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Hi, I'm Molly-o, and it's been two weeks since my last LJ post.
First this bit of fun, courtesy of KellyO (no relation): Steve Perry fanfiction.
Second, a long, whining, self-justifying fertility update:
A big part of why I wanted to explore adoption rather than IVF was because I thought I'd feel kinda guilty jumping through all those medical and financial hoops to have "our own" kid when there are babies that need homes.
Except as far as I can tell, there really *aren't* any babies that need homes. The kids who need homes? They're all six or four or 11. And you know, I'm not averse to fostering/adopting an older child, but I don't want that to be my first and only experience with parenting. I'd prefer to raise a baby from infancy, and then maybe when that kid is eight and I feel like I know what to do with a four-year-old, foster/adopt a four-year-old.
But for every infant whose mother leans toward adoption, there are six desperate couples lined up. Ethnicity doesn't make a difference -- any healthy baby (as well as most babies with fetal exposure to alcohol or illegal drugs) is gonna be snapped up by somebody.
Private adoption is the worst -- pregnant women, many of whom have conflicting feelings about the whole process (as one might expect), selecting couples who have to walk on eggshells because they're so anxious to have this woman's kid but at the same time have to pretend they *aren't* so anxious to have this woman's kid. There's something vulture-y about the whole process. (And yes, I read Dan Savage's "The Kid," and it was a good read but the whole thing weirded me out. And also, I wonder if maybe relationships between a gay male couple and a birthmother are a little less fraught because there is no adoptive mother competing with the birthmother.)
And then I made the mistake of trying to find an adoption community on LJ, and I learned that adoption is possibly the most contentious subject on the planet. Race in fanfiction? Inherent gender differences in math ability? The confederate flag? Those are freakin' tea parties compared with adoption. There's all this lingo, and if you don't use it the "right" way, someone will get pissed -- only no matter *what* you say, someone's getting pissed.
The *most* fun is reading a "legit" journal like![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
adoption and then comparing it with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ad0ption, which despite being a world-class festival of sock-puppetry also manages to be a dead-on parody of the folks at adoption. Even people who seem to have had sane and happy adoptions -- moominmama, at www.thiswomanswork.com, for example -- feel a lot of guilt.
Public adoption is less brutal in some ways, more brutal in others -- the babies are either abandoned by their parents or taken away for cause, which is pretty tragic, but the adoptive parents seem to have less of the vulture thing going on. But even there, if RM & I bring home a baby, there's some other couple -- maybe a couple for whom IVF isn't an option -- that's not taking home a baby.
I haven't ruled out adoption -- in fact I'm waiting for a call back from an organization that coordinates foster parent training in the District. But in the meantime I've called the doctor's office to get more info about our options with IVF. Because at least with IVF I won't feel like I'm taking somebody's baby away.
First this bit of fun, courtesy of KellyO (no relation): Steve Perry fanfiction.
Second, a long, whining, self-justifying fertility update:
A big part of why I wanted to explore adoption rather than IVF was because I thought I'd feel kinda guilty jumping through all those medical and financial hoops to have "our own" kid when there are babies that need homes.
Except as far as I can tell, there really *aren't* any babies that need homes. The kids who need homes? They're all six or four or 11. And you know, I'm not averse to fostering/adopting an older child, but I don't want that to be my first and only experience with parenting. I'd prefer to raise a baby from infancy, and then maybe when that kid is eight and I feel like I know what to do with a four-year-old, foster/adopt a four-year-old.
But for every infant whose mother leans toward adoption, there are six desperate couples lined up. Ethnicity doesn't make a difference -- any healthy baby (as well as most babies with fetal exposure to alcohol or illegal drugs) is gonna be snapped up by somebody.
Private adoption is the worst -- pregnant women, many of whom have conflicting feelings about the whole process (as one might expect), selecting couples who have to walk on eggshells because they're so anxious to have this woman's kid but at the same time have to pretend they *aren't* so anxious to have this woman's kid. There's something vulture-y about the whole process. (And yes, I read Dan Savage's "The Kid," and it was a good read but the whole thing weirded me out. And also, I wonder if maybe relationships between a gay male couple and a birthmother are a little less fraught because there is no adoptive mother competing with the birthmother.)
And then I made the mistake of trying to find an adoption community on LJ, and I learned that adoption is possibly the most contentious subject on the planet. Race in fanfiction? Inherent gender differences in math ability? The confederate flag? Those are freakin' tea parties compared with adoption. There's all this lingo, and if you don't use it the "right" way, someone will get pissed -- only no matter *what* you say, someone's getting pissed.
The *most* fun is reading a "legit" journal like
adoption and then comparing it with ad0ption, which despite being a world-class festival of sock-puppetry also manages to be a dead-on parody of the folks at adoption. Even people who seem to have had sane and happy adoptions -- moominmama, at www.thiswomanswork.com, for example -- feel a lot of guilt.Public adoption is less brutal in some ways, more brutal in others -- the babies are either abandoned by their parents or taken away for cause, which is pretty tragic, but the adoptive parents seem to have less of the vulture thing going on. But even there, if RM & I bring home a baby, there's some other couple -- maybe a couple for whom IVF isn't an option -- that's not taking home a baby.
I haven't ruled out adoption -- in fact I'm waiting for a call back from an organization that coordinates foster parent training in the District. But in the meantime I've called the doctor's office to get more info about our options with IVF. Because at least with IVF I won't feel like I'm taking somebody's baby away.