I’ve never met a mama who didn’t love to gush about their child(ren)’s birth story. What time they felt those “for real” contractions, the hours they spent in labor, and of course, the craziest part of it. Although the details are unique and unpredictable, it’s true that every childbirth scenario is a miracle all its own.
But what if your child’s birth story involved a mama that wasn’t you?
What would that story highlight? The suspenseful pacing in the waiting room? The black-and-white contractual paperwork? The “guest” name badge you wore at the hospital instead of that well-earned “mother” ID bracelet you were expecting? The heart-wrenching emotions when the baby was born but it wasn’t quite your turn to hold her yet?
That blurry-eyed too-early morning at the hospital will forever be etched in my memory – the day our daughter was born. Her birth mom was brave, honest, and exhausted. It was a both/and “kind of” situation. Both messy AND miraculous. Both broken AND beautiful. And we wouldn’t have it any other way.
It’s still a birth story I gush to share with friends – and our daughter loves to hear it often too. For this story’s purposes, I’ll simply leave you a link to read more pieces of our daughter’s adoption journey here.
But for you, it’s November and that means it is National Adoption Awareness Month.
If you’re like we were a few years ago, adoption may be tugging on your heart but the questions in your mind may seem to pull harder. I get that. Stepping into the unknown – especially when it involves your family – can seem overwhelming, even irresponsible in a way. Seeing insider glimpses from someone else who has walked that path can make the process less intimidating. That is my hope here.
As I attempt to give you a glimpse into our daughter’s adoption journey, please know my heart. I am fully aware that no two journeys are alike, and there is no step-by-step guide to adopting a baby.
For us, our first step is always prayer. We have always found clear answers and confidence to move forward (or to wait).
Once we knew it was time to take real steps of action for our domestic adoption, we reached out to Christian Adoption Consultants. They are like a compassionate and experienced tour guide that takes you by the hand and brings you to all the people and preparation you will need – like meeting your social worker to become home-study approved, creating your family profile book to present to potential birth moms, connecting with multiple adoption agencies across the U.S. to share your profile, meeting your attorney to complete the finalization steps, and more.
After creating a family profile booklet, it’s time to select the adoption agencies with whom you’d like to apply. Each agency is different, and each state has different laws for adoptive and birth families. It’s important to become familiar with these when choosing your agency(ies).
Before we go any further, let’s talk about the most common concern – the cost to adopt! The financial piece of adoption can be a story all its own. It has the potential to be a preventative roadblock or an inspirational miracle.
Full transparency, we were not prepared to pay for our daughter’s adoption before we began the process. Like, not even close. But we believed we were stepping out in obedience and that God would make a way. Spoiler alert: He did. And every dollar that showed up again and again, right.on.time was miraculous in every way. (All the gut-wrenching details are in our blog.)
The final big topic is open vs closed adoptions. Before we educated ourselves, we were like many who believed in the “scary birth mom” scenario. We learned that, like many fears, it was based on false information and not true at all. We chose to have an open adoption with our daughter’s birth mom and while it’s an ongoing navigation each year, it’s a decision we never regret. The statistics (and not to mention our hearts) have shown that the more our adopted children know about their story, the safer they can process it and the emotionally healthier they are likely to be. We chose to give her all the pieces of her story we could.
There’s so much to say about adoption, and I hope our story and perspective helped encourage you if you’re considering pursuing it (or even just curious)! We’ve often heard that our daughter is lucky to have us, but for anyone who has chosen to adopt we know the opposite is true – we are the lucky ones.
If you’re interested in learning more, I’d love to connect with you! Leave a comment here or follow me @ashleeilg. You can also check out my friend Mal’s podcast which is all things adoption. She shares helpful tips and insider perspectives for everyone in the adoption triad. Find her podcast Funding Love.
