BC’s Waiting Children

 One of the paths we could take to parenthood would be to adopt one of BC’s Waiting Children.  But is this the right path for us?  It’s something we’ve thought a lot about, and here’s a good list of pros and cons for us.  Your pros and cons may vary!

Pros:

• Very inexpensive.  In fact, it’s pretty much free, except for transportation costs for seminars and classes.
• Quick.  The process, from start to finish, takes months, rather than years.
• These children really need solid forever homes.  In a lot of cases, they’ve been bounced from foster home to foster home, and have had birth homes ranging from bad to complete nightmare.

Cons:

• No babies.  We really would like a baby.
• These children have varying degrees of special needs, from minor behavioural issues, to needing 24/7 medical care. We’re not sure that we are equipped to deal with this.  The paperwork they give you to fill out regarding which special needs you are able to deal with is absolutely heart-breaking.  Every time we’ve filled it out (which we’ve done several times, and not submitted) we end up with our hearts and stomachs in knots–how do you say no to giving a home to children in these situations, even if you know you just can’t say yes?

The cons outweigh the pros for us, at least right now.  We’re going to a free seminar in a few months on adopting a waiting child, and we’ll evaluate our feelings about it again then.

I visit the Waiting Children website at least once a week, and always end up crying after reading through the profiles.  I feel like a complete asshole for not wanting to adopt a sibling group of four kids who need homes, or for cringing when I read what their special needs are.  And then I remind myself that my fiancé and I both work full time, and have to continue to do that, so we just don’t have the resources to adopt four children at once, or even one child who needs special care.  But then again, maybe we could?  Argh.  My heart flip-flops about this so much.

The Beginning

My name is Matthew, and I am 35 years old.  I am a gay man, and I am engaged to be married to my amazing fiancé.  I live in a major Canadian urban centre, work full time in the emergency services field (and part time as a birth and postpartum doula), and my fiancé and I live in a beautiful home in a lovely neighbourhood with our adorable cat.

I have always wanted children.  And so has my man.  And so, we decided we are going to have at least one, but hopefully two.

The question is, as it always has been: how?

We have a few options:

• surrogacy (traditional or gestational)
• adoption of a child in foster care
• domestic private adoption
• international adoption

I have spent the last year of my life doing incredible amounts of research on the law, logistics, costs, timelines, and complications of all of these things.  I have made spreadsheets, read blogs, joined support groups, compiled statistics, talked endlessly with my fiancé about our thoughts and feelings about all of this, and it has brought us to this point:

We are either going to do surrogacy or adoption.  *eye roll*

It’s so hard, either way.  And expensive.  And did I mention difficult?  If we go with adoption, we have to spend a lot of money and then cross our fingers that a birth parent will pick us out of the pile of other potential parents for their unborn child.  It could happen in days, or take years.  But it’s more likely to take years.  Years.

And if we go with surrogacy, we can be more involved in the process, but it’s also expensive, and we have to find someone willing to donate their eggs to us, and then someone who is willing to donate their womb to us and be pregnant and deliver a baby and then hand it over to us?  And did I mention that it may involve more than one IVF cycle?  In fact, it is likely to?

We are not wealthy.  We are comfortable, and do not live in poverty, but we do not have $60,000 laying around.  Which is roughly what we have been told to save up for surrogacy or domestic adoption, either way.

This, my friends, is where we are starting from.  It does not feel exactly like a position of strength, but it is what we have been given.  We have many blessings–steady employment, good housing, good health, loving and supportive friends and family, our faith–and if we can focus on those blessings, and support each other, we will get through this and find our way to parenthood.