Our Adoption Story
I’ve always had a heart for adoption. One of my cousins is adopted, and I was intrigued. My siblings were blonde, and I was a brunette—so I’d been teased that I was left on the doorstep. Perhaps these experiences gave me a sensitive heart early on for those babies who need a family. Thoughts of adoption remained with me in my twenties, when my physician told me I might struggle with infertility as a result of having endometriosis and subsequent surgeries. Time would tell.
I met my future husband in my early twenties when we both were volunteering with a youth ministry called KLIFE. We didn’t date then—we were just friends who shared a mutual love for helping kids. Fast forward many years: After he was divorced, we were set up on a date. He was a wonderful man and father to his three kids, and that was a huge attraction to me. He was also open to more children. We married, and I became a stepmom to three children. Then we tried for a baby.
Our fertility journey was difficult, and adoption always remained an option in our minds during that struggle. I was older, and when our procedure failed, the infertility doctor basically told me my age was skewing his data pool. Adoption was also a statistic on his pie chart, but we had faith that there was a plan for us to add to our family.
Adoption is both beautiful and messy. It is a gift and a loss—a monumental gift for the adoptive family and a loss to the birth parents and their families. It encompasses hours of planning, heart-wrenching decisions and the selflessness of a birth mom and birth dad. We realized we could never truly and fully comprehend some of these things on our side of the gift of a beautiful baby girl in 2009.
As older parents, we chose a private adoption counselor who works with a smaller group of parents wanting to adopt. Our age was not an obstacle going this route. Our adoption felt very personal. We had daily phone calls with our adoption counselor. We knew when the birth mom was seeing the doctor, and we were given a video of her sonogram, but we did not speak to or meet our birth mom until after our baby was born. A birth plan was was prepared between our birth mom and our adoption counselor, so we knew what to expect. We were placed with our birth mom only a month before our daughter’s birth. This short time frame was allowable as we had all our paperwork in place.
We’d made a photo album of our family for our profile. We then waited and prayed. I loved that my 8-year-old bonus son would pray at night for his future sibling. This was a season of growth and perseverance as he had prayed from the beginning with our first attempt to adopt, which did not come to fruition. The cutest was when he said in frustration, “When is that baby going to get here?” implying that UPS had not delivered his package yet.
Our daughter, Elizabeth, was wailing as she was deposited into my arms about five minutes post birth. She immediately quieted and looked up into my eyes when I began singing a beloved song to her. The skies opened up, and I felt light and joy envelop the room. It was a miraculous “God moment” feeling I will always treasure.
When it comes to adoption, my husband and I sum up our feelings with a saying coined by Bob Constantine that captures the love we are capable of giving: “We have four children. Three are biological, and one is adopted, but I forget which one.”.
In our Elizabeth, we have received the gift that keeps on giving. She has more joy in her pinkie finger than most people. When she was young, I told her she grew in my heart and not my tummy. The story of adoption is a lifelong conversation, one that we weave into our daily life. We also talk about and pray for and support our birth mom and birth dad. We will always love them and honor their beautiful gift of our daughter while holding them in our hearts and our prayers all our days.
I imagine I will always have a mother’s heart for adoption as I watch our precious daughter Elizabeth grow into a young lady. My heart is also full of love and gratitude to her birth parents and the friends and family that supported us along the way, as well as those involved in our failed adoption. They walked with us through difficult times. Not every adoption has a happy ending—sometimes birth parents change their minds and keep the baby. The journey included pain, but the joy outshines all of it. As we welcomed our miraculous, sweet Elizabeth into our family, we knew the words the Apostle Paul penned hold true: “Love never fails.”
Nancy Dollar lives in Prairie Village. She enjoys volunteering and has a heart for youth. She loves to dabble in the arts and hopes to paint by the Gulf of Mexico in the future.