in the past little while I’ve had the chance to have some good conversations with a couple of people about adoption. our experience with quincy's birth mother and the road that has brought our family to where we are now. i love to talk about it. i'm sometimes surprised by the questions i am asked. nothing ever really inappropriate or rude, not yet anyway. in one conversation i was asked if it made me nervous or scared to not know what kind of genetic make up, personality traits, things like that that our child would have. (like she can pick and choose everything that HER biological children will come with? :) ) in the other conversation i was asked how long it took until i felt a connection with quincy. both of these girls meant well, of course, and were just curious about my feelings and experience.
it feels strange to me now that our family is not "normal". my answer to the second question was that quincy is my daughter. i felt an instant connection and incredible love for her, that grew by the minute especially the day we brought her home. i know she is ours. her spirit was meant to be in our family- and so was her body too, even if it is brown!
sean and i had talked a little about adopting a few times throughout the months and months of not getting pregnant, but neither of us had the desire at those times. it was never discussed in detail and we didn't decide one day that adoption was just the next step. people ask why i didn't do more fertility drugs or treatments before adopting. i can say with complete surety that this is just what we were to do. this was the plan for our family to begin. i know that now, because we have her and it feels perfect. but i knew it then too. 9 months before quincy was born sean and i knew that there was a baby on it's way to our home.
i have a friend who is in the process of fertility treatments. (a few friends actually). it can be heartbreaking. i wish adoption felt right to everyone who is unable to have children, or who is wanting to start their family and it isn't happening. i told my friend (who says she “isn't ready to give up her dream of being pregnant”) that i can't imagine being pregnant, going through all the labor and delivery, and having a baby that has mine and sean's genetic make up and that all of that would make that baby feel more like mine then quincy does. this is an excerpt from an article i read about lessons of adoption:
“What we learn when we analyze this is that adoption, for most of us, was a second choice, but that does not mean it is second best. We didn't get what we wanted at first. We didn't get what we first thought we needed. However, we have found our second choice to be as enriching and as satisfying as we expected our first choice to be.”
my point, i guess for this post is to say (yet again) just how much i love quincy, how grateful i am for her and her uniqueness and differences. i think she is perfect. i am excited to be her mom and watch her grow and support her in everything she wants to pursue.
how could you not be obsessed with her???
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