Adoption

In contrast to when we first became parents, when we knew almost no one with kids, and to a couple of years ago, when we knew almost entirely straight families, we now have a fairly even mix of lesbian families and straight families in our group of friends. It's great! We're still searching for those elusive gay dads, so point them our way if anyone knows any!

Anyway, we have some good friends who are a lesbian couple and in our same position vis a vis how they came to have kids. In other words, one of them gestated and birthed one kid and the other of them did so for the second kid. One of them and I were chatting sometime recently about fertility and such and got to talking about adoption.

We both agreed that, had getting pregnant not come relatively easily for us, that we would have adopted, although I guess you never really know until you're in that situation. I've always felt pretty sure about that, though. Then, one of us said, "well, I guess we do have some experience with adoption, since we had to do it for kid #2." And then there was a pause as we both realized that we actually both HAVE adopted for real. As in, in the traditional sense of adopting a child that is in no way genetically related to us.

It was kind of shocking for both of us, because it really doesn't feel that way. In my mind, Natalia has always been mine and sometimes I forget that she didn't actually come out of my body. I sometimes think of the night she was born and holding her little foot while they were suctioning her and then being up nearly all night with her that night while Sacha recovered from the birth marathon (and of all the other moments we've shared over the past 16 months), and of how bonded I am to her. Then, I wonder about the people who ask us (infrequently, thankfully, but it's not uncommon) if we don't each love the child we gave birth to just a little bit more? Um, no.

Anyway, to me, (although I was and am exceedingly grateful to be able to adopt Natalia and be her legal parent) the adoption was more of an expensive legal technicality than anything else. So, it was a funny moment with our friend, going from discussing whether we would theoretically adopt or not to realizing that we already have!