Second best?

I have noticed in preparing to adopt, my perceptions of things have altered drastically. For example, I realized the other day I no longer wonder what it would be like to be pregnant. It seems very foreign and even outlandish to me now. What? You mean being interrogated by a social worker, filling out mountains of paperwork, and rushing to the mailbox every day to see if USCIS has doled out your biometrics appointment yet isn’t how babies are brought into your family? That’s crazy talk! That is how my baby is arriving!

I read a story the other day about a couple who had to put their adoption plans on hold because they had unexpectedly become pregnant. Due to age spacing, any good agency (in my opinion) will tell you you need to postpone your adoption plans at such an event, until there are adequate years between the kiddos. In fact, if you are planning on international, most countries have laws restricting how close in age your children can be. My heart absolutely broke for her, and I was shocked at how strong my reaction to this story was. She (and I for her) were of course happy for her pregnancy, but no one understood her mourning for their could-have-been adopted child. After thinking about it for quite awhile, I think this is the reason I become so upset about it: By not letting her mourn for the loss of her to-be-adopted child, is to say that the adopted child was ‘second best’ to a biological child. Why mourn when you are getting the ‘real thing!’ is what it says to me, whether that was intentional or not.

This horror of the idea of my child being thought of as second best to a biological child chills me straight to the bone. Although I readily admit adoption was not our first thought when Brad and I decided we wanted children, it is by no means our ‘second choice’. Infertility factors may have helped open our eyes to this process, but it did not decide it for us.