Joined
·
5,038 Posts
Has anybody else struggled with the decision of whether to adopt or have biological babies?
I am feeling so torn up about it right now. I always knew that I wanted to have at least one pregnancy, but I've also always felt a strong desore to adopt. When we began planning for our family, we decided to try for a bio baby first because we thought it would be easier. We planned to adopt any subsequent children. I am a woman married to a woman, so conception was not as simple as it could have been, but conceiving a baby was certainly a simpler path than adoption. I went to the doctor for a check-up, we ordered some sperm from a sperm bank, I went back to the doctor for the insemination, and wah-la, I was pregnant.
Because I was pregnant with twins, my pregnancy did not go exactly as planned--I was unable to find a homebirth midwife who was willing to take me on--and I ended up having a highly medicalized pregnancy that ended in a scheduled c-section due to the breech positioning of both babies. It was a very traumatic experience for me. The first few months post-partum were also really hard, as I struggled to exclusively breastfeed and care for my two high-needs newborns. In many ways I felt cheated out of the experience I'd always hoped to have.
Now, as we begin to talk about adding a third baby to our family, I am having a really hard time choosing between trying for another bio baby or adopting a baby. Dw feels strongly that we should adopt; we have already brought two more humans onto this over-populated planet, and there are so many babies who need homes. I know that I would love a baby who came to us through adoption with the same intensity as I would love a bio baby, and I would love to feel as though I was part of the solution rather than part of the problem. But I also feel this NEED to have another pregnancy, to try one more time to do it the way I wanted to, to have the experience of mothering and breastfeeding only one newborn. We already have sperm from the same donor paid for, in storage, so if we did conceive a third baby, it would be a full bio sibling to Luke and Jaz.
Do any of you feel guilty about conciously bringing more babies into this world? Is it selfish of me to conceive another human life just so that I can go through another pregnancy and birth?
I am so confilicted.
I am feeling so torn up about it right now. I always knew that I wanted to have at least one pregnancy, but I've also always felt a strong desore to adopt. When we began planning for our family, we decided to try for a bio baby first because we thought it would be easier. We planned to adopt any subsequent children. I am a woman married to a woman, so conception was not as simple as it could have been, but conceiving a baby was certainly a simpler path than adoption. I went to the doctor for a check-up, we ordered some sperm from a sperm bank, I went back to the doctor for the insemination, and wah-la, I was pregnant.
Because I was pregnant with twins, my pregnancy did not go exactly as planned--I was unable to find a homebirth midwife who was willing to take me on--and I ended up having a highly medicalized pregnancy that ended in a scheduled c-section due to the breech positioning of both babies. It was a very traumatic experience for me. The first few months post-partum were also really hard, as I struggled to exclusively breastfeed and care for my two high-needs newborns. In many ways I felt cheated out of the experience I'd always hoped to have.
Now, as we begin to talk about adding a third baby to our family, I am having a really hard time choosing between trying for another bio baby or adopting a baby. Dw feels strongly that we should adopt; we have already brought two more humans onto this over-populated planet, and there are so many babies who need homes. I know that I would love a baby who came to us through adoption with the same intensity as I would love a bio baby, and I would love to feel as though I was part of the solution rather than part of the problem. But I also feel this NEED to have another pregnancy, to try one more time to do it the way I wanted to, to have the experience of mothering and breastfeeding only one newborn. We already have sperm from the same donor paid for, in storage, so if we did conceive a third baby, it would be a full bio sibling to Luke and Jaz.
Do any of you feel guilty about conciously bringing more babies into this world? Is it selfish of me to conceive another human life just so that I can go through another pregnancy and birth?
I am so confilicted.