I Couldn't Love Her More If She Was My Own Child!

I remember that night.

It was 16 years ago, and it was our second date.

"I can't father children due to the therapy I had for cancer as a teenager," said my good looking, handsome, nice, straight, employed date.

I remember the night we got engaged.

"How about artificial insemmination?" I asked.

"No, thanks," said my good looking, handsome, nice, straight, employed fiance.

We did give it a whirl 5 years later after a couple of dizzying roller coaster rides on the domestic adoption front, but my heart wasn't really into it. I went to homestudy classes and listened with incredulity as women bared their souls about the crushing pain of infertility.

"I had to run out of my niece's christening because I was bawling," said one.

"I can't go to baby showers. Don't even ask." said another.

I looked properly sympathetic, but inside I was thinking how very, very different and weird I was. The idea of being pregnant didn't fill me with much of anything except abject terror, and knowing that I could never recreate a little RogerLorrie anyway made it easy to pursue the path that we followed.

I also never had an attack of "I am adopted, I need to see my face on somebody else." (shrug) I'm not being falsely modest here, but I never thought my face needed to be recreated on another innocent human being.

So I've been following the debate that rages on A Little Pregnant, Chicago Mama, Figlet, etc. with great interest and lots of feelings, but I'm having an uncharacteristically hard time trying to figure out if I can add anything to the debate that I (much less any of your poor innocent readers) would find new, or interesting, or significant.

Because the first thing that I believe about all this is that:

We are all different.

I can't take the moral high ground because for me deciding to pursue adoption was almost effortless. I wasn't beset with doubts about could I love another's child as my own--I had noticed that my adoptive mother and father had no problems with this and figured, correctly, that I wouldn't either.

I did not care what race my child was, but I also understand people who want a child who looks like them, and frankly it never occurred to me that my child might want to look like her parents. (It should have). In 1998, China was the go-to program for adoption---devoid of corruption, fairly easy (ha! It must be like labor pains--you forget the hours of backbreaking paperwork and the torturous wait, now stretching into eternity it seems) and yes...I wanted a daughter. Real Real Real Bad. I also wanted a child that had probably not been exposed to drugs/alcohol.

The second thing I believe is:

I agree with the adoptive mothers who are upset over the casual putdowns of adoption by people who haven't done it.

I mean, I've never experienced labor pain, and I wouldn't go around telling pregnant women about my how sister in law's third cousin screamed and screamed for thirty-six hours and got all tore up and etc. I wouldn't tell them that adoption is so much easier because after all, you don't end up with stretch marks and other unpleasant reminders of childbirth, yet so many people seem willing to spread horror stories about somebody they know who had a terrible experience with adoption, ergo, it's a bad thing.

Look, if YOU could never love another person's baby as your own, that's fine, but can you understand how hard it is for an adopted child to hear that? Can you understand how painful it is for me to think that my parents would have loved the product of their loins more than ME? I mean, how on earth could any child be more wonderful than I AM? I ASK YOU.

Can you understand how hard it is for us adoptive parents? Can you understand that we're dreading the day our child comes home from ballet practice asking us about an offhand comment that they heard in the car pool line along these terms? Can you understand that we lie awake at night worrying that our child will someday lie awake at night asking themselves, "Did they settle for me? Did they reluctantly give up the dream of a blonde blue eyed angel with their smile for me? Do they secretly regret that I can't do algebra or throw a football as well as they can and think that perhaps their OWN child would have lived up to their hopes and dreams?"

And the third thing I believe is that:

I, personally, am glad I adopted and I hope with all my heart that you, dear reader, find your path, whatever it may be.

Peace.