I Am Not An Adoption Expert

I don't write about adoption a lot. The biggest reason for that is that I am not an expert. March will make three years since we started the adoption process, but I am still a rookie. I am in no position to be teaching others about adoption.

We are fortunate that we worked with an agency that put an emphasis on education. We had five weeks of classes where things like how to decide which situations to be profiled for, risk factors and special needs, transracial adoption, and open adoption were all covered. We had many opportunities to talk to adult adoptees, birth mothers, and adoptive families of all kinds. We were also responsible for getting just as many credits outside of the classroom by reading books, watching videos, going out in to the community, taking online classes, etc.

Even after we were homestudy approved, I spent my two year wait reading and learning. A few blogs that I learned a lot from are Production, Not Reproduction, See Theo Run, and Inventing My Life. Following all the links Liz (Inventing My Life) provides to other blogs and articles is an excellent way to educate yourself.

But, I still consider myself a rookie who has a lot to learn.

One thing I know is that as a rookie, I need to know when to keep my mouth shut and listen. I need to spend this time learning from others. I have so much to learn from birth mothers, adult adoptees, and adoptive mothers who have been parenting longer than I have. When I go out in public, the only comments I get are how cute Jayden is. I don't really know what's it's like to live as a transracial adoptive family. My experiences in open adoption are also extremely limited and I can't get enough of other people's blogs about their beautiful, sometimes complicated, open adoptions. I want to spread the word about open adoption, but all I can do is point you in the direction of people who have stories to tell.

So, when I come across blogs written by people who have absolutely no experience in the adoption world, but write as if they are teaching people, it burns me up inside. Especially when they include a bunch of strung together stereotypes and myths about adoption.

Lately I have been seeing posts about IVF vs. adoption popping up. I don't know when they came into competition with each other, but there are some hurtful posts out there. With some scary and false information about adoption.

I have absolutely nothing against people choosing to do IVF. In fact, the timing of this is funny because I happen to have multiple friends doing IVF either this month or next. I am happy/scared/excited/hopeful for all of them. I am a huge cheerleader for their IVF cycles. One of them is my cousin, whose mother passed away in the middle of her first IVF cycle. She has been saving up for a year to try it again. I think of them everyday and hope, hope, hope it results in a miracle baby.

The thing I have a problem with is bashing adoption in order to justify your decision to do IVF. It's really not necessary.

So, despite being hesitant to write about adoption, I am going to do it in my next post when I address some of the comments that have been made about adoption.