Family member pregnant with in vitro baby... is it moral to celebrate?

[mommy_k]

I’m just afraid that on judgment day, that God will chastise me for not pointing out enough of the sins of others.

You do realize you are judging people who in your mind are judging people… now that’s something to think about—

 

[AClaire11]

The adoption process is far from easy, whether through the state or through private adoption agencies. I know couples who would make wonderful parents, who have no red flags whatsoever for the social worker’s visit to uncover, and yet they have been waiting for YEARS. Adoption is a calling and not something that infertile couples should be expected to do.

patheos.com/blogs/ellenpainterdollar/2015/04/why-dont-you-just-adopt-is-the-wrong-question-to-ask-infertile-couples-heres-why/

heremembersthebarren.com/2013/10/16/those-rose-colored-glasses/

whitneyanderick.com/crossing-the-line-with-why-dont-you-adopt/

creatingafamily.org/adoption-category/parent-dont-adopt-foster-care/

mommyish.com/2014/11/04/infertile-people-dont-have-a-moral-obligation-to-adopt/

creatingafamily.org/infertility-category/why-not-just-adopt/

Not all of these authors are anti-ivf (those who contribute to heremembersthebarren are and I love that blog), but that doesn’t make their points about adoption less true.

Adoption is a “cure” for childlessness, but not for infertility. For some the move to adoption is an easy and logical next step. For others it is not.

Some people yearn to see their genes in the next generation; they crave being pregnant and breastfeeding; they want some degree of control over their child’s intrauterine environment and genetic makeup. For them, parenthood is more than simply parenting. They want to procreate. Is it really that hard to understand that they simply want what comes so easy for most of us?

 

[Lea101]

Personally, I would celebrate the life of the baby

I won’t say that it’s wrong (what is done is done)

But I will probably bring up adoption, if they want a 2nd child, probably show them adoption centres, talk about how it’s better to adopt etc.

Some people really, really want to go through pregnancy and having their ‘own’ child. And not being able to can be devastating. So I would be extremely wary about saying stuff like “why didn’t you adopt/what you did was wrong” but instead gently get them to be open to the idea of adoptng a cute lil child if they want more kids

 

[Rosebud77]

In the past I have prayed for and with women and families seeking success with in vitro. never felt or feel it is wrong; simple compassion. A human need so deep .

 

[UbiCaritas]

Adoption costs and availability vary from state to state, too.

We’ve started looking into adoption locally. Not ready to make that commitment yet, but we wanted to have some idea of what’s involved. For some background, we live near (and within the same county as) one of the 5 largest cities in the US. This is not exactly the middle of nowhere, y’know? We’d be happy to adopt a child of either gender and any race/ethnicity. Mild mental or physical handicaps are okay. Our caveats are that we couldn’t handle a child with a severe physical disability (house not handicap-accessible, no local family to help), and would want a child 2-3 years old or younger because at the time we might adopt, that’s how old our youngest biological child would be, and from what we read, maintaining birth order in blended adopted/biological families is really important.

I was shocked by just how hard it is to adopt a baby or toddler without severe mental and physical disabilities. There’s a computer database of adoptable local kids in the foster care system, “local” encompassing not just our county, but several around it, too. I’ve glanced through it from time to time. Thus far, over the half-dozen or so times I’ve searched it, the only adoptable kids in that age range are either a) part of a fairly large (4+ kids) sibling group which encompasses kids much older than ours (and this is very rare anyhow) or b) suffering from severe physical, mental, or emotional/social handicaps.

The alternative is private adoption services, which are often highly dodgy in terms of their business practices, and always very expensive…think somewhere between $10,000 and $100,000 in fees to adopt a baby. (Really disturbingly, a lot of them charge more for the “perfect” white or white/Asian baby than for “less desirable” babies of other races.)

Insurance will often cover IVF, while there isn’t adoption insurance. Of course, some companies will offer their employees adoption assistance, but that’s not universally true, not by a long shot.

We need to do a lot more research, but on the face of it, it does seem as though it will be a lot more feasible to wait to adopt until our biological kids are either a lot older (in the case of older adoptees) or out of the house entirely (in the case of, say, a severely emotionally-disturbed child). Very sad, to say the least.

Note: I am not a proponent of IVF, believing as I do the Church’s teaching on it. But to tell people to “just adopt” both dismisses the very real issues with the adoption process, a few of which I’ve tried to outline above, and also treats adoption as a sort of second-class option, one only for infertile people…bit insulting both to adopted children and to their families.

 

[1990Domer]

Please, not too many daggers with what I am about to write. We conceived our child through IVF. Let me give you some background before I’m burned at the stake (LOL).

First, my husband was rendered infertile (unknown to us until after marriage) as an infant when he underwent a hernia repair. At the time, we did not know that some of the fertility testing was against church teaching. He underwent two very long surgeries to try to fix the damage done as an infant. It was moderately successful, but not enough to completely allow us to become pregnant.

Second, we looked into adoption. At the time, fertility treatments were cheaper than adoption because my insurance covered fertility treatments. Also, as we were told, many of the domestic adoptions were tending towards open adoption. This unsettled us. We spoke and interviewed many couples who chose the foreign adoption route. Not all the stories were rosy. There was a lot of people who still ended up childless and many who regretted the trauma the child went through prior to the adoption.

We made the decision to go through IVF. However, there was no donor sperm nor was there any eggs frozen. We had a stillborn girl and then were blessed with our son. We are not proud of what we did, we went to Confession and we would never endorse it. We never thought fertility treatments would be used in the method and manner they are used now. While we love and cherish our son dearly, we will always regret the decision. Would we have adopted? Probably not.

I do have an interesting story. My husband has a SSA brother who has long left the church. He is very into the agenda and convinced my in-laws that the Church’s teachings were wrong. We supported BIL but did not endorse his lifestyle, especially when DS was younger and could not understand BIL’s relationship. My FIL especially was really angry that we would not fully support BIL (meaning, his sex life). My FIL then said to me and DH, “Well, you sinned too when you had DS.” I started to cry but said to him, “Yes, we did, but we confessed our sins and vowed never to repeat the sin nor endorse that path.” He was immediately embarrassed, but our relationship with them was never the same.

So, that’s my story. My take? Celebrate the child but very gently and tactfully make your beliefs known. I always remember this saying: Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.

 

[1990Domer]

In the past I have prayed for and with women and families seeking success with in vitro. never felt or feel it is wrong; simple compassion. A human need so deep .

Sadly, I prayer with women I met who were at the fertility clinic after having an abortion (usually when they were much younger). It was truly, truly the most heartbreaking stories I have heard.

 

[Rosebud77]

Adoption costs and availability vary from state to state, too.

We’ve started looking into adoption locally. Not ready to make that commitment yet, but we wanted to have some idea of what’s involved. For some background, we live near (and within the same county as) one of the 5 largest cities in the US. This is not exactly the middle of nowhere, y’know? We’d be happy to adopt a child of either gender and any race/ethnicity. Mild mental or physical handicaps are okay. Our caveats are that we couldn’t handle a child with a severe physical disability (house not handicap-accessible, no local family to help), and would want a child 2-3 years old or younger because at the time we might adopt, that’s how old our youngest biological child would be, and from what we read, maintaining birth order in blended adopted/biological families is really important.

I was shocked by just how hard it is to adopt a baby or toddler without severe mental and physical disabilities. There’s a computer database of adoptable local kids in the foster care system, “local” encompassing not just our county, but several around it, too. I’ve glanced through it from time to time. Thus far, over the half-dozen or so times I’ve searched it, the only adoptable kids in that age range are either a) part of a fairly large (4+ kids) sibling group which encompasses kids much older than ours (and this is very rare anyhow) or b) suffering from severe physical, mental, or emotional/social handicaps.

The alternative is private adoption services, which are often highly dodgy in terms of their business practices, and always very expensive…think somewhere between $10,000 and $100,000 in fees to adopt a baby. (Really disturbingly, a lot of them charge more for the “perfect” white or white/Asian baby than for “less desirable” babies of other races.)

Insurance will often cover IVF, while there isn’t adoption insurance. Of course, some companies will offer their employees adoption assistance, but that’s not universally true, not by a long shot.

We need to do a lot more research, but on the face of it, it does seem as though it will be a lot more feasible to wait to adopt until our biological kids are either a lot older (in the case of older adoptees) or out of the house entirely (in the case of, say, a severely emotionally-disturbed child). Very sad, to say the least.

Note: I am not a proponent of IVF, believing as I do the Church’s teaching on it. But to tell people to “just adopt” both dismisses the very real issues with the adoption process, a few of which I’ve tried to outline above, and also treats adoption as a sort of second-class option, one only for infertile people…bit insulting both to adopted children and to their families.

For this realistic and compassionate post, thank you.

One of the people I "sat"with, prayed with , during in vitro attempts, gave up after 3 or 4 failed attempts and we lost touch for years. Then an email with a photo attached .She had given birth naturally twice… Maybe the treatment helped her conceive.You never saw a happier family.

What is the situation there re overseas adoptions?

 

[1990Domer]

Adoption costs and availability vary from state to state, too.

We’ve started looking into adoption locally. Not ready to make that commitment yet, but we wanted to have some idea of what’s involved. For some background, we live near (and within the same county as) one of the 5 largest cities in the US. This is not exactly the middle of nowhere, y’know? We’d be happy to adopt a child of either gender and any race/ethnicity. Mild mental or physical handicaps are okay. Our caveats are that we couldn’t handle a child with a severe physical disability (house not handicap-accessible, no local family to help), and would want a child 2-3 years old or younger because at the time we might adopt, that’s how old our youngest biological child would be, and from what we read, maintaining birth order in blended adopted/biological families is really important.

I was shocked by just how hard it is to adopt a baby or toddler without severe mental and physical disabilities. There’s a computer database of adoptable local kids in the foster care system, “local” encompassing not just our county, but several around it, too. I’ve glanced through it from time to time. Thus far, over the half-dozen or so times I’ve searched it, the only adoptable kids in that age range are either a) part of a fairly large (4+ kids) sibling group which encompasses kids much older than ours (and this is very rare anyhow) or b) suffering from severe physical, mental, or emotional/social handicaps.

The alternative is private adoption services, which are often highly dodgy in terms of their business practices, and always very expensive…think somewhere between $10,000 and $100,000 in fees to adopt a baby. (Really disturbingly, a lot of them charge more for the “perfect” white or white/Asian baby than for “less desirable” babies of other races.)

Insurance will often cover IVF, while there isn’t adoption insurance. Of course, some companies will offer their employees adoption assistance, but that’s not universally true, not by a long shot.

We need to do a lot more research, but on the face of it, it does seem as though it will be a lot more feasible to wait to adopt until our biological kids are either a lot older (in the case of older adoptees) or out of the house entirely (in the case of, say, a severely emotionally-disturbed child). Very sad, to say the least.

Note: I am not a proponent of IVF, believing as I do the Church’s teaching on it. But to tell people to “just adopt” both dismisses the very real issues with the adoption process, a few of which I’ve tried to outline above, and also treats adoption as a sort of second-class option, one only for infertile people…bit insulting both to adopted children and to their families.

Can I add that in the U.S., there are adoption credits available. However, they usually do not cover the cost of a private adoption. I think the credit is larger if you adopt a child with special needs. I have to say that in my search, I found much the same as you. When asked about adopting after we had DS, well, he’s got special needs. Without family support, we were unsure we could do it (and now I am also caring for my aging parents).

 

[1990Domer]

Rosebud, I know of countries that have restricted foreign adoption by those in the U.S. Also, the hoops that the agencies make you jump through (living in said country for some period of time) is expensive with no guarantee the adoption will be successful.

 

[AClaire11]

1990Domer (fellow ND grad!) and UbiCaritas, thank you for sharing your stories!

We started looking at adoption when we were struggling with infertility and saw that a) we could absolutely not afford it and b) Virginia requires a separate room for each child during the social worker visit, which prevents us from even trying until we can comfortably rent a 2br (well, a 3br now that we have a baby) and stops some of my friends from adopting a second child. Obviously 10 children shouldn’t be shoved into two rooms, but young children can absolutely share a room! We would have had to go into debt for IVF, were we at that point and not against it, but it would have been much cheaper than adoption. In the end, I don’t know that we would have adopted anyway…It’s such a heartrending, stressful process and I was already at my wit’s end with not being able to conceive. Plus, as mentioned, a white, healthy baby is much more difficult to adopt because of higher demand and, given prejudices in our families and our own comfort zone, that’s what we would have aimed for. Not to mention the closed vs open adoption issue. I’d feel very uncomfortable with open adoption. And so many of the women placing their babies are doing it because they can’t afford to keep them…at that point, if we had so much extra money we could afford to adopt, I’d almost rather help out a needy single mom and help her be able to keep her own baby.

 

[Rau]

They opened the door by telling me, I am just responding honestly. If they are close enough to share details, they should be close enough for me to say, I don’t believe in that.

If a relative told me they use abc, I would say I don’t believe in that.

If a relative told me they were transgender, I would say I don’t believe in that.

If a relative told me they were gay and getting married
I would say I don’t believe 8n that.

If a relative told me they were living with someone outside of marriage, I would say I don’t believe in that.

And so on and so forth.

I am a pretty nice person and would find a way to communicate the above not to offend personally…and have done so without harming the relationship. It’s not hard.

Telling someone, I don’t believe in ivf, but I am happy about the,arrival of the baby is not insulting or judgemental.
Honesty is a good thing, and perhaps if they want to further grow thier family in the future, they know there are other ways.

So your reason to say it is that it is inherently a good thing to volunteer an honest opinion, and that you are giving them useful information they may not otherwise have? IMHO, this can only be profitable if the person concerned is willing to hear this view, and I would doubt that a newly pregnant mother, desperate for a child, is pre-disposed to hear this opinion.

 

[Rau]

…But I also know who in my family I can have that kind of conversation with and who in my family I can’t.

That’s the key. You have to have judged that speaking will likely do more good than harm. It is not inherently good to volunteer our (Christian) view just because it is sincerely held.

 

[Rau]

God bless sorry I should have clarified.

Silent only in the presence of the immediate family of the pregnant woman and/or new baby. In this case I would absolutely be politely silent. However, if I were with relatives discussing IVF in general, I would, without hesitation mention Catholic church teaching on the matter.

I have actually done this, trying to be as gentle as possible. Surprisingly many people don’t know. I have found it mildly effective to focus on the embryos frozen and the ones lost to death actually during multiple procedures rather than beat people over the head with how evil IVF is because people are sympathetic to an infertile couple and rightfully so. While the focus is LIFE and the new baby, so I discuss how beautiful that is (and it is) I also lament the deliberate loss of so many babies that it actually takes to bring that one new baby to life and how sad that is.

This is how my conversations of IVF have gone so far. I have not changed any minds that I know of, however a few people have said “I never knew that” so I guess that is a start.

It will certainly be more difficult to make the case against IVF if and when the day comes that only a single egg is fertilized in the IVF process.

 

[Rau]

…But I will probably bring up adoption, if they want a 2nd child, probably show them adoption centres, talk about how it’s better to adopt etc.

Some people really, really want to go through pregnancy and having their ‘own’ child. And not being able to can be devastating. So I would be extremely wary about saying stuff like “why didn’t you adopt/what you did was wrong” but instead gently get them to be open to the idea of adoptng a cute lil child if they want more kids

Why bring up adoption at all, given there may be “unused” frozen embryos (siblings) “left over” from the IVF procedure? Should they now be the mother’s first responsibility? That may be another difficult topic to raise.

 

[mommy_k]

So your reason to say it is that it is inherently a good thing to volunteer an honest opinion, and that you are giving them useful information they may not otherwise have? IMHO, this can only be profitable if the person concerned is willing to hear this view, and I would doubt that a newly pregnant mother, desperate for a child, is pre-disposed to hear this opinion.

If they know i am catholic why would they think I was predisposed to hear that they conceived this way and agree with it when they share this? It is the same with all the other things I listed.

 

[Maximilan_Kolbe]

That’s the key. You have to have judged that speaking will likely do more good than harm. It is not inherently good to volunteer our (Christian) view just because it is sincerely held.

I think there is the issue of celebrating the good that comes from an evil act versus the discussion of offering our opinion of the act, and the discussion seemed top initially be about the former. Setting aside IVF for a moment, if two lesbians use a man’s sperm to conceive and carry a baby to term and seek to raise the child as a married couple, celebrating the gift of life seems a bit hollow when for many that gift was twisted in abused to such lengths, and that life will be subjected to a form of abuse, in the words of the Holy Father. That is the balance that is difficult to manage I suspect.

 

[mommy_k]

Why bring up adoption at all, given there may be “unused” frozen embryos (siblings) “left over” from the IVF procedure? Should they now be the mother’s first responsibility? That may be another difficult topic to raise.

Good point.

 

[Rau]

If they know i am catholic why would they think I was predisposed to hear that they conceived this way and agree with it when they share this? It is the same with all the other things I listed.

I can think of a number of reasons.

• The Catholic position on IVF is not always known;
• Many Catholics don’t agree with the Catholic position;
• People very often take the view that their decision on such a matter is supreme (and not properly subject to any form of detraction).

If you view it likely that your remarks, charitably offered, will do more good than harm, then it is good to make them.

 

[mommy_k]

I wanted to comment for those who think that the adoption process is always difficult, timely or mpossible, it’s not. Many long time posters here know we adopted some of our children as infants through private licensed agencies…My BF has enlarged her family too, through state adoption.

Each journey to bring them home was different–some very streamlined and some not.I will be happy to share my positive experiences and what to expect so you can pm me.there are many books on this too.

Please do not believe all the horror stories on the internet.when parents welcome home a baby, many times families do not put this on the internet–and only the bad stories show up… so it is very unbalanced.
I hope to encourage others in this beautiful way to have a family. I understand this is not for everyone, but if you are being called to adopt, don’t be discouaged. It does take faith and fortitude, and it is worth it.