Ten Confessions of a Hopeful Adoptive Parent

1. I am worried my husband and I will never be chosen to privately adopt
2. Just when I think I know everything there is to know about adoption I find out I don’t
3. The first time we heard about open adoption it scared the wits out of my husband and I
4. After much research and after talking with many birth mothers and adoptive parents, I believe open adoption is a wonderful thing.
5. I am really starting to resent people who ask me how the adoption process is going because as many times as I explain to them that private adoption can take anywhere from a matter of months to years to never, they don’t seem to understand and always think we will be parents the next week
6. I love explaining what open adoption means to people who have no idea. Their faces go from confusion to complete understanding and I would like to think I have made the world a better place by educating people on something I believe is so important
7. When someone doesn’t understand what private adoption is I make reference to Monica and Chandler on Friends and their adoption of twins. I see the light bulb go off every time.
8. We chose our adoption lawyer because she is eccentric and not what you would expect a lawyer to be.
9. There are times when I want to scream “Congratulations you can reproduce, now shove it!” to my very fertile friends who give me the sympathetic, “Someday” look and I wish I didn’t feel this way.
10. As much as I may wish we could conceive our own child, I feel my husband and I are better people because of the invaluable knowledge we have obtained, the wonderful people we have met and the life experiences that will never be forgotten through adoption.