Published: October 03, 2008 01:12 pm            

Keep home alive: adoption will happen

Each week the Zionsville Times Sentinel runs brief, brave ads from couples looking to adopt. They read like this: “Loving, stable home, filled with happiness, affection, strong family values and financial security await your baby. Expenses paid. Call 1-800 ...” They’re designed to encourage unmarried, pregnant young women to consider adoption and to provide a positive impression of the families with whom they might place their babies.

Reading the ads each week, I say a little prayer that the dreams of these couples come true. Thirteen years ago, my husband and I were the ones placing the ads. Our dreams came true. His name is Joe, and he turns 12 today.

My husband and I married late in life — Michael was 40, I was 41. We both had been married previously; neither of us had children. When we married, it seemed natural to welcome a child. Age, however, was not on our side. After fertility treatments and two miscarriages, we began the adoption process.

Modern adoptions, as you probably know, are not like those of days gone by when a couple registered with an adoption agency and some months later received a call to come pick up their new baby. Ah, many of us wish they were.

Instead, today’s hopeful couples market themselves to prospective birthmothers. Working with an adoption agency or adoption attorney, depending on what your state allows, couples develop a marketing plan. They determine a budget for newspaper ads; informational “post cards” to send to everyone they know and a pictorial brochure about themselves and their homes to share with prospective birthmothers. Usually, couples have a 1-800 line installed in their homes. When that phone rings you know it’s a prospective birthmother. And then the stomach butterflies begin.

We not only talked with our son’s birthmother by telephone, we met her and Joe’s birthfather for dinner. Someone once described this as the most important blind date you’ve ever had. But, in truth, we only wanted what was right for the birthmother and prayed God would bring us the baby we were meant to have. It took the pressure off our encounters and gave us peace.

We also held tight to something our agency’s adoption counselor told us: “With fertility treatments you MAY get a child; with adoption you WILL get a child.” It can be a difficult and capricious wait, but the payoff is huge.

She also gave me a card that comforted me. It read:

“I did not plant you, true.

But when the season is done,

When the alternate prayers for sun

And for rain are counted,

When the pain of weeding

And the pride of watching are through,

Then I will hold you high

A shining sheaf

Above the thousand seeds grown wild.

Not my planting,

But my heaven,

My harvest,

My own child.”

I encourage all “waiting couples” to keep hope alive. Your harvest is coming.

        

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