystery of Not Conceiving

Like many women having kids was something I always just assumed I would do, but with a ready-made family, it wasn't a priority right away. It even took me six years after I quit taking birth control to realize I hadn't gotten pregnant yet, and I might have a fertility issue. 

It just wasn't at the forefront of my mind. I was doing other things, and figured I had plenty of time to get pregnant. And, I still felt too young to have a kid. I kind of still do, but I think I may always feel this way....if I don't do it now, I may never, and I know I'd regret it if I didn't have at least one child of my own. I waited another three years after this realization before I went to the first of what would be four fertility doctors, to determine what was keeping me from conceiving.

The Fertility Game (aka Money Down the Toilet)

After years of tests and treatments, and tens of thousands of dollars, it was finally discovered I can't carry a child to term myself. Complicated auto-immune issues, apparently. 

To have a biological child meant getting a surrogate, and surrogates are insanely expensive unless you have a volunteer. Those are hard to come by, but I did have one, my husband's niece, who is three years younger than me. Last year, her doctor told her she had some health issues that were just arising that would make another pregnancy dangerous for her, so she couldn't do it. There went my volunteer.

While I still have a desire for a biological child, and have hope that this can happen one day, I also didn't want to just sit around and be bitter that I wasn't a mother (as much as I love my step-kids, they have other mothers who are very much a part of their lives, which makes me a secondary consideration to them).

Babies? Cute! But, Likely Not My Thing

I also realized that taking care of babies is probably not for me. Even when I was going through the fertility treatments and desperate to get pregnant, I still dreaded the infant and toddler years, where I would be getting up all night to feed them, losing precious sleep and being tired all the time, soothing them when they cry for ages for no reason, changing diapers, potty training....I wanted the baby, but all the work that came with it actually upset me to think about. 

I assumed I would just get used to it when I had my own kid, and maybe I would (or will). Honestly, though, I think if I ever do have a biological child, I'm also going to have to have a nanny. 

The universe is doing the right thing in making sure a biological child doesn't come my way until I can pay someone to take care of it until it can walk, talk, go to the bathroom on its own, and feed itself. The universe is wise. I would be miserable otherwise, and so would the baby.

In a way, I've been getting clues that babies aren't for me for years, but I've ignored them. That biological urge to reproduce is strong, and it can cause real desperation for pregnancy and childbirth (though, honestly and objectively, neither one of those things sounds like a barrel of monkeys, either, and I'm kind of glad now knowing I won't have to go through them). 

But, relatives have been telling me for years I don't need a baby, even people you would think would want me to reproduce, like my grandmother and my mother. My husband worried from the beginning of our relationship that if I got pregnant, I'd die in childbirth and leave him alone to raise the kid, which he said would be the worst thing I could do to him. I mean, who worries about an otherwise seemingly healthy 23 year old, as I was at the time, dying in childbirth in America? His psychic powers are not to be trifled with, however, something that took me a few years of being with him to realize.

My mom even recently said I never wanted to play with baby dolls as a child....you know, the kind you push in a stroller, feed, and change their diapers. I apparently showed no interest in those, even from a young age. But Barbie dolls, I loved. They were teenagers. Even before I was a teenager, I wanted to play with toys that were made to look like teenagers.

Older Kids, Though....I Have Experience With Raising Them, and I Enjoy Being Around Them

I love kids, so I always thought I'd be a good mother. The reluctance of my family to support me getting pregnant was insulting. They did help out financially with the fertility treatments, but they really weren't on board with it. They helped because it meant so much to me. 

I've worked with kids from age 4 through 18 as a teacher and "house mother" at a group home for troubled youth, and I loved them all. I had so much fun with them at those jobs. And, of course, I helped raise my three step-sons, one of whom lived with us full time for the first three years of my marriage. 

But, crucially, I've never worked with babies. I have no experience with them, and often have to be coerced into holding them. 

Could Adopting an Older Kid Be the Answer? My First Instinct Was the Right One

Maybe the whole baby thing really isn't for me, and that is why my first inclination, on realizing I may have a fertility issue, was to adopt from foster care and get an older child. I went to the orientation, but ultimately decided to do fertility treatments. When it became clear nothing was going to come of those treatments, I went back to the idea of adoption. 

At first, I went to a private adoption agency that adopted newborns to families. After a few months of pondering it, I realized that was the wrong decision for me. So many older kids need and want families, it seemed kind of selfish to go for an infant. I also realized the thought of caring for an infant really did freak me right out. 

I went back to my original idea of adopting an older child from foster care. 

Because my interests, and my husband's, are outside the norm, we both work from home, and are very much laid-back, hippie people who would rather go to a museum than the beach, and who would prefer to go to an organic farmer's market than the mall, it took a while after we completed our mandatory parenting classes and home study to be matched with a child our social worker thought would be a good fit. It took more than a year, in fact, at least for the "official match" to be made.

Even though I checked the available children for adoption on all the foster care adoption websites in the closest counties to us almost every day, I knew patience was the key. My daughter was out there. Spiritually, she had always been mine; it was just taking us a while to find each other. She would come. And, she did.

The first time I met her in person, I knew she was mine. She was always meant to be mine.

Did I mention, she's 17? She is, and she's been looking for the right family since she was 13, and in foster care since she was 11. Her social worker was so excited to find us, and wondered aloud where we'd been hiding all this time. She says we're the perfect parents for her. After meeting her and reading her file, I think so, too.

She was excited about us adopting her right away, and began asking if we could call her long before we were actually allowed to do so. She felt the match was right, as well.

Now, when I look at her picture on the county foster care adoption website, I don't just see a child looking for a family. I see MY DAUGHTER.

And, next weekend, I will get to spend my first un-monitored afternoon with her. By the end of July, she is scheduled to move in with us (hence the "I'm going to be a mom in two months" statement at the beginning of this post). Three months after that, we can finalize the adoption and make it official, but she is already our daughter in our minds and hearts, and in hers.

Finally, I can honestly say, for the first time ever: "I'm going to be a mom!"

How awesome is that?

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