Wednesday, 26 March 2014

A change of perception, a change of destiny

How else could I make this dream possible?  There can’t only be one way of doing it.  I looked into adoption and surrogacy.  The latter was quiet costly and there was no guarantees.  So adoption it was, I read about how parents fell in love with children even though they had not conceived them.  I wondered if this would bring me the same fulfilment it has given to other people.  The more I thought about it, the more I fell in love with the idea.  I was slowly giving up on the idea of falling pregnant and adopted this new dream of doing something different to achieve my goal.
Africans are to some extent economically and politically emancipated but culturally we have not evolved in some areas.  The scientific function of blood is to provide oxygen and nutrients to every cell of the body and to carry away waste products.  Our obsession with blood lines and our definition of its function is the reason why most Africans would never adopt a child who is not a blood relative. In most cases adoption outside blood lines is frowned upon.  Children are not even told that they are adopted because of the stigma attached to adoption.  Exploring adoption as an option, I wasn’t sure how I felt about it.  Would I love an adopted child the same way I would if I’ve given birth to him/her?  I would have missed out on the nine months bonding period and be unable to breastfeed so that’s another bonding opportunity lost.  When you read birth stories, all include the moment the baby is placed in your arms after birth and the first time you breastfeed as the critical phases in the first days of birth.  There would be none of that.

This idea grew and started to have a life of its own.  I contacted a few adoption agencies to gather information on how easy or difficult it would be to adopt a child.  It wasn’t going to be an easy road because the list for adoptable children grows by the day in South Africa but the process of adoption puts off most people.

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