Adoption, foster care and IVF

Thursday night we went to a Monash IVF Adoption and Foster care information session.

It was heartwrenching, but informative. There were two people speaking about their personal experience with overseas adoption - one from Korea and one from China. I welled up when I they showed pictures of their first meeting with their new daughters. It was really tough keeping the tears in, but I managed it just.

There was a speaker about local adoptions - to be honest she was pretty weak and could have served in politics as she spoke a lot but none of what she said had any substance. When people from the audience asked the questions we all wanted to know - like "In reality, how many children actually get offered for adoption every year?", she answered with a "I will discuss that with you later" and went back to her notes to continue her speal.

The fourth speaker was a lady relating her personal experience with foster care.

Of course we also got to meet Sassy and her lovely husband so that was a huge bonus. We had a great chat after the session.

I think in all, it was good to know we have options and although this might be a huge waste of time for us, I still want to continue exploring assisted conception possibilities for the moment. We have our meeting with the fertility specialist on the 29th, and we would like to give IVF a go. We have discussed continuing along this route for another 3 years or so before we re-evalute the situation.

As sassy said on her blog, every route has it's difficulties. None of them are easy. Adoption is one avenue and it has it's issues as well.

There are huge lot of questions floating around my head at the moment. I wonder if I could do adoption. I wonder if we could afford it. Whether taking a child out of their birth country; their birth culture is the right thing to do. I wonder whether I would be able to bring them up with an appreciation of the culture they were born to. I wonder whether I could cope with being a mother without experiencing prenancy - without giving birth. I have always longed to be pregnant to know what it feels like to have a child moving inside me - growing inside me. Would I be happy never knowing whether my child would have my husband's nose or my red hair?

It is a huge step and one that requires a lot more thought and discussion. If we decide to adopt we have to cease fertility treatments - get a letter from our specialist saying that we won't be doing any further treatments. That would be a huge step. We would go through a huge greiving process if we did this, and I am not ready to do that yet.

We have also been discussing foster care as well. It is an option.

And it is nice to know that we have options. Even if we don't exercise any of them yet - we have options and that is a very good feeling.