Adopting After Infertility differs from other adoption books in that it goes more deeply into the losses of infertility, attitudes toward family, and decision making, as well as parenting adopted children if that is the option chosen.
The book is divided into three sections. Part One deals with the losses experienced by persons who are infertile. There are tips on self-care, dealing with the stresses of infertility, and handling family events and relatives’ baby showers.
Rather than specific medical information on options, this book offers ways to consider the emotional impact of the various options such as hormone treatment, in vitro fertilization, egg and/or sperm donation, or adoption. The author offers a rubric for weighting what is most important to each partner (Genetic continuity? Experience of pregnancy? Having a child like their partner? Parenting itself?) and suggests a process couples can go through in making a decision about their options.
Part Two is entitled “Making the Commitment to Adoption”. It includes discussion of the central issues in adoption, dealing with adoption professionals, making decisions about international, domestic private or agency infant adoptions, adopting older children from the child welfare system, children with special needs, and open or closed adoptions.
The book contains vignettes from couples who have chosen all kinds of adoptions, although domestic infant adoptions seem to predominate. Also, the book was first published in the early 1990s, when open adoptions were becoming common but closed or confidential adoptions were still common as well. Most U.S. infant adoptions today will involve some degree of openness (meaning contact, direct or through letters or intermediaries, between birth parents and the adoptive family).
Part Three is entitled “Adoption Through a Lifetime”. There is discussion of bonding with a newly adopted child, fostering relationships with extended family, talking about childbirth and adoption with adopted children, dealing with “infertility aftershocks” like being in a group of women sharing birth stories or seeing your own grown children having biological children of their own, ongoing contact with birthparents, and cultural and identity issues in adoptive families.
Patricia Irwin Johnston is an adoptive parent of three. Pat and her husband experienced the pain of infertility. Also, Pat’s husband and sister-in-law were adopted because their parents were infertile. Pat’s discussions with her in-laws, and their occasional comments in this book, add a unique texture to the story, as do the different attitudes toward their adoption expressed by her husband and his sister-in-law.
Please see these related blogs:
Is it Worth it to Try ART More Than Once?
Book Review: The Adoption Decision