Adopting after infertility

Coming to adoption via a road that may have dead-ended at the junction of Clomid, IVF and GIFT can have families not only tired and sore from the trip, but also feeling personably responsible for not reaching their desired destination … parenthood. It may take some regrouping before setting off down the new path is possible, and adjusting to what may feel like a failure of biology takes time.

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Many myths find their way into the minds of couples starting the process after years of disappointed efforts. Imagining perfection as a demand for all adoptive parents, assuming instant love should have you completely ga-ga at the first infant sighting, and presuming that all good moms and dads will immediately know the right things to say and do are daunting perspectives. They also happen to not be true.

The capacity to build a family through adoption is not limited to the perfect, the all-knowing or the natural nesters. An inability to reproduce biologically does not indicate that some greater wisdom dictates you are to remain childless, so being disappointed by the birds and bees doesn’t condemn anyone to a life without kids.

Making babies from scratch doesn’t preclude the adoption option, either. Contrary to what some folks may believe, adoption is not only for the childless. Although fertility issues lead some couples to adopt, many choose adoption over, or in conjunction with, making kids the old fashioned way. Having a mix of bio and adopted kids in the house is fairly common.

Adoption can be a natural response to unusual circumstances. Although we may think of our species as a ‘stand alone’ when it comes to caring, humans are not the only animals known to raise offspring born to others.

In the wild, mothers of many types of mammals have been observed nursing young ones whose primary care giver has become ill or died. It’s not at all uncommon in the case of domestic dogs for females without litters to come into milk when presented with an orphaned puppy.

In situations where babies are born into the chaotic tangle of breeding colonies, as is the case with seals, youngsters separated in the melee would be doomed but for the frequent adoption by other females, often first-timers who have lost their own pups but maintain a bountiful supply of milk.

Not limited to a “we’re all one big happy clan”, phenomenon, solitary living bears have also been known to add to their families by adopting orphans, sometimes even twins.

Not confining the caring to one’s own coat color or foot shape, it’s not just the identity-challenged swan in a nest full of ducks proving parenting can move beyond seemingly impossible divisions, but raccoons mothering kittens, and even lions adopting Oryx calves … animals that are normally considered lunch.

Tel Aviv University evolutionary biologist, Eva Jablonka, in her book “Animal Traditions: Behavioural Inheritance in Evolution,” reports that adoption in the animal kingdom is “certainly more common than previously thought,” as several hundred bird and mammals species at least occasionally adopt.

Credits: Sandra Hanks Benoiton