AP: Has anyone ever regret how they adopted?

Freckle Face

Dear Opedial,

I have say i am so torn, i can not imagine motherhood without all five of my girls. If we went another route we would not have the children we have right now, and i can't ever wish that as a mother.

To set all that aside......Yes. More for the pain older DD suffers.

I wish I would have found this site before our two adoptions. We would have went through foster care for sure. I feel like such a hypocrite here so often. I just want to give pap's a chance to get educated about the complications the children might go through. Again foster care may not be for every one but every one should look at foster care first, imo.

Domestic adoptions----DD is the middle girl of three. She knows her mother could have kept her cause she is currently raising two girls. How do you explain that away? Why didn't we adopt her mother and sister too? If we send money to these charities shouldn't we send money to her mother too? Can we pay for her two other sisters to go to college too? She wants them to have a good life too.

International adoption----Its the hardest thing i've ever done. Learning another language is so difficult. I would love to learn how to write arhamic to communicate with DD's father but there is a possibility he can't read. I don't want DD to have language as a barrier when trying to communicate with her family. Its hard to learn about a culture from a library or computer screen. I'm hoping that our trip to Africa will help. Its a huge responsibility, i just don't want to let DD down. Who knows what kind of questions she will have years down the road.

Foster care, raising children who actually need parents.......I think would be much easier to answer to your child and as a mom less guilt and sleepless nights.

sweetjane

I don't regret the route we took, but I have been faced with NUMEROUS ethical issues throughout this process....issues which would have never occurred to me prior to this board. Changing names, medical issues, first family (understanding their position and feelings), etc. Often, when I am talking to my husband, I forget that he hasn't been on this board and isn't quite where I am on the issues. Formerly, I was completely content to raise our child in blissful happiness without any care or concern about his natural family, foster family, or even his own feelings about his history. He is a different color than us. It isn't as if he won't know early on that he isn't biologically 'ours'. Not that we were planning on lying to him, but we didn't have a plan at all. We just didn't think about it.....and the state never made his background, culture, race an issue so we never thought about it. Now, thanks to this board, I have all of his medical history, I have every family member's name and most of their addresses, I am in regular contact with his foster family who raised him from birth....and I am trying to get my husband to understand why it matters so much. In his mind, this is 'his' little boy; his absolute world. There is absolutely nothing he wouldn't do for our child and I think his mindset is that of protecting our son from sadness and hurt. I am trying to make him see that NOT giving our son every chance to know who he is and where he came from would be hurting him in the long run. He is, slowly but surely, getting it.
<<foster to adopt mommy

kims

No regrets. I did my research before adopting, so there's not much I've learned on this forum that was new to me.

My four children lost their mother to AIDs and their father, although he was alive and on AIDs medication when we adopted the children, has since passed away as well. The children needed a home and parents. It's very unlikely they would've been adopted in Ethiopia since their father said he brought them to the orphanage because there were no relatives to help. We were fortunately able to meet their father and have him tell us all about their family, what his wishes for the children's education, religion, etc. were.

No, I don't regret adopting children from another country who needed a home. I don't buy the argument that if a child is born overseas they are less deserving than children born here. I don't believe that it's better for older children to age out of an orphanage in a third world country than to be adopted. I do think older children should be asked what their wishes are. I think there need to be serious reforms to adoption. But no, I don't regret anything about my adoption - except that my children were ever put in the position that it was necessary. I wish they never lost their parents.

Shelby

I dont regret anything about how we went about adopting. Im 100% confident that it was ethical and our children had no family who wanted to look after them.

I am thankful that I have never been involved in pre-birth matching. I think there is something awfully wrong about getting a child that way, I personally do not know how anyone can look a mother in the eye and then take their baby away. If that was the only way I could adopt, I wouldnt.

stormwarnfm

At this time, absolutely no regrets.

We adopted through foster care.

Their first family does NOT have it together as of this time, so the adoption will remain closed.

If my kids want to reunify with them when they're adults, I will help them find their birth mother, but I will be involved every step of the way...including being there for the first meeting in case the mother still doesn't have her life on track.

The only regret I have is that the kids couldn't have gotten to stay with their original family and never knew the heartaches and hardships they had with their birth family.

Sophie

I do NOT regret the way I adopted my son at all. I did everything legally.

My only regret is not being able to adopt a second child (or sibling set). I believe siblings are invaluable to each other.

Jennifer L

No. I have no regrets about how we adopted our children.

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