Erin is one of the contributing editors for International Adoption. She writes daily at PCOS Baby where she chronicles life with her children and parenting after adoption from Ethiopia.
I'm 30 years old and the mother of two. P was born in 2003 after primary infertility, a diagnosis of PCOS, and successful treatment with metformin. After thinking that it was actually pretty easy to conceive when on the right medicine, we started TTC#2 with metformin when P was 11 months old. After two more years of that, Clomid, Femara, and several IUIs, all unsuccessful, we decided to stop treatment at the end of 2006 and move onto international adoption.
I'm 30 years old and the mother of two. P was born in 2003 after primary infertility, a diagnosis of PCOS, and successful treatment with metformin. After thinking that it was actually pretty easy to conceive when on the right medicine, we started TTC#2 with metformin when P was 11 months old. After two more years of that, Clomid, Femara, and several IUIs, all unsuccessful, we decided to stop treatment at the end of 2006 and move onto international adoption.
When we first thought about adopting, I thought we'd adopt a baby and we were deciding between Ethiopia and Vietnam. After several more months of conscious non-decision making, we both realized that Ethiopia felt right, and that we really didn't want to adopt a baby. A toddler boy felt like the right choice for our family. We started filling out paperwork in February of 2007 and completed our homestudy at the end of May. Our dossier was complete, including USCIS approval, in September and was in Ethiopia by October.
Right before Thanksgiving, we received our first referral for a beautiful little 2 1/2 year old boy. After much rejoicing and telling simply everyone, we were on the verge of sending back the acceptance paperwork when we found that he had cerebral palsy, a condition that we simply weren't prepared to parent. Heartbrokenly, we declined his referral. It was one of the most painful experiences of my life.
On P's 4th birthday, we received the referral of another beautiful little boy. He was 2 weeks past his first birthday and named K. He was malnourished but otherwise healthy. We accepted his referral in early December 2007. We passed court in Ethiopia at the end of January 2008 and traveled to get K in February of 2008, almost a year to the day after beginning our paperwork. He is a wonderful child, an amazing addition to our family, and we are incredibly fortunate that he is here. With luck, our family will grow again in the future--we would like two more children and hope that at least one of those will be another child from Ethiopia.
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