Adopting After Infertility: How to Know If It’s Right for You

Before you can adopt successfully, it’s essential to come to terms with infertility issues. For some couples who are adopting after infertility, it may take years.  So, move at your own pace. If you rush into adopting after fertility treatments, you risk sabotaging an adoption. Worse yet, you risk treating your adopted child as second best to the son or daughter you might have had.
 
Lifetime Christian Adoption’s Founder, Mardie Caldwell shares, “Handling infertility issues meant that I needed to accept there was a reason for everything. If it weren’t for my infertility, I wouldn’t have adopted my beautiful son. I wouldn’t have opened an adoption center which has created hundreds of adoptive families. Many couples I’ve helped who faced fertility issues moved quite smoothly to adoption. Others have had a hard time turning to adoption because the dream of having a biological child meant very much to them.”
 
Before you are truly ready to adopt, answer this question:
Do you want to have a biological child or do to become a parent? Unless you determine the answer, you might jeopardize your adoption process. It’s vital that you don’t see adoption as “settling.” Don’t “settle” for adoption. Every child deserves parents who love and cherish them as the most precious thing in the world.
 
If you have issues about infertility, we recommend that you get counseling before you adopt. Some couples decide to continue fertility treatments first. If after trying medical options, you choose adoption, you’ll likely find that the adoption process is less stressful.
 
What has helped other couples in your situation is to speak with other adoptive parents. It’s incredible how many characteristics that parents pass on to their adopted children. If you aren’t sure you can accept a child who will not inherit your genes, consider Pharaoh’s daughter in the Bible. She wasn’t looking for a child when she went down to bathe at the Nile River, but when she saw the baby Moses, she seized the opportunity and raised him as her own. The Bible doesn’t say whether she ever had other children, but considering how great Moses became, he would always be her special child.
 
And let’s not forget the ultimate adoption, when a humble couple named Mary and Joseph adopted Jesus, the Son of God. When they got engaged, neither of them planned for their first child not to be conceived through them. And Joseph almost called the whole thing off. But God had other plans. God ordained the adoptive parents of both Moses and Jesus. What child might he have chosen for you to rise to greatness?
 
Families created by adoption are real families. After adopting, you’re a parent, with a child who’s depending on you for his or her emotional and physical needs. You’ll experience joys and heartaches, just like any parent. After all, you’ll be Mom and Dad!