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Why I did IVF rather than adopt
I am an only child and I always wanted a sibling. When I was about 10 years old, my parents decided to be foster parents. We had two sisters come to live with us. I can't remember how old the older one was, but she was a teenager. The younger one was 7 years old. Both came from an alcoholic migrant family, where they were beaten, sexually abused, and essentially neglected. They had been in foster care for quite some time by then (along with their 5-6 other siblings, some of whom had been adopted by then). The teenager ended up going back to an old foster home fairly quickly, so we just had the younger one.
She was 7, but very small and acted far younger. You'd think she was maybe 4-5 if you had to guess. She had severe FAS and some brain damage from her parents driving with her sitting on the floor of a car where there were carbon monoxide fumes. So, she was diagnosed as being borderline mentally handicapped (if I recall correctly, her IQ was in the 80s). She also suffered from lack of bonding. My parents were told that she had been abused, but had never been an abuser. After a year or so, my parents adopted her.
Long story short, as she got older, she resented me very much. She spent the next few years poisoning me by putting my mom's medications (some of which were very hardcore heart meds) into my food or slipping them into my mouth while I slept. I was extremely sick for that time and no one could figure out why. I had migraines that never went away, vomited a lot, couldn't eat, become almost skeletal and looked half dead, pretty much. She also killed all of the neighborhood pets that she could her hands on. It took a long time for anyone to figure out what was going on because she seemed so sweet, but when they did the police wouldn't do anything, the state said it was my parents' problem now, and my parents ended up with a completely crazy kid whose mental health bills were all theirs. She spent the next few years in a mental hospital, except they are so crowded in WA that they would only keep her as long as they said she was an 'acute risk' and then she would come home. To keep hurting me. And no one would help us.
I think I was 17 by the time my parents finally reliniquished parental rights back to the state. I spent pretty much all of my teen years abused by her, or visiting her in mental hospitals, or wondering why my parents let her keep hurting me.
Granted, adopting an abused 7 yr old is nothing like adopting an infant. But that experience has stuck with me, and I don't know whether I, personally, could adopt. Particularly since I have other children.
Adoption is wonderful. But maybe not for me.
This discussion has been closed.
Re: Why I did IVF rather than adopt
Jody, I hope my post was not offensive to you at all. I think it is a personal decision. The purpose of my post was to rebuff the idea that adopting is for infertiles only; not that it should always be pursued.
I can understand your concerns. DH and I originally planned on doing domestic older child adoption, but then decided against it for all of the reasons you mentioned. The risks are great and b/c we were not ready to be done having children the limitation that the adopted child(ren) would need to be the youngest or only child was not something we were ready for. We still have some risks with older child international, but by and large the orphans in Haiti are orphans due to poverty, death of parents, etc. and not b/c of abuse.
Anyway, just want to make sure you know I wasn't trying to offend you or any of the SAIFers.
One word:
FILTERS
There is most definitely a big difference in adopting an infant than a foster child that was abused and neglected for the first 7 years of her life. My Grandparents had 7 of their own Children and were foster parents and ended up adopting 3 of the foster children. They all came from bad homes and two of them are not in contact anymore now as adults. They are not mentally challenged though.
My Father was also adopted - from birth- and he never went searching for his really family and had a great up bringing and is very grateful to his adopted family. My father being adopted when nobody else wanted him has always made me want to do the same for another.
Sorry to hear about you and your adopted sister.
*shrug*
Nothing I wrote is somehow shameful or embarassing to me. I was just sharing an experience that colored my willingness to adopt. I would share this story with anyone who asked, Internet or otherwise.
wow.
I thought the same thing, MollyO but once an AW, always an AW. So it was a matter of time before she piped in and added her manifesto....
wow. i'm so sorry you had to go through that...
Not at all! I completely agree that adoption is a wonderful thing, and it's sort of strange that many people only think of it in terms of IF couples when, really, anyone can consider adoption. I think that what you and many others are doing is wonderful! Totally wonderful.
I am actually somewhat conflicted personally because I know mentally how awesome adoption can be, and I kind of wish that I could get past my own hang ups. I've considered adopting about 100 times, but I can never quite move past my experience and really take that step. That said, I think that if IVF #2 had failed, I might have. I really, really wanted another child and didn't care how I got it by that point.
I just think that people have a huge number of misconceptions about how easy it is to adopt, the time it takes to adopt, the amount of money it costs to adopt, and what you're getting into with older kids (a lot of people will make comments about how wrong it is that people only want to adopt infants or young children). I do hope that there are people out there who can adopt special needs kids like my former sister, but people should also be informed and know what they are getting into.
I really don't recall anyone asking...
i believe this is in response to all the IVF vs. adoption drama from this morning... i could be wrong though.
I've noticed a pattern of rampant, TMI, AW'ing on J&J's part and it annoys the hell out of me so I posted what I did.
I can't block her anymore so I choose to take the 'adult' route and clown her from time to time when I'm in a biitchy mood.
oooooh yes. I've said it before.
Then every once in awhile she shows some level of hilarious down-to-earth behaviour and you want to like her again. It comes and goes.
Now its gone.
Actually, I think this post explains a lot. She does come across as something of a crisis collector at times and her post gives a little bit of an insight as to why that is.
I don't mean this in an offensive way. Some people just have whirlwinds of sh!t around them. Often there's chaos in their backgrounds. This seems to be just such a case.
Ahhhh yes. Always waiting to swap tragedy cards with others? A one upper. Definitely. This does showcase this as a history.
Still it wouldn't matter what we brought up, she'd find a way to top it. Both positively and negatively.