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Discussing Adoption

How Should You Bring Adoption up to Your Spouse?

By Sue Poremba

Nobody grows up dreaming of the baby they'll adopt. That's what Jeff and Beth Raymond of Baltimore, Md., were told by a social worker in a prospective parent class.

"Adoption is always 'option B,'" says Jeff Raymond. "As we went down the path of trying to get pregnant, we kept adoption in the back of our mind."

In addition, friends of theirs recently adopted a child from China, so the couple saw firsthand that there were a lot of positives to adoption. "On the very day that a reproductive specialist told Beth that having a baby was out of the question, we had a cry, did some grieving and then opened the phone book and started calling adoption agencies," Jeff Raymond says. "We had always wanted to have a baby, and at that point decided we would just have to take a different path."

Some prospective parents decide immediately that adoption is the way to go, but for most couples, adoption is "option B." But if a couple is not able to conceive and want to have a child, adoption needs to enter the discussion.

If a couple has tried for at least a year to get pregnant and followed the doctor's suggestions to achieve pregnancy, and these haven't worked, the couple may want to start considering adoption, says Christine Adamec, author of The Complete Idiot's Guide to Adoption

Want to see more?

• Who Are All These People? Your Guide to Who's Who During Adoption
• Up Front and Personal: Is Open Adoption for You?
• Bringing Adoption into the Light: The Myths About Adoption
  and How to Fight Them
• Check out our Article Library.
• Talk about it!