The other day I heard of a sad failed adoption story that happened a few decades ago. A girl and her brother were raised in an orphanage (I'm not going to write the country here, but if you want to ask me personally via email, go ahead). I don't know if they lost their parents or something, but the both of them were there in the same orphanage anyway. A married couple then came over to get to know them with the intention of adopting them. They came many times over the course of many years and each time they visited the kids, they always brought goodies and gifts. They even sent letters to the kids and the kids had already called them "papa" and "mama" during their visits.
One time the caretaker (or dunno who) asked each of the kids if they wanted to be adopted by the couple. However, before they could give their answers, they were told to think VEEERRRYYYY carefully before deciding. The person who asked them to consider told them that it was possible that the couple only wanted to adopt them to get benefits from the government. Long story short, even though the kids probably wanted to be adopted by the couple, they finally said no. And they didn't hear anything anymore from the couple. No letters, no visits, nothing.
One day, though, the girl sneaked into the office of the orphanage (a place where she wasn't supposed to get into) and while rummaging around the place, she found a pile of letters from the same couple who had wanted to adopt her and her brother. Apparently the couple were still writing them letters even after they had said no. But the officials of the orphanage had hidden the letters from the kids.
My heart just broke when I heard the story. I don't really know much about adoption processes except from a few articles that I've read and I suppose in the past it may be different than nowadays and it may differ in different countries, but the bottom line is that I can't erase the image of the girl finding the stack of letters years later...it's etched in my brain and I just can't imagine what she must've felt at that time...and on the other side of the story, the couple themselves have no idea what had happened...
Anyway, on a different track, let me share this lovely video that I accidentally found:
Well, in this post I just want to share why we aren't really sure about adoption. First of all, I think we're still hanging on to the hope of "passing our genes" to our kids and we don't know yet when we're going to let go of that hope.Another thing that makes adoption a bit less of our option is hubby's age. 'Coz of the wonderful social benefits in Finland for mothers-to-be and parents and the fact that education is almost free for kids here, it would be (almost) impossible to find an abandoned baby here. So it means Finnish people (who want to adopt) adopt kids from abroad. I've read online that other countries have different maximum age difference requirements between the adopted baby and the adoptive parents. Hubby turns 40 next year and many countries have set the max. age difference to be 35 years old or at the most 40 years old.Considering the fact that it takes around 1.5 or 2 years to get an adoptive child, it means we can't get small babies (at the youngest, we'll probably get a 2-year-old)...and 'coz we're not even sure about adoption yet, the longer we wait, the less likely we are to adopt 'coz we both think it's better to adopt younger babies than older children.So I'm not really sure if we'll ever adopt 'coz of the above reasons...
Yesterday AF came again. This time I didn't feel too bad (progress!!!), but self-denial was strangely still strong (which was kinda interesting). When AF first showed up, there were only some spots of brownish blood and a small voice in my head started saying, "Oh, hey, some people also experience that when they first start getting pregnant." Errrr...yeah...so I haven't totally let go yet, but still it felt good not to feel too bad about AF's arrival - at least no cursing, no tears, no overwhelming grief.
Last night before I went to sleep, I asked hubby if he knew how long we had been TTC. His guess was more or less right: 1,5 years. Well, actually it's 19 months but we were apart for a whole month when I was in Indo last year, so that didn't count.
Today I started browsing for adoption pages in Finnish 'coz I wanted to know the cost and how long it took. I was SHOCKED to find out that normally it takes AT LEAST 1,5 years. Gee...and the maximum age for the parents are 45 years of age, though some countries want the parents to be 35 years old or 40 years old. That means time is running low 'coz hubby will turn 40 years old next year already.
I'd love to ask him later on what is more important to him: having our own flesh and blood or being parents. I just want to know how long we're going to try to have our own babies - and how far do we want to go if that's the case - or whether we're going to try adopting before next year comes or whether we'll just keep on trying to have a baby on our own (and if that doesn't happen then we'll just stay childless forever).
Choices, choices, choices. There are no easy choices/options. It's kinda sad now when I'm faced with "brutal" choices like these, though that doesn't mean that we won't ever have children 'coz we'll never know what happens in the future, but still it's kinda sad when I think of all the people who can have kids "easily" 'coz they don't have to think about these tough choices.
But anyway, everybody has different problems and challenges and I certainly hope that IF would make hubby and I become closer and closer. After hubby answered my question last night, he asked right away when he was supposed to take the Chinese herbs again. ;-D Well, I should talk about this with hubby sometime, but I should pick the right moment 'coz right now we have plenty of other things to talk about 'coz we're in the process of buying our own house - which is REALLY A BLESSING for us 'coz three years ago, it NEVER crossed my mind that we'd be able to buy a house this soon. It NEVER crossed my mind that we could travel anywhere AT ALL - compared to the fact that we have been travelling a few times already over the past 3 years.
God is GOOD, SO GOOD, SO GOOD. We didn't do anything to deserve getting what we get, but surprise, surprise, He's given us SO MUCH MORE than even our wildest dreams!!!
So today I'm just going to let this fact seep into my very core to wipe away any sadness that I have...and just believe, believe, believe...believe that everything will be fine in the end, even if some dreams aren't meant to come true. Actually, writing these words has helped brighten up my day already! I should really continue writing here then ho ho ho ho ho...
Note to self: Just because I feel what I feel doesn't mean I'm a bad person. It just means that I'm spreading my wings to enrich myself as I get a firsthand experience of different facets of emotions, so that (hopefully) I can become more understanding towards other people when they're experiencing those facets of emotions.
