Dodging the mines to adopt in South Africa

Three years ago I became, not depressed, but flat, restless and unhappy. This is the antithesis of me. I’m upbeat, have more energy than I can use in a day and am a positive person. I laugh a lot and I had stopped laughing. I have a big smile and I had stopped smiling. And I felt enormously guilty.

I had everything. Perfect husband, a close relationship with my family, a small close circle of friends, the perfect job, a lovely home and yet I couldn’t get one thought out of my head: is this it? I felt so guilty about this recurring thought that I didn’t tell My husband because it would make me seem ungrateful and because, more importantly, make him feel awful.

After a while of this torture, just like that, in a flash I realized what it was: I had the capacity in my life for more and that more was children. Up to that point I thought I didn’t want children so the idea that I wanted to be a mom was farthest from my mind.

When I discussed this revelation with My husband he was excited and we immediately set about that dreadful word ‘trying’. Because that’s what it became, very, very trying. I’m the kind of person that when I want something I want it now. It takes me time to make the decision but once I’ve made it, I want it to happen now. And it didn’t. Not that month, not the following month, not the following year (or two or three) and not after four AIs and two IVFs.

Infertility has been referred to as a complex life crisis, psychologically threatening and emotionally stressful. That single sentence blandly sums up a world of obsession, tension, financial burden, mechanical sex, weekly dietary changes, herbal remedies, blame, self-loathing, indignity, embarrassment, jealously … all neatly cloaked in the myriad things that accompany hormone treatment. It’s a living nightmare, hideous on so many levels. So much so that when our fertility doc said we needed to look at donor sperm my brain flipped. No. No more. Even though My husband was happy to continue I just couldn’t do it. And he respected that.

Over the years we’d touched on the topic of adoption, once, fairly seriously, around the dinner table with my folks. And in that minute when the doc was talking donor sperm and R80,000 I knew without a doubt that I wanted to adopt.

We went home and Googled ‘adoption’. Clicked the first entry, a private agency and phoned. We were told in implicit terms that they were no longer taking on couples who wanted white babies, their waiting list was just too long, and they were only doing trans-racial adoptions. Oddly the idea of adopting a white child had never really taken hold with us. The few concerns we had about adopting a black child were mine, not My husband’s. I worried about two things: would this baby feel like mine and would the child, growing up, experience unfair challenges about having white parents. Finally, what had become my mom’s mantra sank in: a child is a child.

At the introductory meeting with our social worker she said something, which I know she came to regret (and she’ll smile and concur): the process happens as quickly as you drive it. So I drove it. We completed the intensive screening process in six weeks. For the first time I felt empowered. I was now playing an active part in our starting a family and even if these activities were psych evaluations, medicals, affidavits, police clearances, extensive in-depth interviews, I was driving it and I was doing. In between evaluations on the strength of our marriage, financial status and individual psyches I was teaching myself how to sew, making my first, gorgeous baby quilt, sanding down and varnishing the wooden floor in the baby’s room, getting ready.

Then the bomb dropped and my world fell apart, again. I really wanted a little girl. I know why. Because my mom and I have such an incredibly close relationship, I wanted that too. The final step in the screening process is the home visit. After our social worker had ascertained that we actually did live in a house, we sat down to talk about ‘our’ baby and I asked how long it would take. She said that there was no telling, that we would have to wait; it could be six months, it could be a year.

That was it; the past three years came flooding out in uncontrollable, ugly, snotty sobs. Not wise in front of your social worker when you want to portray the picture of stability. When I went to wash my face and blow my nose she told My husband she was worried about me. Fortunately My husband, in his calm way, was able to alleviate her fears. When I came back she said it was because we wanted a girl. In general women keep their daughters so there are far more boys available than girls. She also told us about a four-month-old little boy – in fact she had mentioned him to us a few times over the previous few weeks – whom she felt would be a perfect match, but cautioned us against taking ‘second prize’. Discuss it and come back to me, she told us.

Three things happened. One: we went for a long walk and realized that what we’d hoped for and prayed for, for so long, was right there, in front of us, yet we were still looking all around it for something else. Two: Mom said, “Just because you might have a daughter doesn’t mean that you’ll have the relationship that you and I do.” Three, and probably the most important: before we left for our walk we phoned my folks and explained all that had happened. Mom said she needed time to mull it over and talk to my dad. Throughout the years of us trying to start a family my dad had not said a word; he kept his council throughout. When we got home I phoned. Dad answered – another thing that never happens – and he said, “Sometimes the things in life that are most unexpected work out the best.”

We met our little boy on a Wednesday afternoon. I cried as I held him in my arms and he laughed and smiled and gurgled as though he’d known me his entire four months. He chose us that day and we chose him.

Although I was mad about him and drank him in at every possible moment it took time for the feeling that I was looking after someone else’s child to go away and for quite a while I over-compensated with him emotionally; my mom straightened me out on that. A little while ago I found myself, quite seriously, explaining to My husband why Luke was going to be tall. Mid-explanation I realized that his height and physical characteristics had and would never have anything to do with us. But in every other way, he is our child and we could not love him more if he was biologically ours, In fact we believe we love him more because we chose each other on that beautiful Wednesday afternoon a week before Christmas.