After our first failed (known) egg donor cycle in Brisbane, Australia, we found ourselves in a low place. Not quite as low as after our third miscarriage (ectopic pregnancy) in 2007 but almost as bad. We had finally accepted egg donation after years of coming to terms with my premature ovarian failure, however, it now seemed that I may not even be able to get pregnant with or carry a baby to term with egg donation due to my completely shite uterine lining.
Plan A- have our own child through aggressive IVF using my eggs had failed.
Plan B - have a child through a known egg donor family member had recently failed.
We now had to look at Plan C - parenthood through adoption.
I had negative feelings about adoption….. At the risk of offending all the wonderful adoptive parents out there who I am in awe of, adoption seemed like the last resort….something a couple turn to only where all attempts at IVF have failed. Or else adoption is for where a couple already have genetic children and genuinely want to give a disadvantaged child a stable and loving home. My feelings about adoption being a last, and least desirable, course of action were mostly due to initial inquiries we had made about adoption in Ireland in 2007 after our ectopic pregnancy.
Plan A- have our own child through aggressive IVF using my eggs had failed.
Plan B - have a child through a known egg donor family member had recently failed.
We now had to look at Plan C - parenthood through adoption.
I had negative feelings about adoption….. At the risk of offending all the wonderful adoptive parents out there who I am in awe of, adoption seemed like the last resort….something a couple turn to only where all attempts at IVF have failed. Or else adoption is for where a couple already have genetic children and genuinely want to give a disadvantaged child a stable and loving home. My feelings about adoption being a last, and least desirable, course of action were mostly due to initial inquiries we had made about adoption in Ireland in 2007 after our ectopic pregnancy.
The Health Service Executive (HSE) is the government agency that assesses and approves all couples in Ireland to adopt either domestically or from overseas. However, I had discovered that if you were Protestant it was slightly quicker (than if you went through the HSE) to apply to a protestant adoption agency called PACT, who were licensed by the HSE to train and approve couples for adoption. We had filled out copious application forms back in 2007 and attended a long information session one weekday afternoon in 2007. The women from PACT ('PACT Ladies') that ran this session went on and on - information overload- without the courtesy of stopping for a quick toilet break in the 3 + hours they had us trapped in their room. The whole session was dis-spirting - in fact, it bordered on cruelty, as the PACT Ladies at the front of the room told everyone that they 'could not and should not' apply for approval to adopt if still undergoing 'infertility investigations' (the PACT Ladies did not seem able to bring themselves to say IVF or perhaps did not know what the term meant, so always referred to 'infertility investigations'). A woman attending the session, clearly by herself, and seated in front of DH and I, burst out crying after hearing the PACT Ladies pronouncement and put her hand up to speak. She explained that she was currently on a public waiting list to access IVF treatment through the HSE, which would take some time; why could she not also join the waiting list to adopt in the meantime if things did not work out with the IVF? PACT Ladies' response: adoption training experience is very stressful and in their learned opinion, 'couples did not have the strength to do both "infertility investigations" and adoption assessment' at the same time. The PACT Ladies* seemed to take a perverse pleasure in telling the audience of desperate childless people that adoption was an arduous process; and that multiple "sending" countries, such as Russia and Ethiopia would no longer be available to Irish couples after the Government ratified the Hague convention and that it was a statistical fact that many of us would drop out of the process because it took so long and was so tough (they imparted this information with a smug smile on their faces). The session left DH and I with a negative outlook on adoption. We decided to ask to suspend our application whilst we pursued IVF from 2007 onwards. We only got back in contact with PACT on 5 December 2009 in order to re-activate our application for approval to adopt after our failed IVF in Barcelona.
[* I since have heard anecdotes from various people that the adoption course moderators employed by the HSE do not behave any better i.e. display the same lack of empathy and insensitivity when presenting adoption information and training sessions, so in fairness to PACT, it goes with the territory to treat the infertile community with contempt….]
On 13 January 2010 (before we left to do IVF in Brisbane), I completed updated forms for PACT relating to our income, assets, jobs and provided current P60s. Full medical assessments, child welfare and police clearances for every jurisdiction we ever both lived in would also be required (no mean feat considering I had grown up in Australia and lived in the UK and DH had lived in the USA and Italy for a time). The application forms required that we list every single doctor that we had ever consulted for "infertility investigations" and required that we sign an unlimited and wide consent to PACT obtaining all of our medical records. I had to list the dates and stages of all the miscarriages I had suffered and which hospitals and consultants I attended. This information was required despite the fact that there is no legal requirement for a couple to be medically infertile in order to be entitled to adopt under Irish law - something that grated upon me and that I felt was a terrible invasion of my privacy. After we had completed the adoption preparation course, we would then have to wait for the appointment of a social worker to our case so that a home study could be undertaken. A social worker would come into our home and interview DH and I together and apart, look around our home and also interview our referees. A home study would be finalized when the social worker submitted a report saying whether you had met with their expectations (or otherwise) as prospective adoptive parents. All of this information was required merely for permission from the Irish Adoption Authority to adopt a child - the Adoption Authority was not tasked with helping us make a match with a potential child for adoption. That would be a whole different obstacle to deal with once we got the stamped piece of paper from Ireland allowing to proceed to start searching for a child overseas. It had been explained to us that it was pretty pointless to investigate Irish domestic adoptions as a handful of Irish children were legally adopted each year - sometimes the numbers were in single figures - and these adoptions were usually inter-family adoptions.
We were advised that we had been accepted into an adoption preparation course to be run by PACT on 10 February 2010. We viewed starting the course as a positive step, after our failed egg donor cycle, and were quietly hopeful that finally something concrete was happening. I had recently joined the Mexican Adoption Support Group and was madly researching countries that were open to Ireland for adoption placements, such as Russia and Ethiopia. A month earlier, on 12 January 2010, a catastrophic earthquake had struck in Haiti, a country that DH had visited the previous year to do volunteer building work with an Irish charity. The large number of children that the earthquake had left without any family to raise them led to media speculation that countries like Ireland would be able to arrange for a bilateral adoption agreement (unfortunately, this has taken some years and only now, as I write, does it seem even probable that Haiti may become a 'sending country' to Ireland). DH had visited a Haitian orphanage in 2009 and was shocked and moved by the lovely children he met there. We had talked about being able to give one or more of those children a home, but the problem with adoption was the bureaucracy and roadblocks put in both adoptive parents and adoptive children's paths. To be clear, my negative feelings about adoption at this time were largely based on the lengthy and non-transparent process involved - I had no doubt that I could love and bond with a child that needed a mother but whether I had the strength to wait 5 years to be matched with one, after battling infertility for 6 years, was another question altogether. However, my resentment of the bureaucracy and drawn-out requirements was somewhat naive - by the end of the adoption preparation course, I was able to grudgingly acknowledge that the course content was somewhat justified. If nothing else, the HSE (and agencies like PACT) could never be accused of failing to prepare prospective adoptive parents for the daunting reality of inter-country adoption. Every single negative circumstance that might arise was presented to attendees in impressive detail.
We commenced the first of 6 sessions of adoption training at PACT's offices on a weekday on 31 March 2010. Like us, all of the other couples (4 in total) had to arrange for 6 full days away from their jobs for every second Wednesday from end of March until the end of May. Of the 4 other couples attending the course, it soon became apparent that only 1 other couple were infertile and childless (we ended up becoming good friends with this couple - we bonded over the trying nature of the sessions we attended together and are friends to this day). Information about your status as parents or otherwise was openly communicated in a round circle compulsory discussion on the first day - the whole thing had the look of 'group therapy' that I had seen in so many American movies. There was no such thing as privacy or the discretion to hold back any key facts. We were told that anything we communicated in the sessions was meant to be treated as anonymous and private by fellow attendees but we were not asked to sign any confidentiality agreement and we were trusting other couples to honor the spirit of that understanding. 3 couples all had at least one genetic and naturally conceived child. One couple even had 2 natural children and smugly declared to everyone, just so we were in no doubt - that they had absolutely no problems conceiving - indeed, they were always fertile - it is just that that had been so lucky in their lives and were financially comfortable, so "they felt they wanted to give something back….". This couple looked like they were in their mid to late 40s. Naturally, I took a set against them, being the bitter infertile that I am! They were so pious, judgmental and clearly had not suffered any form of loss in their sheltered lives. Everything they said was so insensitive and clueless. Including when the Annoying Woman from this couple raised her hand and asked how she should complete her medical assessment questionnaire form, when she was "in perfect health" and there was not a "thing wrong with her fertility-wise…." For all she knew there could have been cancer survivors in the room with her, but she never thought nor cared about other peoples' feelings. It also irked me enormously that DH and I along with the other infertile couple in the course (the only 2 couples that were under 40) would have to compete with these couples for any referral to adopt, should we choose the same country to pursue as any of them. I felt they were greedy and should leave adoption to those who were childless.
I found the first adoption preparation session particularly upsetting, as I thought I would be amongst fellow infertile couples. I burst out crying during the first group session and had to leave for 10 minutes to get my emotions under control. I also felt depressed that we were at Plan C - this was really it - adoption - it was all that was left - so I better start taking it seriously. There was no allowance made for past pregnancy loss or any grief you were bringing into the process so it was best to put that all away. The first session at PACT was introductory and focused on how few countries were available to adopt from in the new post-Hague Convention world. Ratification of the Hague Convention on Intercountry adoption meant that the focus when placing children with adoptive parents should be to keep them in their country of origin. This seemed to mean that overseas adoptive parents, would only be considered for older and most likely, special needs children. There had many many controversies over adoptions from Vietnam, Cambodia and Guatemala in previous years, including allegations that babies had been part of child trafficking operations and taken from their mothers under duress or by fraud. The Hague Convention was aimed at eliminating private adoptions where large sums of money could be exchanged by desperate adoptive parents for placement with a young healthy baby. All admirable goals - but we failed to see how it assisted desperately poor children languishing in orphanages in countries that would never have the legal infrastructure to become 'Hague compliant'. Yes..... it is important to keep as many children as humanly possible in their country of origin, but where the country of origin is endemically poor and the majority of its citizens undernourished and uneducated, which is the lesser evil? Foreign adoption or intergenerational grinding poverty and disadvantage…..or perhaps worse....
Domestic adoptions were virtually unheard of in Ireland for non-relatives of an Irish child and typically number around 10 or less per year. A woman I worked with who grew up in social housing in inner-city Dublin told me that she thought a woman who gave a child up for adoption was viewed particularly harshly by working-class Dubliners and far more so than a woman who had a termination. Happily, adoption in relatively wealthy countries like Ireland, the UK and Australia is no longer necessary due to the success of social welfare programs. I learnt that most domestic adoptions that have occurred to strangers in Ireland in the past years have been through Eastern European birth mothers who work and live in Ireland and give up their babies here.
The second adoption training session was all about attachment and the effects of institutionalization on a child. We were forced to watch an archaic video from the 1960s about "John" who is left in home care for week while his mother goes into hospital - this video is infamous amongst adoptive parents - everyone remembers how upsetting it was to watch a little toddler pine for his mother (what significance the film has in the context of adoption is questionable…..) The third session was about loss - pretty heavy - well, devastating really…..about a child's grief for the loss of their natural birth parents, the grief an adoptive couple have over losing a genetic connection with their own family by not being able to have a child naturally and the loss of identity that occurs when a child is adopted into a completely different race and culture from that from which they came. There was a huge emphasis on difference and belonging and the importance of being able to support your adoptive child as they struggled with identity issues. Coping with racial discrimination was also inevitably touched upon - issues such as how you would answer stranger's questions when out shopping with your African or South American or Asian-looking adopted child. Racial diversity and potential discrimination did not overly daunt me, as I grew up in a multi-cultural Australia. However, this session posed one of the hardest question of all - that of wealth and poverty and issues of justice. How do you explain to your adopted child that you are their mother and that they live with you only because their birth mother (and father) were so poor that they were compelled to give you up? The PACT Ladies had no easy answer to that question. The 'grief of the birth mother' component of the sessions particularly troubled me. After losing three of my own unborn babies, I did not like the idea of taking another's woman's child away from her just so my loss could be somehow equalized and that I could experience parenthood. It seemed unfair. I offered the opinion, which was not appreciated in the group session, that in a truly just world, first world couples would 'sponsor' or financially support a poor mother in a third world country so that she got to keep and raise her own child…..
Whilst most of the topics during the adoption course were expected, we found the fourth session on 12 May 2010, a real turning point personally. This session was a more detailed look at medical issues arising from children being institutionalized in orphanages for many years before placement and focused on the reality of things like foetal alcohol disorder, sensory processing disorder and other developmental conditions. We were made to watch a BBC documentary on orphanages in Romania which contained very distressing footage of soiled children tied to cots and interviews with some British couples who had gone to Romania to 'save' these children. One British couple had an adopted son from Romania who presented symptoms akin to those of severe autism. This couple were exhausted and heartbroken despite doing everything within their power to battle for a better life (and the best medical treatment) for their son. The mother said that in hindsight the decision to adopt their son had destroyed their lives and their marriage….she very bravely confessed that she and her husband would have divorced by now, if only they had the time or energy to go about making the practical arrangements. The video really hit home to me - this couple would have had a better quality of life had they chosen to remain childless. When asked to give our impression of the video in our group circle afterwards - I shared this thought. Annoying Woman's husband immediately shot me down, crying out "how can you say such a thing?! they saved that little boy from that orphanage….." I responded by saying that I was entitled to express my opinion and was actually only repeating the words of the British woman herself from the interview …..even the PACT Lady convening the session nodded in agreement with me when I said, "they would have been better if they had never adopted….it destroyed their lives".
But what was more important to DH and I than the video on Romanian orphans and changed our plan of action, was that the goal of the new Adoption Act of 2010 was that more and more, the children being adopted by Irish couples would have special needs….the focus on new born babies or even toddlers being adopted was diminishing and the message from the HSE was clear……are you prepared for this? …..for being truly selfless and sacrificing your life for your adopted child? I was not sure I was, let alone DH. It was one thing to take the normal odds of birth defects or devastating genetic conditions when having a child the natural way, or even ever so slightly higher odds with IVF, but with adoption….it now seemed that medical problems of some sort were likely to be inevitable…..
In the same week that we down-heartedly trudged off to our fourth adoption preparation session, we became aware that a surrogacy agency from the USA, Circle Surrogacy, were going to be attending Dublin to host an information night about surrogacy in the USA……It seemed a no-brainer to me to investigate this ….and I showed the information on the evening to the other couple we had be-friended in our adoption training. Surrogacy increasingly seemed the only logical course of action for us…and dare I say it, a new Plan C.
We were advised that we had been accepted into an adoption preparation course to be run by PACT on 10 February 2010. We viewed starting the course as a positive step, after our failed egg donor cycle, and were quietly hopeful that finally something concrete was happening. I had recently joined the Mexican Adoption Support Group and was madly researching countries that were open to Ireland for adoption placements, such as Russia and Ethiopia. A month earlier, on 12 January 2010, a catastrophic earthquake had struck in Haiti, a country that DH had visited the previous year to do volunteer building work with an Irish charity. The large number of children that the earthquake had left without any family to raise them led to media speculation that countries like Ireland would be able to arrange for a bilateral adoption agreement (unfortunately, this has taken some years and only now, as I write, does it seem even probable that Haiti may become a 'sending country' to Ireland). DH had visited a Haitian orphanage in 2009 and was shocked and moved by the lovely children he met there. We had talked about being able to give one or more of those children a home, but the problem with adoption was the bureaucracy and roadblocks put in both adoptive parents and adoptive children's paths. To be clear, my negative feelings about adoption at this time were largely based on the lengthy and non-transparent process involved - I had no doubt that I could love and bond with a child that needed a mother but whether I had the strength to wait 5 years to be matched with one, after battling infertility for 6 years, was another question altogether. However, my resentment of the bureaucracy and drawn-out requirements was somewhat naive - by the end of the adoption preparation course, I was able to grudgingly acknowledge that the course content was somewhat justified. If nothing else, the HSE (and agencies like PACT) could never be accused of failing to prepare prospective adoptive parents for the daunting reality of inter-country adoption. Every single negative circumstance that might arise was presented to attendees in impressive detail.
We commenced the first of 6 sessions of adoption training at PACT's offices on a weekday on 31 March 2010. Like us, all of the other couples (4 in total) had to arrange for 6 full days away from their jobs for every second Wednesday from end of March until the end of May. Of the 4 other couples attending the course, it soon became apparent that only 1 other couple were infertile and childless (we ended up becoming good friends with this couple - we bonded over the trying nature of the sessions we attended together and are friends to this day). Information about your status as parents or otherwise was openly communicated in a round circle compulsory discussion on the first day - the whole thing had the look of 'group therapy' that I had seen in so many American movies. There was no such thing as privacy or the discretion to hold back any key facts. We were told that anything we communicated in the sessions was meant to be treated as anonymous and private by fellow attendees but we were not asked to sign any confidentiality agreement and we were trusting other couples to honor the spirit of that understanding. 3 couples all had at least one genetic and naturally conceived child. One couple even had 2 natural children and smugly declared to everyone, just so we were in no doubt - that they had absolutely no problems conceiving - indeed, they were always fertile - it is just that that had been so lucky in their lives and were financially comfortable, so "they felt they wanted to give something back….". This couple looked like they were in their mid to late 40s. Naturally, I took a set against them, being the bitter infertile that I am! They were so pious, judgmental and clearly had not suffered any form of loss in their sheltered lives. Everything they said was so insensitive and clueless. Including when the Annoying Woman from this couple raised her hand and asked how she should complete her medical assessment questionnaire form, when she was "in perfect health" and there was not a "thing wrong with her fertility-wise…." For all she knew there could have been cancer survivors in the room with her, but she never thought nor cared about other peoples' feelings. It also irked me enormously that DH and I along with the other infertile couple in the course (the only 2 couples that were under 40) would have to compete with these couples for any referral to adopt, should we choose the same country to pursue as any of them. I felt they were greedy and should leave adoption to those who were childless.
I found the first adoption preparation session particularly upsetting, as I thought I would be amongst fellow infertile couples. I burst out crying during the first group session and had to leave for 10 minutes to get my emotions under control. I also felt depressed that we were at Plan C - this was really it - adoption - it was all that was left - so I better start taking it seriously. There was no allowance made for past pregnancy loss or any grief you were bringing into the process so it was best to put that all away. The first session at PACT was introductory and focused on how few countries were available to adopt from in the new post-Hague Convention world. Ratification of the Hague Convention on Intercountry adoption meant that the focus when placing children with adoptive parents should be to keep them in their country of origin. This seemed to mean that overseas adoptive parents, would only be considered for older and most likely, special needs children. There had many many controversies over adoptions from Vietnam, Cambodia and Guatemala in previous years, including allegations that babies had been part of child trafficking operations and taken from their mothers under duress or by fraud. The Hague Convention was aimed at eliminating private adoptions where large sums of money could be exchanged by desperate adoptive parents for placement with a young healthy baby. All admirable goals - but we failed to see how it assisted desperately poor children languishing in orphanages in countries that would never have the legal infrastructure to become 'Hague compliant'. Yes..... it is important to keep as many children as humanly possible in their country of origin, but where the country of origin is endemically poor and the majority of its citizens undernourished and uneducated, which is the lesser evil? Foreign adoption or intergenerational grinding poverty and disadvantage…..or perhaps worse....
Domestic adoptions were virtually unheard of in Ireland for non-relatives of an Irish child and typically number around 10 or less per year. A woman I worked with who grew up in social housing in inner-city Dublin told me that she thought a woman who gave a child up for adoption was viewed particularly harshly by working-class Dubliners and far more so than a woman who had a termination. Happily, adoption in relatively wealthy countries like Ireland, the UK and Australia is no longer necessary due to the success of social welfare programs. I learnt that most domestic adoptions that have occurred to strangers in Ireland in the past years have been through Eastern European birth mothers who work and live in Ireland and give up their babies here.
The second adoption training session was all about attachment and the effects of institutionalization on a child. We were forced to watch an archaic video from the 1960s about "John" who is left in home care for week while his mother goes into hospital - this video is infamous amongst adoptive parents - everyone remembers how upsetting it was to watch a little toddler pine for his mother (what significance the film has in the context of adoption is questionable…..) The third session was about loss - pretty heavy - well, devastating really…..about a child's grief for the loss of their natural birth parents, the grief an adoptive couple have over losing a genetic connection with their own family by not being able to have a child naturally and the loss of identity that occurs when a child is adopted into a completely different race and culture from that from which they came. There was a huge emphasis on difference and belonging and the importance of being able to support your adoptive child as they struggled with identity issues. Coping with racial discrimination was also inevitably touched upon - issues such as how you would answer stranger's questions when out shopping with your African or South American or Asian-looking adopted child. Racial diversity and potential discrimination did not overly daunt me, as I grew up in a multi-cultural Australia. However, this session posed one of the hardest question of all - that of wealth and poverty and issues of justice. How do you explain to your adopted child that you are their mother and that they live with you only because their birth mother (and father) were so poor that they were compelled to give you up? The PACT Ladies had no easy answer to that question. The 'grief of the birth mother' component of the sessions particularly troubled me. After losing three of my own unborn babies, I did not like the idea of taking another's woman's child away from her just so my loss could be somehow equalized and that I could experience parenthood. It seemed unfair. I offered the opinion, which was not appreciated in the group session, that in a truly just world, first world couples would 'sponsor' or financially support a poor mother in a third world country so that she got to keep and raise her own child…..
Whilst most of the topics during the adoption course were expected, we found the fourth session on 12 May 2010, a real turning point personally. This session was a more detailed look at medical issues arising from children being institutionalized in orphanages for many years before placement and focused on the reality of things like foetal alcohol disorder, sensory processing disorder and other developmental conditions. We were made to watch a BBC documentary on orphanages in Romania which contained very distressing footage of soiled children tied to cots and interviews with some British couples who had gone to Romania to 'save' these children. One British couple had an adopted son from Romania who presented symptoms akin to those of severe autism. This couple were exhausted and heartbroken despite doing everything within their power to battle for a better life (and the best medical treatment) for their son. The mother said that in hindsight the decision to adopt their son had destroyed their lives and their marriage….she very bravely confessed that she and her husband would have divorced by now, if only they had the time or energy to go about making the practical arrangements. The video really hit home to me - this couple would have had a better quality of life had they chosen to remain childless. When asked to give our impression of the video in our group circle afterwards - I shared this thought. Annoying Woman's husband immediately shot me down, crying out "how can you say such a thing?! they saved that little boy from that orphanage….." I responded by saying that I was entitled to express my opinion and was actually only repeating the words of the British woman herself from the interview …..even the PACT Lady convening the session nodded in agreement with me when I said, "they would have been better if they had never adopted….it destroyed their lives".
But what was more important to DH and I than the video on Romanian orphans and changed our plan of action, was that the goal of the new Adoption Act of 2010 was that more and more, the children being adopted by Irish couples would have special needs….the focus on new born babies or even toddlers being adopted was diminishing and the message from the HSE was clear……are you prepared for this? …..for being truly selfless and sacrificing your life for your adopted child? I was not sure I was, let alone DH. It was one thing to take the normal odds of birth defects or devastating genetic conditions when having a child the natural way, or even ever so slightly higher odds with IVF, but with adoption….it now seemed that medical problems of some sort were likely to be inevitable…..
In the same week that we down-heartedly trudged off to our fourth adoption preparation session, we became aware that a surrogacy agency from the USA, Circle Surrogacy, were going to be attending Dublin to host an information night about surrogacy in the USA……It seemed a no-brainer to me to investigate this ….and I showed the information on the evening to the other couple we had be-friended in our adoption training. Surrogacy increasingly seemed the only logical course of action for us…and dare I say it, a new Plan C.
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