The Decision to Adopt: One Woman's Journey

By Charmaine Graham

Fall 2006

The numbers speak for themselves: 11 cycles of in-vitro fertilization (IVF), approximately 200 needles I personally injected into my stomach and thighs, five failed corrective surgeries, 26 embryos conceived in a petri dish, one surrogate mother to carry our embryos, three pregnancies lost before a foetal heartbeat was detected, countless times I let doctors and nurses investigate my private bits, and after all that… still no baby. I am infertile.

Infertility was horrifying and exhausting for me. My sense of loss was immense and my fears were even bigger. My marriage suffered and I felt isolated from my friends, who seemed to get pregnant the minute they batted their eyelashes. I felt isolated from society. For 1,189 days I pushed myself and my marriage to the limits in my quest for a newborn until one day I finally had a screaming epiphany: why not adopt?

With the kind of enthusiasm I hadn't felt since I began looking into fertility treatments, I researched everything I could about adoption. Everyone seemed to be adopting from China, but an adoption social worker suggested I try for a private domestic adoption.

Domestic adoption? We had heard about lengthy waiting lists, too many couples and not enough babies. Wasn't domestic adoption nearly impossible?

The social worker explained that there weren't a huge number of babies available for private domestic adoption, but since more people are now taking the route of international adoption, there are fewer couples looking to privately adopt in Canada. I also learned that birth mothers in Canada have 29 days to change their minds after the birth—a risk, certainly, but 29 days was still a shorter time than my menstrual cycle (the time span I had learned to gauge my life by), so I figured I could handle it.

What about manipulation though? I remember hearing stories of birth mothers being wooed by the State and adoptive parents signing over their children.is now illegal in Canada. In private adoptions, government regulations prevent potential adoptive couples from giving anything, even a Tim Horton's doughnut, to potential birth parents, which removes any opportunity to influence them one way or another.

My husband and I were relieved to learn that today private domestic adoption is managed with great deal of integrity and is monitored by bodies that represent the best interests of all parties. So, with great excitement, we decided to proceed.

First we had a home study completed by an adoption social worker. It was invasive, yes, but not nearly as invasive as some of the infertility treatments I had to endure over the years. Along with the home study we had to create a profile—a book that potential birth parents review when deciding whom they want to have adopt their child. I asked around and found a few profiles online, and I was quite shocked that they weren't as detailed as I had expected. I mean, isn't this the job interview of your life?

I think there are several reasons why profiles may sometimes be lacking in detail. The first is that people are exhausted by the time they reach the point of creating a profile in the first place. I can understand; in all honesty, if you have gone through IVF, you have been trying to get pregnant for at least a couple of years before you even start thinking about adoption.Second, the home study is quite intimidating for most people; it involves a huge pile of paperwork, a fingerprinting process, nerve-wracking questionnaires and meetings. So much goes into passing your home study that it can be easy to forget about the importance of your profile. Third, most couples are not guided through the process of creating a profile, and so some basic questions go unanswered—where do you start? What do you include? What kind of pictures should you use? What are birth parents looking for?

I immediately realized that our profile needed to be organized, efficient and definite in terms of the message I wanted to convey… a message of honesty and compassion, and of kindness. I went to work, I wrote, I read, I talked to birth mothers who had placed their children already. I thought about the kind of relationship I wanted to have with our birth parents. I took pictures, I got organized, I searched for information. I also contacted a close friend of mine who had always stood by me in my journey to become a mother. She happens to be one of Canada’s most well-respected and talented art directors, and has worked on multiple publications, so her input was invaluable.

After much work, we created our profile, entitled "A Loving Home." It was beautiful. It was full of integrity, honesty, love, colourful photographs and a clear expression of who my husband and I were, what we had accomplished in our lives, what kind of home we could provide and how much we wanted to make a child happy.

Then I sat back. I figured we would give it one year, and if nothing happened we would try to adopt internationally. I decided to enjoy some time with my husband and find myself again. Thirty-two days later our social worker called with the news that the first birthmother who had seen our profile had selected us. Seven days later our son was born. So much for the idea that it is impossible to adopt domestically, or that it has to take a long time. Think we were just lucky? Well, I think our hard work simply paid off.

As our son approached 18 months of age we decided to try again.We worked with the same well-loved social worker, who did so much to make us laugh and feel at ease. We redid our home study and started working on updating our profile. My friend, whom I have nicknamed the Queen of Graphic Artistry, agreed to help again. Adopting a second time is harder;many birth mothers want their children to go to a childless couple, so we had our work cut out for us. I created a page called "100 Reasons You Want Your Child to Have a Sibling," among other revisions, and it worked. This time our wait before receiving our "congratulations" call was 47 days, and 7 days later our daughter was born.

The birth mother for our second adoption had a tough time. She was young and overwhelmed—and why wouldn't she be? This was big stuff! So she had a difficult time with her decision. The experience was a bit nerve-wracking, to be sure, but in the end I had a strong sense that if it didn't work out that was okay, because I knew that in our quest to become parents, I had found the ability to communicate with a birth mother or father through our profile. I knew another adoption would work out for us if this one didn't. Fortunately, it did, and now we have a son and a daughter, 19 months apart.

I helped a few friends with their profiles along the way, some of whom had been waiting for years to adopt a child. I am proud to say that all of them now have their children in their arms. After receiving much encouragement from my friends, my husband, and especially the professionals involved in our adoption (who always told us our profile was the best they had seen), my graphic designer friend and I are starting a business to help other couples create their profiles in the hopes that they, too, can make their dream of having a child come true.

Twenty-one months ago I would have never believed I could adopt domestically. Now, my husband and I have two kids under two years of age in diapers, dirty bottles on the counter, a pile of toys surrounding my laptop, and a budding new business. As I type this my daughter is pole-vaulting off the couch while he concocts a plan to eat the dog’s food without me noticing. It’s chaotic and I love every minute of it.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Charmaine Graham resides in London, Ontario with her husband and two children. She is enjoying motherhood to the fullest and has recently started a business to help people create profiles for domestic adoption. She can be reached at charmainehome@execulink.com or through www.adoptionprofiles.ca.

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