Al & Rose

We were just devastated when we found out we couldn’t have a baby of our own.  From the time I was a little girl, I just assumed that one day I would get pregnant and have lots of babies.  Everything seemed so perfect with Al – our house, our jobs – now we couldn’t get pregnant, and probably never would.

Al thought right away maybe we should adopt, but I couldn’t face that – I felt like such a failure as a woman.  I know it seems silly, but I thought these adoption agency people were just going to come out and start judging us and we somehow wouldn’t measure up.  I had also heard that adoption was really expensive and didn’t know how we could afford to do it.

When I called Common Sense they were so helpful – mostly by just listening and being patient with me.  At first I hardly even knew what questions to ask.  They invited me in and we just talked about what adoption involved, what Al and I had been hoping for and how disappointed we were right then.  It made it easy to take some time to look into this other way of becoming a parent.

We went to these “core” training sessions where we were with other people who were considering adoption, and learned about the different kinds of adoptions there are – domestic, international and the “special needs” adoptions here in this country.  It took me many months to feel like I was ready to give up my dream of having my own baby so I could really consider adoption.  It may sound harsh, but I wasn’t sure I could love a child who didn’t look like us, who wasn’t part of us.

Finally, after talking with others who had adopted, we started to realize that adopted kids grow to be part of you even if there isn’t a biological connection.  We saw how this was a way to be a parent, but just a different one than we had grown up knowing about.  As we looked at our own strengths and resources, we found that we had a lot to offer kids so we decided to go ahead.

Now we have three kids and I can honestly say we feel like real parents.  Our first two, Mike and Jamie, were brothers in foster care when we first saw their picture in one of the adoption exchange books.  Here I was, wanting a baby and fell in love with boys ages 6 and 8!  So we jumped right into school conferences, homework and little league instead of diapers.  Going through this kind of “special needs” adoption hardly cost us anything, so when we got settled with the boys we decided to pursue a baby girl from China.  When Nina arrived a year ago her big brothers were just thrilled, and I finally have my baby.

It is hard to imagine how our life was before adoption.  Between all the boys’ activities and living with a toddler on top of that we truly have a very rich life.  Common Sense helped us look at what we could handle and they continue to be there for us as different challenges come up.  We go in and help out with preparing other families and are thinking that once Nina is out of diapers we may take some more kids from the foster care system – it turns out we are pretty good parents even if we came at it a different way from how we thought we would!