The Question of Adoption

Yesterday (Saturday) we went to Montreal for a regional welfare training conference. We had to drive 2 hours there to make it for an 8am start, so it was a pretty early morning for us. By the time we went to bed last night, R was completely wiped out. For the last half of the trip we took the old highway 17 which runs along the Ottawa River and goes through a few little towns. The sun was low over the water some of the trees were already turning bright red. It was spectacular.

One of the speakers at the conference was the Social Services manager from Toronto, responsible for all of Eastern Ontario (us) and some of Western Quebec. Last year our bishop gave us the contact information for this man because we were going to make preliminary inquiries about adoption. We did not want to give up on pregnancy altogether, but we thought we should at least begin to explore some other avenues, so we weren't starting from zero the day we decided to go ahead with adoption. We probably still have the telephone number somewhere, but we never contacted Social Services.

One of R's friends at church who adopted two children loaned us a book called For the Love of a Child, all about the adoption process. Someone else loaned her Chicken Soup for the Expectant Mother's Soul because it had a section about miracle pregnancies -- people who had no chance at having children and then it just happened. That was the only part I read. I don't think either of us had totally bought into the adoption plan yet, but it was in the back of our minds. R worried about adopting a child and then suddenly getting pregnant. She worried how the two children might view themselves differently if one was "biological" and the other was adopted.

Although we would be ecstatic to raise adopted children, there is something extra special about seeing your own genes passed down into another generation. Perhaps it's just vanity. At the same time, I hope certain of my traits and features do not get passed along, or at least get diluted. My baby pictures are not the sort of thing that makes it onto the front of a magazine. I had a really big head and some very large features to go along with that head. On top of that, I was a bit gangly and uncoordinated as a kid -- leading to numerous nosebleeds when I would try to play catch. R has a tiny little head and daintier features. Let's hope that we meet somewhere in the middle.

Week 7 starts tomorrow. The day of the chickpea is upon us.