“Mommy, can I have a brother or sister that doesn’t have epilepsy?” Jackson, Age 5. Knife meet heart.

Miguel will tell you that it took us more time to choose the tile for our new master bathroom than it did to decide to move forward with adoption. But that’s not entirely true. If you’ve been following our family’s journey for awhile now (“Family planning”, “I love babies”) you know that adding to our family has been a discussion in the background for years - long before Adelaide left us. I spent the last year trying to convince myself that our physical family of three was enough - but we all knew something was missing; and not just Adelaide. She left a void that cannot be filled or replaced; a space that will only ever be hers and hers alone. This was something else.

“Mommy, I know I can’t have a brother or sister because they could be sick like Adelaide but I really wish I could.” Jackson, Age 7.

At first we tried to compensate for this additional missing piece with a new puppy. We love Sriracha, (most of the time) but she was most definitely not the solution. Meanwhile, Jackson just kept getting inexplicably older and I started to feel like we were running out of time. With each passing month I could feel the age difference between Jackson and a new baby growing wider and wider. But… what if we didn’t have a baby? I mean, not for nothing, Adelaide had essentially been an infant for four years - we’re good. 

“Mommy, could we adopt a brother or sister?” Jackson, Age 8.

It wasn’t as if we hadn’t considered adoption - we absolutely had. But adoption comes with its own terrifying risks. I’ve watched as a dear friend has been matched multiple times only to have the pregnant mother change her mind. But if we were no longer looking for a baby, then surely that would be simpler? After all, isn’t the foster care system overrun with children looking for homes? Well, not exactly. I came to discover that American foster care’s goal is NOT foster-to-adopt, but instead foster-to-reunite. The thought of welcoming a child into our hearts for an undetermined amount of time and then just hoping that the birth parents screw up enough to have their parental rights terminated and then hoping that no other family member steps forward to claim guardianship - is just a little too much for this already grieving family to take. 

OF COURSE there are plenty of fostering stories that end in loving adoption but that doesn’t negate the very real risks, and when it comes to adding to our family, history has made us definitively risk averse.

“Kelly, you are going to get a new baby brother! He isn’t going to come from Mommy’s tummy and he won’t look like us, but we will love him and he will be our family.” My mom, age 33.

My brother had almost been adopted from Korea. My mother had endometriosis and did not think she would be able to get pregnant again - and then she did. She would have gladly taken the child from Korea and the miracle child growing in her tummy but the adoption agency wouldn’t allow it. Even having been presented with the international adoption option as a child, it was still foreign to me. In the decades since the 1980’s, international adoptions have become less common and I just didn’t know anyone who had gone this route. But as I started to research the process and agencies, as I found people online who had been through the process and then graciously accepted their offers to chat on the phone - I began to feel a seed of hope. 

Maybe, just maybe, this was where we could find that missing piece.

Which brings me back to Miguel’s and my ‘quick’ decision to move forward. I spent a day sorting through the international adoption agencies in our state, and then scheduled a call with my top contender. One 30-minute call later, Miguel and I had exhausted our preliminary questions and sat on our bed discussing the nuts and bolts: ie. finances, logistics, timing. 

“I think we do it.” Miguel, age 44.

“Me too — Wait, did we just decide to adopt a child?” Me, age 39.

And that is how years of wanting, thinking, researching and dreaming boiled down to one very big but exceedingly easy decision. If all goes according to plan, by this time next year Jackson’s wish will come true and he will have a new brother or sister - or maybe two. (wait, what?!)

To be continued…