From Infertility to Adoption, Knowing When to Move Forward

When is the right time to move from infertility to adoption? When do you emotionally feel ready? Will you ever feel ready and must move forward with other ways of creating your forever family! Mardie Caldwell, through her personal experience and over twenty years of working with couples nation-wide, has made it her life’s work to bless children needing forever adoptive parents.

How do couples decide to move forward in adoption as opposed to doing donor embryo or IVF?

We just had our third try with IVF with my own eggs. Our doctor told us that I was a poor responder and the quality of my eggs is not good. He said our only options are either with donor embryo or adoption. I am just trying to work through the loss of both a dream and of the babies we fertilized and trying to decide the best direction for us. I still have such a passionate desire to “carry life” in me, but I am not sure if that will go away once I start the adoption process or adopt. Does it? My fear with trying donor embryo is if it doesn’t work, can I take another “failure” after all our losses. My fear with adoption is that it might take years or the adoption might keep falling through. My only experience with adoption is a co-worker with an older child adoption that has not been good. I realize there is no guarantee with either path, but it is such a difficult decision, I am curious as to what led other adoptive parents to their decisions.

Mardie’s reply:

We decided that it was more important for us to be parents than to be pregnant. My biological clock was ticking, and we had to decide what we wanted most in our family. We moved from infertility to adoption and then after our first adoption of our son, we tried some mild infertility treatments again. We didn’t have a lot of money to do extensive infertility drugs or procedures. So, we decided that adoption was right for us. The decision to adopt came surprisingly easy to both of us. We always wanted to adopt someday regardless of whether or not we had any biological children. So, it was a true blessing for us.