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Adoption
and Child-Free Living
Life
without children-Choosing not to have children at all is an
option. You can select to live child-free. Remember, child
free living is a choice you can make i.e., choosing not to
have children isn't the same as having childlessness thrust
upon you.
You
may find that coming to terms with your childlessness gives
you the ability to take control of your own life again. Infertility
often means living in a state of suspended animation - waiting
and waiting forever through tests and treatments for a baby.
If you choose to live child-free, you can get on with living
again. Plans can be made to explore the endless possibilities
of career, travel, recreation, hobbies and togetherness as
a couple when previously all the uncertainty made this impossible.
When you are chasing the dream of a baby, it is easy to forget
that life has the potential for many other dreams and fulfillment.
It
is crucial, however, for both partners, should they choose
the child-free alternative, to feel they can happily fill
their lives with work and other interests. If the husband
has a successful career but the wife has little to replace
the parenting function, unhappy consequences are likely.
One
of the biggest fears people express when considering a child-free
life is that they will regret this decision in their older
years and end up being lonely and miserable.Children should
not be an insurance policy against loneliness in old age.
People also worry that when they die, they will have nothing
to leave behind. The truth is that children are not the only
ones who remember you, nor are they the only means of establishing
everlasting memory.
Remember,
there can be real advantages to life without children: more
personal freedom, more time to spend on your own interests,
and more emotional energy to invest in your emotional relationships.
Start enjoying your time with your spouse more - remember
the early heady days of your marriage before you were striving
for a child? Try to recapture those magic moments again. A
new lifestyle may be difficult to think about and many people
advise that you try to do many things that interest you to
give yourself a chance to spend some of your pent-up needs
- the need to be needed and the need to do something. It's
a matter of balance.
The
answer to wanting one thing exclusively is to be involved
in many things - to spread yourself around. Taking a holiday
to mark the end of treatment and the beginning of a new lifestyle
can be very helpful and allows time to relax and assess the
situation.
Acceptance
or resolution of infertility doesn't mean putting all desire
to have children into the past and forgetting about it. Infertility,
your experiences and thoughts will always be a part of you
and will be remembered with mixed emotions, including sadness,
regret and frustration, over the years. Acceptance is more
an acknowledgement that your hopes weren't to be and that
you have to make some readjustments. It is not something you
can do suddenly. You gradually come to this point, maybe over
the course of your infertility tests and treatments or maybe
only when treatment has finished.
(Child
Free Living ,Continued, )
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Child Infant Adoption & Myths
on Adoption :
Adoption - Yours by Choice
from the book How to Have a Baby:
Overcoming Infertility
by Dr. Aniruddha Malpani, MD and Dr. Anjali Malpani, MD.
You don't have to be super human, super kind, super loving
or perfect to be able to adopt a child - you just have to
be ready. Being ready only happens when you've had time to
get used to the idea - and if you are infertile, it is never
too early to consider adoption. You can begin gathering information
from adoption agencies even though you may not be fully committed.
It is always a wise strategy to investigate alternatives in
case pregnancy does not occur - after all, statistically,
the overall chance of pregnancy for an infertile couple undergoing
treatment is only about 50 to 70 percent after one or more
years of trying.
Also,
because many agencies do not accept people over a certain
age as adoptive candidates, especially for infants, it is
important to collect information so that you don't discover
later that you are too old to fulfill a particular agency's
requirements.
To
couples just beginning to consider adoption the central concern
is: can we love an adopted child as our own? Other doubts
include:
· What kind of children is available for adoption?
Aren't they all misfits or discards?
· Won't adopted children grow up maladjusted?
· What will our families say and do? Will they love
a child we adopt?
· Won't the child go off to find its birth parents
once it grows up anyway?
· Why do we have to go through so much agony to build
a family? Infertility was one struggle and now adoption with
its waiting list is a whole new one.
· What will society say? Will our child be accepted
by friends and neighbors?
As
you find yourself more ready to accept adoption as an alternative,
these questions often lose their importance. Some of them
disappear when you finish grieving for your biological child
- the child that never was - and resolve this grief by allowing
healing. Through grief, you learn to focus less on the process
of obtaining children and more on the children themselves.
A couple must, together and separately, come to terms with
their loss - to learn to say good-bye, before they are ready
to consider adoption. The other doubts disappear after you
talk with adoption agencies; adoptive parents and their families;
read books about adoption; and learn how adoption is accomplished.
The question then is no longer "Can we do this?"
but becomes " How do we do this?"
You will learn that in many ways families with adopted children
are the same as any other families. You'll express love, have
disputes and make compromises in your daily lives. Your child
will be your child, no matter how you came to have him.
Adoptive parenting may be your second choice but it's just
as good as biological parenting. It is different - don't try
to compare them, one isn't better than the other. However,
you will have to deal with several issues that occur only
in adoptive families. Prepare yourself to discuss adoption
with your child - and to truthfully deal with the myths and
misconceptions that many people have about adoption. You may
also find that you and your child will often be faced with
questions and ignorant comments which assume that adoption
is a second-best alternative for all involved.
(Adoption
, Continued)
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