We continued to pursue the tail end of our infertility treatments as we did the paperwork for our adoption. Basically, after IVF #4 failed, we kind of gave up on infertility treatments and we started the 6 months of paperwork to adopt internationally.

But, because of some insurance changes, our only opportunity to use up some frozen embryos was just as our dossier went out. Well, surprisingly the FET worked. While we were pregnant, we delayed the adoption 8 months (the country we adopted from was just reviewing our paperwork during that time anyway) and then reinitiated it when our biokids were 7 months old. We almost immediately were assigned our daughter and went to get her 2 months later. She is 5 months older than our biokids. They get along great and are in the same class in school.

If we had waited until the biokids were 12 months old as many suggest, then all our Immigration paperwork would have expired and we would have basically had to start that all over. Not something I could have contemplated when we had babies to take care of.

For us, there is really not a difference in how we feel about our kids…they are all just our kids. Obviously, since our daughter through adoption is of another race and thus was obviously adopted, we do have to deal with overly curious people when we go out and we have to direct time and resources to giving her and her sisters experiences related to her country of origin. The only thing that we really missed by adopting, is not having been with our daughter from her birth; she was already walking and babbling when we met her. We miss that early time, but that is not really an option when you adopt internationally.

Personally, in reflection, as both the survivor of 4 years of infertility treatment and an adoptive mom, it would have been easier emotionally to have started the adoption process earlier, before as the previous poster mentioned, that was the “only” option. Maybe not so it would have been a “choice” but so that you can leave it up to fate/luck which way would work first to bring you your child. Kind of like fertiles might have a preference for either a boy or girl, but are happy with whichever fate gives them.

Also, maybe you would not be as desparate when you had setbacks in one or the other path. Regrettably, both methods have LOTS of “hurry up and then wait” periods, so you can do both. During an IVF cycle, you are intense for 3-4 weeks, but then if it fails, you have to wait 2 months to start over. During our adoption, I was running around frantically getting paperwork done, then spending weeks on end waiting for our social worker or Immigration to do their parts.

In our case, we had already faced the issues related to what particular aspects of becoming a parent mattered to us and for us it wasn’t really biology so much as having a healthy child from a young age. I did want the opportunity to experience pregnancy though and with the way it happened, I did.

By the way, the agency we dealt with did not make us sign a “no more fertilty treatments” pledge…one reason we chose them. They said that they usually have at least one couple on each adoption trip that is either pregnant or has recently had a child. For us, finally succeeding at pregnancy did not remove our desire to adopt. And I think that by the time many people have suffered from infertility for several years, they are open to the idea of a blended family because many infertility “treatments” require one of both parents to not have a biological connection anyway.

There is another local couple that used our agency. They had “unexplained” infertility. After starting the adoption process, they unexpectedly got pregnant without any medical assistance. They also continued with their adoption and have 2 daughters very close in age.

~ICLW

Thank you for sharing your perspective.