How did you come to adoption?

This was the question that was first asked of us in our first home study. How did you come to adopt? We sat there and thought of our previous year...

We had started to think about how we could have a family. For those of you who don't know, we aren't able to conceive a biological child through traditional methods...in other words, our pathway to making a family does not cross with pregnancy. Our two options were to use in-vitro fertilization (IVF) with a surrogate mother or adoption. When weighing both options, ultimately we knew that adoption was for us. With so many newborns and children needing loving and nurturing homes, it is only fitting that we could provide this.

Was it an easy decision? Definitely not. For anyone who has the desire to start a family, you go into it with many hopes and dreams. What would the baby look like? Would the baby have my hair or his smile? IVF and Surrogacy could have possibly provided this for us. But at what cost? Hormone injections, medications for weeks only to have a next to no chance of success. It's truly disheartening to discover how difficult it is to start a family for those who have difficulties conceiving. It can also be very hard to let go of previous plans and visions of how your family would be. However, in retrospect, adoption seems like the only answer.

Thus, after asked the question in our first home study, Bryan and I were able to reassure each other and our story of how we came to choose adoption. We are very excited, though apprehensive, to take the not so traveled road to becoming parents.