@mindaa--male grieving process

Hi,

You posted asking about my H's process of grieving a biological connection to an adopted child and what it was like for him. I can't speak directly how it was (since I'm not him, LOL) but I can tell you how we dealt with it.

First of all, understand that my H takes forever to come to a decision on anything. it took a month of weekend visits to the furniture store to pick out a bedroom set! So I knew this was unlikely to be a quick process for him. Also, the topic of adoption came up about halfway through our fertility treatments. I intiated it, and told him I wanted to pick a date that we would focus less on IF treatments and more on adoption. He was OK with adoption in the abstract, but we shifted that date a few times mostly because I don't think he was ready. We were dealing with IF for me, not him, so he let me be the driver as far as what treatments we (I) would do, but he did have some input on how long he thought we should continue to TTC. I think he was convinced that next try was going to work, and I was just ready to move on.

When I came to the realization that adoption was how I wanted to grow our family, I got a copy of Adoption for Dummies and read it cover to cover. I was SO excited the morning after I finished it, and started peppering him with all sorts of facts and figures. He very calmly (yay DH) told me that he felt overwhelmed with all this information and needed to deal with some things. Specifically that loss of a biological/genetic connection. I was surprised that was an issue for him, but I respected the fact that he needed to work through it. Having both of us on board (and excited even) was key, of course.

We agreed that I would tell him some information I'd learned, just piecemeal and not "OMG let's do this NOW!" He also said he was open to phone or web-based seminars, so in the following month or 2 we did one of each. Once we were done with them, he was much more comfortable with the idea in general. I'd say 2 to 3 months in, he was ready to talk to actual agencies.

His next big issue was the home study. He was convinced some stranger would be pawing through our underwear drawer and asking detailed questions about our sex life. We called 2 agencies we were interested in, and spent an hour on the phone with each person, having them walk us through it. Once it was demystified, he felt a lot better about the process. It also gave us a feel for the personalities of the people we'd be dealing with.

Then I got to wait another month or 2 while he weighed the pros and cons of each agency to decide which one we were going with. I don't think we had a ton of conversations about it, I more or less checked in with him every time something jogged my memory (another bill from the RE, a mailing or e-mail from an agency, a conversation I heard at work).

Once we were more or less decided on an agency, we then spent the next few months putting our rental condo on the market, since it was time to get rid of it and we wanted to use the proceeds for adoption fees.

By then he was on board, though the autobiography was still a slog for him. He's not a touchy feely guy, and hates to write, so answering questions about his (not so fabulous) childhood and his thoughts on adoption and everything around it were not his cup of tea. We worked on a strategy for that as well. We picked a drop dead date that he wanted to finish it. I read questions to him every night while he was puttering in the kitchen and would write down his answers. Once that was done, everything else was pretty much logistics.

One note about mourning the loss of a biological connection: the moment he met DD, it was instant bonding. He picked her up, put her on his chest, and she fell asleep instantly. The next day we took her home, and he said very emphatically, "They can't take her back." I don't think he ever thought about biology after that.