Adoption After Infertility
How to talk to our adopted children about our past infertility struggles.
“Mama, I have to show you something.” My eight-year-old son was adamant.
“What do you want to show me? It’s time to get ready for bed,” I answered wearily.
“Just come here.” He insisted.
He led me by the hand to the photo albums and flipped to the back pages of one of them. There I was in a hospital bed, grinning like a crazy person. There I was with my hands on my swollen belly, appearing to be pregnant, but in reality, hugely bloated due to hormones.
He simply pointed and hummed so many questions in the sound, “Hm?”
I admit I had forgotten those pictures were there. It’s been a decade, I think, since we attempted IVF. I didn’t talk about it much before or after. I haven’t tried to explain it to my kids, who are all adopted.
Peter and I never want them to think they are our second choice. They were clearly God’s first choice and plan all along. But we certainly did try to have children for many years before we ever considered the adoption of a large sibling group.
I want to answer questions, age appropriately, as they come up. I am learning how very important it is to talk to my kids about their stories. Even children adopted at birth innately know their stories. My children remember theirs.
I told my son that I was at the hospital because my doctor was helping me have a baby. I told my children, who had flocked to me for any insights I would offer, that it hadn’t worked. Later, I admitted to my oldest my babies had died.
“So, you wanted a baby and didn’t get one?” My little boy sadly asked.
“Yes. But I am so glad you’re my children now.” I tried to reassure him.
He came to me and my 50 lb boy snuggled into my chest like a baby. He stayed that way, holding onto me for dear life while the older kids began to talk about their birth mother.
Suddenly, he announced, “I wish I wasn’t adopted.”
I misunderstood at first, but then realized what he meant. He wanted exactly what I wanted: for he and his siblings to have been the ones in my womb. This is, in a million ways, heartbreaking for both of us.
Adoption is not the way it is supposed to be. It is a beautiful redemption, but it is also a lifelong loss of parent from child.
I tucked my younger kids into bed that night and held them a little tighter.
The older ones, the ones who remember more from their pasts, stayed up to talk about the day they lost their first family. No words are enough, but I can acknowledge their grief and attempt to reassure them it isn’t their fault.
I hope this will open other conversations as their hearts continue to heal. We have all lost so much. We are a family now, still struggling to be.
I want to encourage adoptive parents to talk about your kids’ stories with them. They know, in a deep place, that being adopted isn’t the way it was meant to be. We were meant to be nurtured and raised by the same voices we learned in the womb.
How can we talk about their stories?
1. Honestly
2. Age appropriately
3. Respecting birth families
4. Holding space for grief
5. Being a safe place for future conversations