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Adopting After Infertility
Adoption After Infertility
by Jennifer Bibb
 As a student, I may have frustrated a handful of very fine university professors. Though I enjoyed learning, I knew exactly what I wanted to do after graduation, and it didn't have a thing to do with an advanced degree or any kind of career. I wanted to be a wife and a mother; and I had no qualms about it because this was what I had wanted long before I ever set foot on a college campus.
Even early in our marriage, my husband Bryan and I talked about when we would begin trying to start a family. We wanted to give ourselves time to enjoy early married life and grow as a couple, and we wanted to carefully consider our finances and Bryan's schooling. When the time was right, we were thrilled that this new stage in our lives might be just around the corner, and we were equally as devastated when infertility seemed to take that dream away from us.
Our friends and family knew that we longed to have a child, and they often asked us why we didn't adopt. Although Bryan was very comfortable with the idea since his brother had been adopted, I still grieved over the loss of not experiencing pregnancy and having a child that was—biologically speaking—part me and part Bryan. Having already tried to overcome infertility, I felt too emotionally and physically tired to embark on another process, and I was not ready to face the possibility of further disappointment.
When I thought of having a baby, I wanted the entire package, just as I had always imagined it, just as I had always seen everyone else do it. Furthermore, I felt that at that stage in my life, adopting a baby would be a “Plan B.” I would be adopting “on the rebound,” so to speak, since in my heart I was still in love with the idea of having a biological child.
If I ever chose to adopt, it would have to be a positive move—a move that was able to stand on its own, without the underpinnings of former efforts and disappointments. I would have to choose adoption based on the sure knowledge that I had moved and grown beyond my old ideas. It would have to be a decision that I had gradually come to understand and believe in with all my heart.
I knew that if God meant for us to adopt, He would lead me to that place in His timing. In the meantime, my “job” was to live with a joyful and thankful heart and to be sensitive to and ready for any changes that He might work in that heart. Those changes came, and it is thrilling to me now to reflect on how they transpired….
Two years ago, I found a wonderful counselor who helped me deal with my feelings of disappointment and sadness. I went to her wanting to resolve my questions about why I hadn't gotten pregnant and where I was to go from there. She taught me simply to wait, trusting that the future God had planned for me was one I could face with excitement rather than anxiety. So, I began working on building a happy and full life without children. Little by little, I started to let go of what I felt I had lost, and I began to embrace fulfillment through my faith, my marriage, my family, my friendships, and my interests and hobbies.
I also began to think and pray about my calling in life. Author and theologian Frederick Buechner writes about one's calling in terms of the word “vocation.” He writes, “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet.” These words were instrumental in my thinking. I sought after and pursued God's calling for me as fervently as I had motherhood. God was preparing me for a major shift in my thinking, which occurred in the summer of 2003.
That summer, I spent several weeks with my nieces and nephews, who ranged in age from six weeks old to six years old. One night, my infant niece was crying, and I walked her and comforted her until she fell asleep. I was watching the two of us there in the reflection of the den window when God whispered something in my ear. There were no angels and trumpets, no visions, no thunder, no handwriting on the wall. Only me, a softly snoring baby, a ticking mantle clock, a dim old lamp, panes of smudged glass, and the comfortable feeling of being at home.
In that moment, I felt overcome with a feeling that, in the reflection of the window, I was looking at a glimpse of my future. I felt with a calm, though unexpected, certainty that God was showing me myself as He meant for me to be. He was talking to me about my calling. Despite my earlier struggles with infertility, despite my commitment to a happy life without children, despite my fears of future disappointments, I knew I was still called to be a mother. This was an important realization, but it was still unclear to me how that was supposed to come to pass.
The next day, I played with my three-year-old nephew in our neighbor's swimming pool. We laughed and talked, and I remember how wonderful it felt just to hold him up in the water. He was completely unaware that I was soaking in his innocence and joy–his simply being alive–his simply being precious to me. Little did I know that I was learning the final lesson in what I now know to be my preparation for adoption.
In a moment of complete clarity, I thought I could take this child home right then and love him as my very own for the rest of my life. He was not my biological child, and it did not matter. I remembered words from Douglas McGrath's recent adaptation of Charles Dickens' novel, Nicholas Nickleby:
In every life, no matter how full or empty one's purse, there is tragedy. It is the one promise life always fulfills. Thus, happiness is a gift, and the trick is not to expect it, but to delight in it when it comes, and to add to other people's store of it … What did these people do when their families shrank? They cried their tears, but then they did the vital thing. They built a new family, person by person. They came to see that family need not be defined merely as those with whom they share blood, but as those for whom they would give their blood.
Though my journey through infertility to adoption has been mysterious, I am able to claim with confidence: I want a child to love. I want to share my life with a child. This is my calling.
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