Categories: uncategorized
Date: 19 January 2006 11:12:19
Please note, these old journal entries that I am reproducing (and editing) here were written at an emotionally charged time, where everything was scary and I had a lot of questions. There were over-reactions and unfounded fears that I have now dispelled. I talk about issues that are very personal and could possibly raise uncomfortable feelings in people.
I don't want to create worries for anyone who may be considering adoption by my quickly written statements at the beginning of my knowledge of this process. If you carry on reading this blog over time, I would hope to help dispel your fears too (I'm quite peaceful about the future right now). However to get there, I need to be raw and honest about how I felt and the worries I went through. It just wouldn't be a real and honest journey otherwise. Thanks.
Sometime earlier last year, but a little later:
Questions
Ok. Now that we feel we've made the decision to attempt to make the decision whether or not to adopt a child, I've been obsessing a little. Spoke to the Social Worker for the first time today and made an appointment. I've ordered three books from Amazon so far, taken two out of the library and my favourites folder entitled ‘adoption and parenting' keeps getting fuller and fuller.
So why are all the good books and good sites American? The British stuff seems to tell you lots about the process and the pitfalls, and the considerations about ‘special needs' and ‘transracial families', but not much about the questions I actually have.
Why do they simply assume that if you want to adopt, you must be infertile? I don't know about that in reference to myself. I don't want or need to know about that about myself. I could be, I might not be. . . I don't really care.
I have seen next to nothing other than a brief mention that it's possible, about choosing adoption as a first choice over pregnancy. Really, why is it considered only right that we should try to conceive naturally first? If we have not gone through the whole medical hullabaloo around infertility, I have been warned that there will be questions raised by the social workers. Apparently they will want to know about whether we could end up having children by birth later and it seems that they then expect that to mean that we will reject our adopted child as “second best”.
It just isn't true for us. I know it isn't. Why is it 'normal' to have children by birth first and then adopt, but I don't read about it happening the other way round?
They tell you that disabled people can be approved as adoptive parents, but nothing more. I want to read about or correspond with a disabled woman who has done that. What will they make of my disability? Will I have to go down roads again that I have left behind and moved on from years ago? How can they want to know the future of my progression when that's an unknowable answer.
I got quite angry today. I joined an online forum and nearly one of the first messages I read was about someone getting turned down at the decision panel because they were on anti-depressants. They were told that it would mean that they would not cope well with being an adoptive parent. I had read that it's only a myth that adoptive parents have to be perfect, but it seems that it's a myth that it's only a myth. How true is what I read?
I'm simply thinking too much, and I haven't seen my husband for days, since he's away on business. When am I going to stop putting off my own work? I suppose it might help me stop thinking about children . . . but I doubt it. Before, I wasn't scared yet. I'm getting there, the more I read and the more I obsess.