Lorri Antosz Benson - Adopting Hope: Stories and Real Life Advice from Birthparents, Adoptive Parents, and Adoptees

With contributions from Anne Stark,

Kate Stark Knight, Mary Ellen Stark

McWilliams, and many others.

Copyright 2018 by Lorri Antosz Benson

All rights reserved.

Published by Familius LLC, www.familius.com

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Some names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals. Although the author and publisher have made every effort to ensure that the information in this book was correct at press time, the author and publisher do not assume and hereby disclaim any liability to any party for any loss, damage, or disruption caused by errors or omissions, whether such errors or omissions result from negligence, accident, or any other cause.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

2018937155

Print ISBN 9781641700368

Ebook ISBN 9781641700870

Printed in the United States of America

Edited by Leah Welker

Cover design by David Miles

Book design by inlinebooks

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

First Edition

Dedicated to

The Sistas, my four daughters:

Taryn, Taylor, Halli, and Kate.

Your tremendous abilities to love,

accept, celebrate, and embrace

each other are one of my

greatest gifts in life.

FOREWORD

NOT ALONE ANYMORE

Ana Rose OHalloran

Ana, age thirty-five, is the executive director of a nonprofit theatre in Los Angeles. She and her husband, Grant, have been married for five years and adopted their first child, Blaine, in June 2017 .

I have always known I wanted to be a mom. So, when I met Grant, it was upsetting to hear he didnt want children. I still remember us looking at each other awkwardly for the rest of our date. We had been dating about a month, and it was apparent to everyone, including me, that we were going to get married. However, Grant not wanting children was a deal breaker for me. Two days later, he called me and told me that he hadnt stopped thinking about our conversation. He told me he couldnt see a future without me and that if having children meant we could be together, then he wanted them too.

Grant and I are plannersto the extreme. Around the time that we met, he was in the process of buying a house. It ended up being the first house we lived in together, and while it was great for a couple starting out, we knew it wouldnt be big enough for us to start a family. We had our plan: get married, renovate our current house, buy a bigger house, and then start our family. So, after we got married we spent the next year completing renovations. Near the end of the renovations, we agreed the timing was right to start our family. This was the beginning of a three-year period of heartbreak after heartbreak.

For the first few months, I shrugged it off every time I realized that I wasnt pregnant. I tried to act as if it were not a big deal, because I knew that stress could affect the possibilities for the next month. I tried to look happy, and not jealous, as friend after friend told me they were going to have a baby. After the first six months, I started reading books and articles, and it seemed everyones advice for couples our age was to wait one year before going to a doctor. So, I became more diligent, taking my temperature every morning and tracking my ovulation. When that still didnt work, Grant and I agreed to see a fertility doctor. Based on everything we read, it seemed easier to run tests on Grant first, so we did.

We both assumed it was an issue with me. So, we were quite shocked when the doctor informed us that it was an issue with Grant. He suggested Grant be put on a fertility drug to try to increase our chances of getting pregnant. We followed the advice, but we were met with the same disappointment each month when we realized we still werent pregnant. The doctor then suggested I get tested too because he wasnt sure why this wasnt solving the problem.

I was scheduled for an HSG test. Luckily, I was really busy at work and didnt look online to see what this meant. I probably would have backed out if I had. The pain from this test was so intense that I almost passed out in the doctors office. I still remember crying to my mom on the phone, heading home afterward instead of to work where I had planned to go, questioning how I would ever have a baby if I couldnt even take the pain of this test. Then the other line started ringing, and it was the nurse, who informed me that the test showed I had something called a bicornuate uterus. She said while this didnt prevent me from getting pregnant, it significantly increased my risks of having a miscarriage if I did. I was devastated. I drove myself home, pulled the covers over my head, and sobbed my eyes out in bed for several hours until Grant came home.

We decided to go back to the doctor and come up with a new plan. The doctor let us know that after retesting Grant, the fertility drug had actually had the opposite effect that he had hoped. He recommended that we try IVF and that we both go on fertility drugs to increase our chances before it was too late. Neither of us was very excited by the idea of being on the fertility drugs at the same time, and theoretical conversations wed had of worst-case scenarios became a reality, crashing down on us.

We needed to decide how we wanted to move forward with starting our family. We had previously discussed adoption as an option, but more in the if we have more than one baby, it might be nice to adopt way. We talked for hours. We ruled out surrogacy, finding a sperm donor, and IVF as options for us. I cried more deeply than I have ever cried in my life during these conversations. I felt like part of my heart was dying, but by the end of the last discussion, we had our plan. We knew we wanted to move forward with adoption to create the family that we both so desperately wanted.

In some ways, I think we were lucky that our infertility journey took so long. During the adoption process, we kept being told that in order to successfully adopt, it was important that we fully mourn the loss of our biological children. I had already done that each time we received bad news from the doctor and, ultimately, on that last day, as I cried for my biological children who would never exist.

Grant and I got to work coming up with our plan for the adoption. We discussed so many things about our future childgender, race, age, medical background, and geographic preference. We decided to hire an adoption attorney to help us rather than going to an agency because we felt that was the better fit for us. We decided we didnt care if we had a boy or girl. We didnt care what race the baby was; we knew we wanted a newborn and that we wanted to adopt domestically. One of our biggest conversations was about the type of contact we wanted with our childs birthparents. I told Grant that I only wanted a closed adoption. My reasoning was that everyone I knew who was adopted didnt know their birthparents and seemed fine, and the thought of an open adoption just made me feel too vulnerable somehow.