| I have always had a heart for adoption. Even when I was a little girl I would play that my baby dolls were adopted from an orphanage. Obviously, I didn't play paperwork, lawyers, and agencies, haha, just the childlike-story idea of just picking a child and being a parent. Even though I didn't realize how difficult adoption truly can be, I always wanted to adopt. I always believed that one day I would... |  Me at age 4, I think |
Before my husband and I got married, we discussed children and both wanted many. I think I felt much more strongly about adoption than he did in the beginning. I wanted some together and some adopted, and he agreed. But, to be honest, I know so many couples who say they want both, but never actually adopt. So, I'm not sure quite how serious he was in the beginning.
  Where we lived in Haiti | Shortly after our one year anniversary, we spend some time serving in Haiti as short-term missionaries. Our main tasks while working there were leading short-term teams who came to our island, and teaching English as a second language. The one experience I wanted more than anything else there was to work with orphans, which I did get to do. We worked some with a local orphanage down the road from where we lived. I felt like it was during that time in my life where I had to start letting go of so many dreams that I had, so I was especially grateful that this was a dream that was able to come true, and I clung to it. |
After we were married, though, Mitch didn't seem as enthusiastic about children or about adoption. I think the idea of growing our family and everything changing was scary for him, and he wanted to wait, which is very understandable. I really wanted to have children right away, but I knew it would be best to wait until after our time in Haiti. Even though we had discussed the idea of being pregnant by the time we came home at Christmas, I had a hard time with the waiting game. It's crazy to think how much time went by before we were parents and how difficult it was to wait way back then. I was dealing with a lot of culture shock and my emotions were all over the place. I think maybe I just wanted to start growing my family so I felt established in some way. I hadn't felt at home in a long time, and I wanted to.
| After spending so much time with the kids at the orphanage, my husband's heart was very softened toward adoption. Mine became more so, and we decided together that adoption wasn't just something that we'd like to do one day, or something that would be cool...it was something we had to do. We fell in love with some of those kids and could easily have taken them home with us. |  Playing in the yard outside my house with girls from the orphanage |
In my last post, I mentioned how the idea of infertility did cross my mind. Sometimes I feel like, deep down, I always knew. I would hear stories of women who were never able to bear children, and my heart would break. I could empathize with women in that situation in a very unique way. In a way that I didn't empathize as deeply with people in other life situations. Maybe it had nothing to do with wondering, and had more to do with the fact that more than anything, I wanted to be a mom one day. I always loved hearing stories of adoption and I always connected with mixed families. I feel like I had mixed feelings. I wavered between wondering if I would ever bear children, and thinking that infertility was something that would never happen to me.
They weren't the same color, and they didn't speak the same language... We didn't know their past and very little of their present, but we loved them. But, one thing we did know was that adoption is long, hard, and costly. We thought of it as a "down the road" sort of plan, and figured we'd start the easy way. So, we came home, made sure we had our medical insurance in place, and then decided we were ready for babies.
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