Thoughts on adoption

We watched the film 'Raising Arizona' the other night, a Cohen brothers (love their films) comedy in which a childless couple - with no hope of adopting because of the man's chequered past - abduct a baby from a rich couple with quintuplets. They figure that the couple has plenty of babies already and won't mind losing one. Though it is all pretty light-hearted and mostly resolved at the end, it did make me think about the desperation of women who want a baby so badly they'll do anything to get one. I remember reading tales of abduction when babies were taken from prams outside shops or stolen from hospitals (and shortly after found and returned, not like recent media tales of abduction which appear more sinister) and I always felt sorry for the woman doing the abduction too as envariably she was mentally unstable after years of miscarriage or just the inability to conceive. Sometimes not fulfilling that primal urge can tip people over the edge.

At the end of the film there are scenes depicting an extended family sharing an afternoon together and I found myself crying, much to my surprise! I guess the idea of children and then grandchildren to share your life with, whilst it is idealised in the media, calls to something deep within us. The idea of the unknown - that certainty rocked by years of not conceiving - is shocking. Maybe my husband and I won't have a big extended family to share our later years with?

That led me on to adoption, which we have been thinking about a lot lately. Whilst I fully respect couples who pursue the dream of having their own family at all costs through IVF and other methods, my husband R and I really don't want to go down that route. I have seen people driven half mad by the hope, expectancy and disappointment, not to mention financial strain and physical invasion, for what are very slim odds. I don't want to be poked around by doctors, having studiously avoided them for so long. If R's sperm test results come back negative again on September 18th, we have built a barrier of protection around ourselves - we will go for adoption.

I have a mountain of books on adoption by my bed as I know it is not an easy choice, not just for us but for the child being adopted. They will have all sorts of grieving to do too. The process itself takes an average of 18 months so we're keen to get started as soon as possible if we're not going to make a baby ourselves.

I have started looking around our house and seeing it through the eyes of a social worker; uh oh...sink overflowing - check; animals everywhere - check; haphazard and sharp-cornered second-hand furniture - check; dust, fur and pawprints on every surface - check; just about enough room to squeeze in two people and four pets with none leftover - check. I have been having Home Improvement kind of dreams of creating a mezzanine in our tiny bedroom in order to squeeze another in. When we thought we were just going to get pregnant, easy-peasy, we planned to co-sleep and maybe wedge a basket in somewhere if R's flailing nighttime limbs got too much for the babe - the couple who used to live in our cottage had two babies here and managed ok, utilising the top drawer of their chest of drawers, pulled out of course! Something tells me a social worker isn't going to be that impressed by this particular idea - 'yes, we plan to pop 'em in here, next to my smalls'.