Tag: adoption

Our Second “Family Day”

My son’s 2nd adoption anniversary is this month.  It’s so weird that he has only been my “legal” son for 2 years.  It’s almost easy to forget how uncertain things were while I was fostering him and how I lived in fear that something would happen and CPS would take him from me.  Now, he’s almost 4 and he has such a personality!  He’s also starting to understand “adoption” a little more.

I know there’s so much controversy about celebrating Adoption Days. I don’t really look at it as “celebrating,”  I look at it more like “remembering”… talking about how we became a family and reflecting on it.  As my son gets older he will have more say in how and what we do to “commemorate” our adoption.

I actually don’t call it “adoption day” or “gotcha day.”  I don’t really like those phrases.  I refer to it as our … Continue reading

On Motherhood and Mother’s Day

Sitting here in the hospital room, as my newly adopted daughter recovers from her first of what will be several open heart surgeries, I have almost forgotten that this Sunday is Mother’s Day. In the past, Mother’s Day had always been a painful reminder of what I wasn’t yet — a mom. On Facebook, friends would post about spending Mother’s Day with their kids and I tried to focus on the fact that I was lucky I still have a mom at my age, when so many of my friends have already lost theirs. But it was hard.

So you’d think that this Mother’s Day would be foremost in my mind—my first Mother’s Day!!! But it honestly hasn’t been—I’m too busy being a mom and trying to comprehend and digest what I’ve gotten myself into. And I’m tired. So damn tired. I didn’t know a person could be this tired … Continue reading

Child of Mine: A Story of Embryo Donation

For as long as I can remember, I have wanted to be a mom. I started babysitting when I was just 9 years old and continued to do so through college. I have always loved children and “borrowed” my friends’ children on a regular basis. When I was in my mid-20s, I would often say that if I got to be 35, wasn’t married, and had no prospects for marriage, I was going to go to a sperm bank and use a turkey baster. Fast forward 10 years: Me, at age 35, not married and not involved with anyone. And so my journey to a child began.

Fast forward another 2 years. I had moved back to my hometown so I could be near my family, bought a house, lost weight, and was on the brink of my first donor insemination. I was beyond excited!! The morning of my insemination, … Continue reading

Pathways to Becoming an SMC

If you’re considering becoming an SMC, it’s time to explore all of the different pathways to building a family without a partner 

TYPES OF DONORS

KNOWN DONOR

A known donor is a person that the woman knows and chooses to donate sperm. This option is much cheaper than a donor from a sperm bank since the sperm does not need to be purchased. However, there can be many legal risks with this option (I suggest watching “Nuclear Family” on HBO if you are considering this route).

UNKNOWN DONOR

This is your typical sperm bank route. Sperm donors can’t claim legal rights to the children born through donation so you don’t have to worry about custody issues in the future. You also get a ton of information regarding the donor’s physical traits, medical history, career, etc. Honestly, it’s more information than you would probably k know about a partner!

EGG DONOR… Continue reading

How We Came To Be

Four years ago this month I conceived my first child by a non-medicated, intrauterine insemination. I hadn’t been a Thinker for long. Or perhaps, I had been a Thinker my whole life. The certainty that I would never marry and have children was something that haunted my thoughts since I was in my early twenties. Until I separated the two life events, becoming a mother seemed all but hopeless. I thought about it only in terms of what would never be.

For over a decade, I mourned the loss of what came so easily to most women: a family. Once I gave myself permission to research the possibilities of single motherhood, things happened very quickly. Within a month I had read everything I could find on the topic. I began contacting adoption agencies. The official responses were consistently negative. A social worker at a domestic agency said to me, “No … Continue reading

One Ticket There, Two Tickets Back

So this is the story of how I went to Florida and came back with a baby.

As you might know, in every state, in adoption, a birthmother has the right to change her mind for a set period of time known as the “revocation period”.  In New York, for instance, a birthmother has 30 days after she signs the papers to decide she wants to parent. It’s fair, I think, because it’s not the kind of decision you want to find yourself regretting if you have decided to make an adoption plan for your kid.

In Florida, there is no revocation period, which means that after the birth mom signs the papers she cannot change her mind. That’s awesome for an adoptive parent, and why a lot of people try to adopt in Florida.

The one thing is that the birth-mom can’t sign the papers until 72 hours after … Continue reading

A Fine Whine

Ugh, so, this is just unbearable. This waiting is terrible. How do any of us go through it?

I’ve been officially a waiting-to-adopt family for nine (or is it ten?) months. And before that, I did two-and-a-half years of infertility treatments. I woke up the other day and just thought to myself, “I just want to be a mom. So badly.”

I started this journey nearly four years ago. And I am still single and childless. I know, it sounds like I am being a total downer., I AM a total downer right now. Sorry, guys, really. But I just feel like it is NEVER going to happen for me.  My friend was waiting to adopt a dog and she is going to get it this weekend… so even that is happening. When is it going to be my day? I know I’m whining. Again, I am so sorry.

There … Continue reading

The Anvil

I’m putting this out there: why not consider that me becoming a mom IS going to happen, rather than always thinking it ISN’T going to happen?

They say that if you think positively, this attracts positivity. I’ve always felt this is nonsense.  I have always believed that if I think positively, then that is exactly the way for something bad to happen. You know how Wile E. Coyote is always running around trying to do things, and the Road Runner always seems to drop an anvil on his head? That’s how I view myself in the world– that an anvil is always about to drop and crush me.

Now that I say it out loud, it seems kind of sad.

Also, let’s analyze this critically. Wile E. Coyote always has dastardly intentions: to kill the Road Runner. So really, it makes sense in the Looney Tunes world that his evil … Continue reading

My Path To Single Motherhood

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about my path to single motherhood. It’s strange, because it feels so natural and normal to me now, that I sometimes forget how unconventional my path has been.

Plan A

Ever since I was a little girl, I always wanted to have children. I had big dreams about having birth children and adopting. My “Plan A” approach was always in this order: fall in love, get married, have birth children, provide foster care, and adopt.

When I turned 28, I started seriously considering the “what if’s” about Plan A not working out. I had just moved to a new state, was away from all my friends/family, and I was finding it difficult to meet any new quality men. I tried a bunch of stuff: online dating, volunteering, getting involved in the community, speed dating, singles events, etc. But it just wasn’t happening … Continue reading

The Fortune Cookies Were Right

Early on the morning of Wednesday, November 6th, I was getting ready to drive to my reproductive endocrinologist nearly two hours away, where I would have a test to determine if there was a blockage in my fallopian tubes causing the problems with my lining development.  I had become incredibly disheartened by the adoption process after what had happened three weeks before (and the year before that, and all of the empty, waiting months in between), and was hoping, desperately, that this procedure would reveal the answer to my infertility issues so that the donor embryos I had on reserve would lead me to my child.

I was about to get in the shower when my phone rang.  I could see from the caller ID that it was my adoption agency, perhaps calling to check up on me after the debacle of the month before.  I answered, keeping my eye … Continue reading

“I've been a member for 14 years. From deciding to start trying through my child’s high school years. I've found SMC to be a trustworthy, valuable online community. I highly recommend tapping into this brain trust of experienced single moms who chose this path.”

– Anonymous