e-mail
I am very open about adoption’s role in building my family. My husband and I married while I was pregnant, and he adopted Bear a few months after his birth. Beauty is adopted from Guatemala. Suffice to say, adoption is a big, beautiful part of my life. I’ve noticed that many people assume that both my children are adopted (which they are, by my husband). It doesn’t bother me, but when the conversation of pregnancy versus adoption arises, many times I get hit with the infamous question: which is harder, pregnancy or adoption?
Oh, boy.
In short, you really can’t compare the two; it’s apples to oranges. While pregnancy has an approximate start-to-finish time; adoption usually offers a less concrete time frame. There is risk to be found in both processes, as there is to be found in anything worthwhile in life. But even still, it’s just the tip of the iceberg.
It goes without saying that pregnancy brings about physical changes, and your child is with you 24/7 from the word go, sometimes before you even realize he or she is there. I didn’t miss a single moment with Bear. I gained seventy-five delicious pounds (okay, so maybe that exceeds the “healthy weight gain” but hey, we were hungry!), I felt every kick, every hiccup, every Braxton Hicks contraction. Born by Cesarean section, I experienced both my first major surgery and my first hospital stay since my own birth. I was one of the first people–alongside those in the OR–to hear his first amazing cry. I held him within an hour of his birth. I left the hospital three days later, a new mom with a new little life to care for and love. He is pure joy in my life.
Adoption didn’t bring any weight gain, but did teach me amazing organizational skills (graduate school has nothing on the organization needed to adopt, let me tell you!). Adoption helped me to appreciate other people’s roles in bringing children into the world and into my life; from Beauty’s foster mom to the attorney in Guatemala and especially, her firstmom. I missed Beauty’s first cry as well as the first nine months of her life, but watched her grow from afar and built nine more months of dreams for and about her. Adoption taught me everything about what it means to be, in short, an adoptive mom. It made me really think about my own feelings toward and about the adoption process; it made a woman I’ve never met, M. (Beauty’s firstmom), a true part of my family, even if there is great physical distance between us. It brought a beautiful little girl to my world. She is pure joy in my life.
You can’t compare the two processes; for every similarity, there’s a handful of differences. Which is harder? Well, they both post challenges in their own right. I wouldn’t say there’s anything “easy” about either process, but I firmly believe there’s merit in the journey of both pregnancy and adoption. And for all the trials and tribulations in said journeys, the outcome is truly priceless: an amazing addition to your family, a child who forever becomes a part of your heart and your life. And whether said child arrives through pregnancy or adoption, there’s nothing “hard” about that.
