Why we are adopting internationally is the most frequent question we get. Our usual response is three words: Drugs and alcohol. (Followed closely by the biological dad not signing off on the adoption.)
We began paperwork for domestic adoption. We spent lots of time researching adoption and speaking to adoption agencies and adoptive parents. It was our agency director who finally made up our mind to pursue international adoption. While we found that healthy infants occasionally come up for adoption, these are usually private adoptions where someone knows someone. The agencies said the majority of the babies have alcohol and methamphetamine exposure and many of the mothers do not receive prenatal care early in pregnancy. Worse, up to 70% of biological fathers do not sign off on the adoption. In Nevada, they can return up to 6 months and take the baby back.
The problem is that we both know too much. Ralph has delivered babies and worked with patients who have problems due to prenatal exposure to drugs and alcohol. Before starting work on my Master's program, I worked with adults with cognitive impairment, many of whom also had fetal alcohol syndrome.
Our agency director asked us how important it was to have a newborn who looked like us. We had done the newborn thing, and frankly, it sucked. I know Ryan's birth and infancy were not "normal," but it was a horrible year for us and we have no desire to re-live the stress and sleepless nights. We don't care what the baby looks like; we just want a healthy baby. Had Ryan not had ongoing special needs, we might have considered the risk, but with his special needs, we felt we could not intentionally go through that again.
So, that made the choice plain for us.
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