The Choice

For most people, not all but most, coming to the decision to adopt is not always an easy one.  The path to choosing adoption is usually a path filled with tears, heartache and hurt.  Years of infertility, treatments and failed pregnancies.  By the time this option comes up a lot of times people feel so defeated they don't ever take the steps to move forward or are financially drained from the other treatments and medicines. 
For myself, I never went though the treatments and medicines, we went to 1 appointment to see what our options were, and that was it.  We knew we had a very small chance of me being able to carry a baby and we also had to do egg donation so we had the added expense there.  So we knew that we needed to find another path to parenthood.  We briefly spoke about adoption and then decided we were going to try the foster to adopt route.  We took all of the classes, spent weekend sitting inside during the summer, evenings given up and at the very last class the social worker in charge said something that totally turned us off.  We walked out and looked at each other and was like this was a total waste of a few months.  We took a step back and just thought about our options and did research, ok well I did research.  I looked at agency after agency after agency.  Made call after call after call.  We spoke with so many agencies and heard good things and bad things from each of them.  I won't go into all the details of every reason we didn't choose an agency, it could have varied from the time they said an average match took, it could have been the fees, or the fact they charged different fees based upon race, which I have a major personal issue with.  Finding and choosing an agency is part research and part gut and mostly luck if you ask me.  I can't sit here and say I would do this different or that different because then things would have ended different for us and I can't imagine my life any different than it is today.  I can say if we were ever to try to adopt again I would do things different. 
Once you make a decision on an agency there are a million choices that follow.  I will tell you that you will second guess each and every single one of them.  When you go right you will always think you should have gone left.  It won't be until you are sitting with your baby in your arms that you feel you have made the right decisions the right choices.  It will be then that all the pieces have fallen together. 
Adoption is not a journey for the faint of heart for use.  But the reward in the end is so amazing!