What God Meant by Dawne Davis

Last night at our infertility support group, our facilitator shared an article with us. I found it so touching that I had to post it here. It was written for RESOLVE of Colorado by Dawne Davis. For those of you unfamiliar with RESOLVE, it's the National Infertility Association and their website, www.resolve.org, has tons of helpful resources. If you stumbled upon this blog because you are struggling with infertility, I highly recommend you visit the site. I also recommend finding a support group. Jeff and I are getting a lot out of ours and I wish we had done it sooner.

What God Meant by Dawne Davis

Couples experiencing infertility often receive well meaning, but extremely insensitive "advice." We can all list the most popular ones: "Just relax and you'll get pregnant," or "Adopt and you'll get pregnant," or the most painful from those who think they've got the goods on God's plan: "Maybe God never meant for you to have children." The sheer audacity of making a statement like that never fails to amaze me. The same people would never walk up to someone seeking treatment for cancer and say, "Maybe God never meant for you to live." However, because I'm infertile, I'm supposed to just get on with my life. It's hard to understand that people cannot see infertility for what it is: a disease for which I have the right to seek treatment. What if Jonas Salk had said to the parents of polio victims: "Maybe God meant for thousands of our children to be crippled, live in iron lungs, or die." What if he'd never tried to find a cure? Who could think for one minute that was God's plan?

What do I think God meant when he gave me infertility? I think he meant for my husband and me to grow closer, become stronger, love deeper. I think God meant for us to find the fortitude within ourselves to get up every time infertility knocks us down. I think God meant for our medical community to discover medicines, invent medical equipment, create procedures and protocols. I think God meant for us to find a cure for infertility.

No, God never meant for me not to have children. That's not my destiny; that's just the fork in the road I'm on. I've been placed on the road less travelled, and like it or not, I'm a better person for it. Clearly, God meant for me to develop more compassion, deeper courage, and greater inner strength on this journey to resolution, and I haven't let him down. Frankly, the truth be known, I think God has singled me out for special treatment. I think God meant for me to build a thirst for a child so strong and deep that when that baby is finally placed in my arms, it will be the longest, coolest, most refreshing drink I've ever known. While I would never have chosen infertility, I cannot deny that a fertile woman could never experience the joy that now awaits me. Yes, one way or another I will have a baby of my own. And the next time someone wants to offer me unsolicited advice, I'll say, "Don't tell me what God meant when he handed me my infertility. I already know."

A Plan

Jeff and I have been busy these past few months gathering as much information about adoption as we can. We've had meetings with several domestic adoption agencies in our state, as well as a consultation with a local adoption attorney. Our heads have been spinning from all the new information and possible  routes to take! There are basically three ways to adopt a child domestically in the United States. The first is through foster care, the second is through an agency, and the third is to do an independent adoption. With an agency adoption, the agency provides all of the services for you. They take care of your pre-placement assessment (home study), assist with matching the birth parents with adoptive parents, and handle all of the legalities after the baby is born. In an independent adoption, you hire an agency to complete your home study only, search for birth parents on your own, and then hire an attorney to assist with the legal part. We're planning to do a combination of the two.

We have decided to work with Children's Home Society of North Carolina. However, to keep wait times down, CHS only accepts couples into their infant adoption program when the number of waiting adoptive couples gets low. We are currently on their wait list, but it will probably be early 2013 before they're ready to accept more couples. Jeff and I are feeling very antsy! We're ready to get started, so we've decided to get going on our home study now (though CHS) and search for birth parents on our own until CHS has an opening for us. We'll most likely advertise on parentprofiles.com after our home study is complete. The adoption attorney we met with told us that the majority of his clients find children through that website.

We started our paper work about a week and a half ago and we're working diligently to finish it as quickly as we can. It will probably take another week or so to finish up. We were both required to get physicals, fingerprints, and background checks. We've had to gather tax returns, our marriage certificate and health insurance information. The most time consuming part so far has been the 40 question "autobiography" that Jeff and I each have to complete. Some of the questions are pretty basic and some are a lot more in depth. If you're curious, here are a few examples:

• What do you regard as your greatest personal achievement to date? Your greatest personal failure? 
•  What are the racial attitudes in your neighborhood and surrounding area? How do they compare with yours?
• What do you do to make the world a better place?
• What are the strong points in your marriage? What are the areas of weakness and disagreement and how do you deal with them?
• What would cause you to consider divorce?
• Describe your relationship with each family member when you were a child and now as an adult.
• Regarding your family with who you grew up, what three things would you choose to continue with your own children?
• What values were conveyed to you by your parents?  How do you feel about these now?
•  Describe your experience in school as a child and as an adolescent?
• What are your religious beliefs? How do you practice these? How do they relate to your spouses’ beliefs?

Some of those are pretty intense, right!? As soon as we finish and submit our paper work, we'll be assigned a social worker who will make several visits to our house. She'll conduct interviews with us together and separately and call our references. Then we'll wait to get (hopefully) approved! We were told that the entire process should take about 6-8 weeks. We're hoping to be "paper ready" or as some people say, "paper pregnant!" by Christmas! YAY!