Show notes
As I prepared for our 200th(!!!) episode of the podcast, I realized that I hadn't completely shared a huge part of my story with you. You may already know that I’m an adoptive mom. Today, I’m going deeper and sharing my infertility and adoption story.
I sometimes talk about my journey as arriving through the back door of motherhood. In this episode, I’m talking about how I experienced infertility, why we chose adoption, and how that informed me as a mom, ultimately becoming a trauma-informed parent.
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My hope is that if you have experienced infertility, this episode gives a voice to your pain and a place for you to feel supported and loved. If you have not experienced infertility, I hope that hearing my story might help you have more understanding and compassion for your girlfriends or family members that are going through it.
My Infertility Story
After a few years of marriage (I married young at 22), it became clear to me that I really wanted to become a mom. Sometime in 2001 or 2002, my husband and I started trying to get pregnant. For the first few months, I didn’t think much of it when my period kept coming.
Six or seven months in, I wasn’t super concerned but thought it was a bit strange that I wasn’t pregnant yet. So I started the ovulation strips, the basal thermometer, and all those little at-home hacks to increase our chances.
A year went by, and I still wasn’t pregnant. During this time, I was pretty sad. In the beginning, I was so excited for my friends when they got pregnant. But as time went on and it became more evident that maybe it wasn't going to happen for us, I started to feel jealous, scared, and less than. It triggered insecurities and feelings from my childhood of not belonging.
At the one-year mark, we decided to go to the doctor and have some testing done. Our results showed that we would need some interventions if we wanted to get pregnant. The obvious answer at the time was IVF.
I knew a few people who were going through IVF, and I was hearing about how much it cost and how devastating it was if it didn’t work. So, we decided to consider ALL of our options.
After getting our test results, we weren’t closed off to the idea of adoption. In fact, I think there was a part of us that always sort of wanted to adopt. We just thought it would be in addition to our own biological kids.
The options were laid out to us in two paths: the medical route or the adoption route. At first, I told my husband that I wanted to pursue both at the same time.
Our Adoption Journey
As we started to look at adoption, I was clear on one thing. I did not want to adopt through foster care. I was so desperate for this child, and I wanted a baby that could be mine. While I now know that this isn’t the risk factor I thought it was, I was so afraid that our relationship would be insecure, that a birth mother could come back and take my child away.
So we decided on inter-country adoption. At the time, our main options were Russia, China, and Guatemala. We attended an adoption seminar and learned about the process, costs, and wait times. Russia seemed the most aligned for us in that we could have a baby in about nine months. It felt like the most natural timeline to me.
We realized pretty quickly that both IVF and adoption required a lot of time, money, and energy. We had to choose one.
When I have a big decision to make or I'm in a lot of emotional pain, I often end up on the shore, by the ocean. So after the seminar, my husband and I drove to Santa Monica, sat on the beach, and talked about it.
We both wanted to pursue adoption for different reasons. Kevin wasn’t super invested in having a biological child. And I wanted a sure thing. I didn’t want to go through round after round of IVF. We decided to adopt.
Adoption requires a lot from the parents. If you get pregnant and have a baby, you take it home and that’s that. With adoption, you’re evaluated on:
- Your home
- Psychological testing
- Financial stability
- Your fitness as a parent
- Your marriage, religion, and values
- Whether you believe in spanking or time outs
They call it a paper pregnancy, and you essentially have about 100 pages of documents describing everything about your life, home, finances, etc.
It’s so intimate, like having someone look under the hood of your life and then decide whether you're good enough or not. You have to prove that you are worthy of adopting a baby. It was really hard. I knew that I was a good person, but it also brought up a lot of information, insecurity, and pain.
I felt very alone during that time. I didn't really have anyone else in my life who was going through it. And I also didn't know how to deal with the pain of watching my friends have baby showers, give birth, and have newborns. They were afraid to share their joy with me because they knew I was in so much pain.
Once our dossier was complete (and translated into Russian), we sent it over there and were added to the list to be matched with a baby. The youngest a baby could be adopted at that time was five months old, so we thought we’d get a baby around five or six months old. While we were waiting, Russia changed the rule to eight months old. We got stuck in this transition, and it took much longer to get matched than we expected.
When I was waiting and so, so sad, wanting to be a mom so bad, our social worker said to me, “You know, Darlynn, you are gonna be matched with the right kid for you. No one ever thinks, ‘Oh, this is the wrong kid for me. I should have gotten the kid three months ago or three months from now.’” And I knew she was right.
But I still had to wait. The best way I can describe it is that a piece of me was missing. I felt so much despair. And I could not wait for this baby to come into our life.
In February of 2005, we got matched with our son, Lincoln. It was a really amazing experience. We got a photo of him and knew that he was ours. We flew to Russia and went to court to file for adoption. We went to his orphanage, met him in person, and signed off that we agreed to adopt this baby.
And then we had to leave again. It was so painful to see him and then leave to wait for a court date. It’s like meeting your child and then leaving them at the hospital and not being able to go visit. We also knew that we were leaving him in poverty, neglect, and malnutrition. I couldn’t do anything about it. We had to get on an airplane, fly back home, and wait the two weeks until our court date. But two weeks went by, and we were still waiting. Eight weeks passed between the time we met Lincoln and our court date. Then another 10-day waiting period. It took four months from being matched to taking him home with us.
Finally, he was ours. We went through the visa process, flew home, and I was a new mom to a one-year-old. Feeling like I missed out on the baby stage and that first year of his life has always been a bit hard and painful for me. But we bonded with him immediately. We loved him to pieces. He fit right into our family.
We started to go to mommy groups and play groups. I met a bunch of friends that I still have to this day. It was such a beautiful time of my life because I finally was a mom. I got there, and it was incredible and wonderful.
Within a year, we decided to do it again. The process was a little bit easier because we’d been through it before and knew what to expect. We thought it would take eight weeks for us to get matched with a baby again, but it happened almost immediately (like, within 3 days!). When we finally came home with Sawyer, he was also 12 months old.
The Early Years
Now, we have two kids. They’re 22 months apart and were adopted two years apart.
The transition with Sawyer was a bit harder. First of all, I already had a three-year-old at home, too. And we brought Sawyer home within just a couple months of deciding to have another kid.
It’s probably no surprise to you that having two little kids is intense. We now know that Lincoln has ADHD, but at the time, it was coming out as lots of energy, aggressive behavior, meltdowns, impulse control, and anger.
Around the time Lincoln was 4, I realized that his behavior was a little outside of normal, and I started to get support. I went to parenting classes, and I met Jeanette Yoffe, who changed the trajectory of my parenting forever. You’ll actually meet her on the podcast in a couple of weeks!
Through meeting her, I started to learn about trauma-informed parenting, to understand that feelings drive behavior, and to not take behavior so personally. I learned about emotional dysregulation, stress response, and how the nervous system works. My brain exploded in so many amazing ways because I could see a pathway for my family to heal.
Trauma-Informed Parenting
I realized that things were so outside the norm with my kids because Lincoln had ADDA, Sawyer had sensory processing disorders, and they both experienced a year of neglect living in Russian orphanages.
Nowhere in my education or preparation for becoming an adoptive mom was I taught the words trauma or trauma-informed or insecure attachment. There was no education about what I might experience by adopting a kid from a Russian orphanage.
I became a Calm Mama because I became a mom of kids who had experienced real trauma.
All of my training and everything I have learned has been because I wanted to parent these kids well and do right by them.
And everything I learn I share with you, because I believe that if we can practice compassionate parenting, if we can learn self regulation tools for ourselves and teach those skills to our kids, that any kid can benefit from that.
Where We Are Now
Now, both of my kids have a different relationship to adoption and to their story. We talk about it openly.
For the most part, they are both really adjusted to their stories. I make space for their loss when it comes up. I think as they grow, they'll discover more parts of themselves that may feel wounded or abandoned by the loss of their birth mother, birth father, and their birth country.
For me, having kids who don't look like me and don't look like each other has always been kind of interesting. I have grief. I have sadness over my own loss of the ability to have biological children, but I don't have any shame about being an adoptive parent. I’m grateful. And I hold both grief and gratitude tenderly.
I'm really grateful that I have these specific children that I have. I know that would only have happened through this infertility and adoption story.
I feel grateful for you for listening, for caring about me, for allowing me to tell my story and share some tender things with you.
And if you experienced infertility or you are going through infertility right now and you just want some support, please feel free to reach out.
I want to leave you with this bit of encouragement: Whatever happens in your life, whatever pain you go through - even when it feels unbearable, like it's going to sweep you under and drown you - you are really strong. You can handle it. You can pivot. You can always find a new normal and a new place of peace.
Lots of love to you, Mama.
Resources:
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