Infertility

Adoption and assisted reproduction have a lot in common!

Like any newly married young couple, we (Nazima and Riyad) loved to dream about the next stages our life together. We enjoyed the strong

In our “Perspectives” series, we examine adoption in other places, other cultures, and other times. By widening our lens, we hope to open our minds and develop a deeper understanding of ourselves, each other, and our roles in the world of adoption. Would you like to write about adoption from a historical or cultural perspective? Contact us at editor@bcadoption.com.

If you see any of these signs in your relationship before you adopt a child, work through the problems together or get a good counsellor.

Within our first year of being married, my husband and I knew that building our family may come by way of adoption.

I suffered from debilitating but undiagnosed pain, and doctors raised the possibility of a hysterectomy. It took another 14 years of pain and failed attempts to conceive before I found a doctor who finally diagnosed me with endometriosis.

A timeline of one youth’s life from adoption, through foster care, and into independence, as told to Mary Caros.

Author’s note: This account started out as an interview with a youth as a way to allow her to give voice to her life experience. There is more to this story—and more to all of our life histories— than one person’s subjective experience. Our recollection of life events are often affected by the time and space in which we remember them. This young woman may tell her story quite differently five years from now.

Donor conception–a type of adoption?

As a donor-conceived person, I have used the phrase “half adopted,” because for some of us donor-conceived people that is how we see our family situation. In the classical sense of donor conception (DC), we have one parent who is biologically related to us and another who is not. In essence, this non-biological parent is in fact agreeing to raise and care for a child who has been conceived by their partner and another person. In effect, they are agreeing to adopt this child as their own.

As a mother of two adopted adult children, I had been going to the Forget Me Not Family Society (FMNFS) meetings in Cloverdale for over a year, and I thought I knew about Moms (birthmoms) and adoptees. My sister Bernadette was forced to give her baby to what society told her was a “better family” because she was given no support to keep her precious little newborn.

Sarah Reid is a happy adoptive mom, but she's fed up with well-meaning friends who assume she can't cope with other people's preganancies.

I'm happy you're pregnant! I'm not jealous. Not jealous at all. Really!

When I was a kid, I always knew I’d grow up and get married and have babies. Granted, I thought it would be through pregnancy first and adoption later on, but things happened this way for a reason. I’ve got my baby boy and all I see is joy. Adoption wasn’t an alternative—it was our path.

So why, why, why, are people walking on eggshells?

I don't have any regrets about how my wife, Tina, and I went through the adoption process. But there are three things that would have made a difference if I had known them beforehand.

Bad Advice

Firstly, I wish I had known that so many people would give advice and yet have no real understanding of the issues. It seemed that everyone had his or her own ideas and thoughts on our situation. When Tina and I found out I was infertile, we experienced a great deal of emotional pain, and we didn't know who to share our burden with.