Choices, Choices, Choices

Are you hoping for a boy or girl?  What age child are you hoping to adopt?  Are you adopting from another country or from the US?  Are you open to siblings?  What if the birthmother has a history of mental illness in her family?  What sort of prenatal care will you accept or not accept?  What about transracial adoption?  What about special needs?  Are you open to communicating or meeting with the birthparent?  If so, under what conditions and for how many years?

It’s almost overwhelming to think about all the decisions that need to be made regarding adoption preferences (I just counted them up – 45 decisions about our preferences!).  And all of these decisions feel so unnatural – you never expect to have to decide on your child’s gender or age or origin.  It’s truly a bizarre feeling.

Our first decision had to be whether we wanted to adopt internationally (from another country) or domestically (from the United States).  The answer to this question determined which program we entered at our adoption agency, what documentation was required, what training program we attended, etc.  For us, this was a simple decision – but explaining it hasn’t come so simply. 

We are adopting domestically.  Most likely, our child will be from Maryland, although he or she could be from anywhere in the US.  Why?  We simply didn’t feel called to adopt internationally.  Many of the people we know who have adopted have done so internationally (from China, Russia, and Ethiopia).  We admire them and their reasons for adopting internationally immensely.  For us, though, we didn’t feel any peace about it.  Instead, we really felt compelled to adopt from the US.  So, we entered the domestic program at our agency, and the rest is history!

Stay tuned for more posts about other choices we’ve made about our preferences…