A child and a half

There is nothing more moving than seeing a baby being born. If you can watch a video of that without crying, you’re far more stoic than I can ever be. Just seeing a delivery of some stranger’s kid is enough to make my face wet. I can’t imagine how powerful it would be to watch the birth of my own child. Unfortunately it is an experience I will likely never have. My couple is infertile.

Nevertheless, life is so varied and complex that there is no shortage of moving and life-changing experiences.

I have had the fortune of being handed the gift of children in the form of adoption. And while it is impossible to compare apples and oranges, there is an intensity to the process of adoption that I don’t believe can be compared to any parental experience. The more you must overcome to achieve a dream, the more valuable it becomes. It’s as simple as that. And I have never had to work so long and hard.

It starts with the emotional toll of the years of infertility with the never-ending roller-coaster of false hopes and bitter disappointment. This is followed by the complexity and twists and turns of the adoption process which, if you haven’t been through, is hard to fathom. And then there is the actual delivery. In the case of my first son, this included being handed the baby in the parking lot of the Anna Laberge Hospital in Chateauguay by his courageous and mature beyond imagination seventeen year old mother while we all sobbed uncontrollably. For the others, it was a trip to the the other side of the world to a country struggling to overcome decades of war (an utterly emotionally and physically draining ordeal) and the challenge of trying to adapt your children to a new world, especially in the case of older children, (my last two were each 7 years old).

When Journal Métro was publishing a section on family and pregnancy, they asked me to write on a related theme. This is why I decided to discuss adoption, a topic I can talk about for days to anyone who cares to listen. It is called A Child and a Half, a title I had on my computer since 2005.

A child and a half (voir plus bas pour la version Française)
(Source: Un enfant et demi. Journal Métro, May 8, 2012)

The harder you work for something, the sweeter it is.

Having children is such a natural part of the cycle of life it happens without even trying very hard. Just ask any parent who wasn’t yet planning to be one. Except nature doesn’t always cooperate, especially when we mess with her by waiting until our thirties before having unprotected sex.

My wife and I were in such a situation. Once I finished school and found work, it was time to start a family. Step one was a piece of cake – have sex. Then came steps two to who knows, I lost count – wait, get disappointed, have more sex, get disappointed again, and so on until it starts to take a greater and greater toll on you and your relationship.

Then of course come the medical investigations and interventions; charted temperature, timed sex, delayed periods and false hope, sperm tests (ask me about the joy of collecting sperm in a hospital setting), months of personality and body-altering fertility hormones, artificial inseminations, in vitro procedures. After several years we were forced to confront a difficult reality; our dream of having a family may never happen. It was devastating. We then considered adoption.

I asked a friend who was going through the same thing about his thoughts on adoption and he said, “I don’t think I could love a child that didn’t look like me.” To each his own, I suppose, but to my wife and I it wasn’t an issue.

The emotional roller-coaster of the infertility investigation paled in comparison to what laid ahead. Adoption is even more of an ordeal; police screening, evaluation by social workers, financial and personal references, bureaucratic delays from months to years, at least twenty thousand dollars, the devastating heartbreak of having a file closed on you after you have purchased a plane ticket and wrapped the child’s Christmas presents, and in my case, forty plus hours of air travel with a sick baby vomiting on you and screaming while other passengers shake their heads and ask you to ‘do something!’ followed by four nights asleep on the floor of your daughter’s hospital room.

For this adoptive father, these memories have only made life sweeter. The greater the effort, the greater the reward. Adoption is a profoundly life-transforming experience.

With all due respect to mothers who had to endure thirty-hour labours, the pursuit of an adopted child is far tougher. I often say – only half-jokingly – that an adopted child is worth one and a half biological children. This is why when asked how many kids I have, I say four…but I’m always tempted to say six.

Voici la version Française:

Un enfant et demi

Plus on a déployé d’efforts pour obtenir une chose, plus on la savoure.

Avoir des enfants est tellement naturel que cela se produit sans qu’on fasse trop d’efforts. Sauf que la nature ne coopère pas toujours, surtout si on attend jusque dans la trentaine pour procréer.

Ma femme et moi nous sommes trouvés dans cette situation. Après mes études, j’ai obtenu un emploi, puis le moment est venu de fonder une famille. La première étape était du gâteau : avoir des rapports sexuels. Puis, venaient les étapes deux à…. j’en ai perdu le compte. Attendre, être déçus, avoir d’autres rapports, être déçus, etc., jusqu’à ce que cela commence à peser sur toi et ton couple.

Puis, vient l’aspect médical : prise de température, relations chronométrées, retards du cycle menstruel, faux espoirs, analyses de sperme — parlez-moi de la joie de recueillir du sperme en milieu hospitalier — prise d’hormones qui modifient la personnalité et le corps, inséminations artificielles, procédures in vitro. Après plusieurs années, nous avons dû faire face à la réalité : notre rêve d’avoir des enfants pourrait ne jamais se réaliser. Nous avons alors songé à l’adoption.

J’ai demandé à un ami qui vivait la même chose ce qu’il en pensait, et il a dit : « Je ne pense pas que je pourrais aimer un enfant qui ne me ressemble pas. » A chacun son opinion. Pour ma femme et moi, ce n’était pas un problème.

Les montagnes russes émotionnelles de l’infertilité n’étaient rien en comparaison de ce qui nous attendait : enquête de police, évaluation par des travailleurs sociaux, références personnelles, retards bureaucratiques pouvant durer des années, au moins 20 000 $, le chagrin de voir un dossier se fermer une fois qu’on a acheté un billet d’avion et emballé les cadeaux de Noël et, dans mon cas, quarante heures d’avion avec un bébé qui vomit sur moi et hurle pendant que les autres passagers hochent la tête en me demandant de « faire quelque chose! », avant que je passe quatre nuits sur le plancher de la chambre d’hôpital de ma fille.

Pour le père adoptif que je suis, ces souvenirs ne font que rendre la vie plus agréable. Plus l’effort est grand, plus grande est la récompense. L’adoption transforme profondément la vie.

Avec tout le respect dû aux mères qui ont enduré 30 heures de travail, l’adoption me semble un processus beaucoup plus difficile. Je dis souvent en plaisantant à moitié qu’un enfant adopté vaut un enfant biologique et demi. C’est pourquoi, lorsqu’on me demande combien j’ai d’enfants, je dis quatre… mais je suis toujours tenté de dire six.

Tagged as adoption, international adoption, parenthood.

Posted in Happiness, Human nature, Life.

Posted on 18 May 2012