Where Do Babies Come From?

"Where did you come from baby dear?

Out of the everywhere and into here"

--George MacDonald

 There's a loaded question if there ever was one.  "Where do babies come from?"  Of course we all know, but in November this question has a different meaning for some families. 

November is National Adoption Awareness Month.  Over 57,000 children were adopted via the foster care system in the US during 2009.  Close to 13,000 children were adopted internationally in the US during 2009.  The domestic figure does not include private adoptions, surrogacy or adoptions by family members.  Almost everyone knows someone who has adopted a child or whose family has been touched by the special journey that is adoption. 

Years ago, after giving birth to my first child, I got a glimpse of what adoption might be like.  We initially wanted to have children all close together, three or four, pop them out one after the other and get it all done.  Yes, well we all know what happens when man plans.  God laughs.  Eight years and lots of messy medical issues led us to consider adopting since we had been told by all the "best" medical experts that it was the only way. 

OK fine.  So we went through the homestudy process, and the Immigration process since we had decided on adopting from Korea.  Right about when the hard part of the process was over I wasn't feeling that well.  Turns out there was a reason for that.  We were amazed to learn that we would indeed have another child biologically.  Due date, 12/25/98.  Of course we put our adoption on hold to see what would develop.  

The baby we were told would never happen was born slightly before his due date.  I had been in touch with our adoption agency, and found, had I not gotten pregnant, we would already have had our baby in Korea placed with us. 

I couldn't help but think: "what if?"  And it being the Christmas season and being hormonally insane, when the movie "It's a Wonderful Life" came on TV I immediately decided that I simply must name this child George Bailey.  What if indeed! 

Isn't that the whole theme of that movie? What if there had been no George Bailey? For us, it was almost that way.  Somewhere there is a little Korean girl with a family that would not have her if George Bailey had not been born.  I'm certain this is how it was supposed to be.

This "what if" is so much a part of the adoption process for so many families and it always makes me remember what our social worker told us at the beginning of the adoption process:  "You will parent the children you are meant to have, regardless of how and when they come to you."   I did not get to experience all of what adoption can bring to a family, but through friends I did get to see some of the really cool parts of it. 

I stood at the airport one cold rainy night with a family I knew, and watched as a quiet, reserved Korean woman got off the plane holding a beautiful little girl all dressed in pink.  She handed this darling baby to the family amidst the cheers and applause of everyone in that terminal.  I have been at a dear friends childbirth, having been lucky enough to see my God Daughter emerge into the world and that was a phenomenal experience.

Yet standing in Logan airport and seeing one woman hand a child to another, bow and say "Good luck with your special daughter" was no less moving.  

Of course there are other parts of adoption that are not always picture perfect Kodak moments.  There is the heart wrenching pain of the birth parents, who face such a difficult choice.  There are sometimes the confused feelings of the adopted child about why they were placed for adoption, do they look anything like their birth parents? do they have other siblings?  Adoptive parents can even experience post adoption depression, very similar to post partum depression and since so little is known about this, it can be difficult to find the right help.

Even though I did not adopt, I have had some experiences similar to what families who adopt internationally have had.  For instance, if you are like me, whiter than Christmas, with red hair and freckles and you're out and about with Asian children, people will assume they are adopted.  And then come the idiot questions.  "Oh my goodness, isn't he cute, how much did he cost?"  "Oh look at that darling baby, where did you get her?" 

The best one was in the store, I had my son with me and a woman with an Asian child very close in age to mine approached and said: "Well….I see you got your son, the same way I got mine."  I looked her dead in the eye and said: "Really.  How did you and my husband meet?"  

Not for nothing, is it ever really a good idea to question a parent on where they "got" their child?  I think questions like that can get pretty dicey and I can't imagine  what would possess a person to ask a total stranger about something so personal.

What I do know though is that so many families today are patchworked together.  Through marriage, re-marriage, adoption and sometimes just plain luck, families are blended and made stronger for all their different parts. 

I didn't know until recently there even was a National Adoption Awareness Month.  Who isn't aware of adoption?  Who doesn't get that we no longer live in the time of Dickens and Oliver Twist?  This is the 21st century, so much can happen in a family. 

 More choices are available now to families who want children and parents who find themselves unable to care for the children they have. Ask anyone and they will say how wonderful adoption is, how lucky children are to be "chosen" and how wonderful it is when families are able to find a child to love.  That's what they will say anyway, but then you have movies like "Orphan" that depict adopted children as murderous sociopaths. You have news reports that highlight only the most extreme and unsuccessful stories about adoption. 

So yes, we do need this month.  We need it for every person who has ever said to an adoptive parent "oh that's nice you were able to adopt since you can't have children of YOUR OWN." We need it for every person who thinks that giving birth is the only way one becomes a "natural" parent.  

So during November if you happen to hear about an adoption event, or see a display of books about adoption at your local library, take a minute to really listen and see what's being said about adoption.  You might learn something you never knew about where babies come from.  At the top of this column is a quote from a poem about where babies come from, it's the first line.  Here is the last line

"But how did you come to us, you dear?

God thought about you, and so I am here"

I think that's a pretty good answer to the question,  "where do babies come from?"