What made you want to adopt?

Well, folks, we've heard it all.  Well intentioned, or not, and everything in between.

Real Question #1:  "So what made you want to adopt?  Did you just want to do something nice that you felt good about?"

Real Comment #1:  "Oh, you're adopting?  That's so honorable."

Real Comment #2:  "Well that's a perfect way to get a little girl since you have 2 boys!"

Perhaps these types of questions and comments aren't meant to be as off-putting as they seem to come across as.  But really when I hear them, I shrink a little and wish I had a turtle shell to suck my head into.  It's strange to get a compliment for something we're doing much like the rest of you.  You don't get a compliment when you're pregnant. "Oh that's so great of you to get knocked up!" But for whatever reason many people think we're doing a good deed by adopting. I'm not sure I really understand it.

When I hear "that's so nice of you guys."  Or, "that's so honorable" I seriously want to look around for the person who is actually doing a good deed.  It's not me.  It's not us.  Let's see, yeah one Tuesday night last May, we were getting ready for bed and asked one another what our next big idea would be and we came up with a grand idea to save an orphan!  Meanwhile pumping ourselves with self-importance!  We aren't egotists and even if we were, this would be a pretty brazen effort to support our cause.  Watch as we single handedly save the world orphan, by orphan, by poor abandoned baby girl orphan.

You would be amazed, or maybe you wouldn't, by these and countless other questions and comments we hear when we say we're adopting.  Especially when we mention we're adopting a special needs child.  We get the "oh, that's so kind of you" comment which is usually accompanied by a look that sadly resembles pity.  It may be the same look that you get when you tell people the not so photogenic mutt you adopted from the humane society was hit by a car and left for dead but minus a gimp leg and bald torso, he's now a happy new member of your family.  Maybe that's a tad harsh, but that's pretty much what it feels like.  Like we're taking in a puppy who would otherwise be put down.  It's as if some people just can't believe we would do such a thing without some very deep rooted reason or justification.  But think about this ... what nobody really knows is what will happen 5 or 10 or 15 years after you give birth to that perfectly, physically healthy baby.  Nobody knows!  For every 1 test you can perform, there are 50 things that will appear for which there was no test for.  Our little guy has the same odds of having a learning disability as does your kid, as does our little Macey. You also can't account for what will happen in the journey from the womb to the outside world. Your child could be deprived of oxygen for just the slightest moment and then you'll have a baby who comes with a little bit of baggage.  Just like baby sister.  I could go on and on, but you get the picture. There are no guarantees no matter if you give birth to a child or have the privilege of being given the chance to parent a parentless child.  No guarantees.  But, like all of you, we have hope that our little girl will be running around at the park 6 months from now.. 2 years from now .. squealing and playing alongside her peers, oblivious to any differences, big or small.

And don't get me wrong.  The cynical bitch inside of me wants to make it sound like you're all being ridiculous about this.  It's not all of you. Some of you are normal and either have never asked "why" or when you did it was more to understand how we came to the decision to adopt as to the simple why we would consider adoption.  That same group seems to also not mention what it makes you think of us as parents and people. Thank you a million times over. As much as I hate the pity party, it's even more uncomfortable to listen to people commend us for this or shower us with compliments that we really don't feel we deserve.

We didn't set out to do something selfless. We didn't set out to save an orphan.  We set out on this journey simply to have another child. We had talked about adopting early on in our relationship and again before we had our bio kids.  It didn't really come up again until Parker brought it up last spring.  (And it came up so out of the blue that I questioned him the next morning, immediately suspecting he'd had a little too much drinky drinky before bedtime the night before!)  Turns out he'd never abandoned the idea and much like we planned our bio kids close together, he wanted to get on it so that our new baby would be about 2 years apart from his/her older brother who would be turning 2 in a month from when it came up.

It came up for us much like it may have come up in many of your relationships.  Wife/husband is ready to have a or another baby ... waits for husband/wife to come around then the husband/wife comes home after throwing back a few at happy hour and says, let's do this, let's have a baby, and let's start trying now!  Or maybe you're one of those who starts timing your ovulation and tracking your temperature.  No matter how it comes about, you're thinking, we're all thinking "let's have another baby." See, it's really not THAT different.

Now, don't get me wrong, when choosing the country from which to adopt, we did have to have those discussions. Those meaning whose lives would be greater impacted by being adopted "out" .. out of the country, out of the system, whatever the case may have been.  We had to have those discussions, but they came after the fact, not as part of the decision to simply adopt.

I also think there's an element of not really knowing what to say so it's not as if all weird comments come from total a-holes.  Some are born in awkwardness.  If a friend says I'm pregnant, you congratulate her.  If we say we're adopting it doesn't really warrant congratulations so you try to find the next best commendation or question.  And since there really aren't that many people who adopt, you may have never found yourself in a conversation about it.  I get it.  So the next time it comes up, feel free to ask 20 questions, but keep your compliments.  I don't deserve them. At least not yet.  Let's see what kind of shit show my life becomes after September and how well I do, or do not, hold it together.  Only then will I be worthy of a high five. And even more so of a Mom's Night Out!