Did you adopt a child and/or were you adopted?
My younger son is adopted. He is biologically related to my wife. We had been planning to adopt our second child after the first was born, had even begun the procedures, but were planning to wait a while longer when a package of joy was figuratively left on our doorstep.
Almost there.
Iggyette, 17 year old step daughter recently asked that I adopt here and she wants to take my family name. That’s enough to make me misty eyed.
Now Iggyette only speaks Spanish, like her mother, and cannot event pronounce my family name correctly, so there is a certain amount of inconvenience with such a name change.
So we are making the paperwork moves as and when we can.
I’m adopted. Brought home by my parents when I was 6 weeks old.
Both my kids are adopted. They were both born in South Korea. My son was almost six months old when he came to us, and my daughter about five months. Twenty seven and twenty four years ago, respectively.
My brother-in-law is adopted, and my cousin has three bio-sons, and two daughters that are sisters by birth as well as by adoption.
Regards,
Shodan
My oldest son is adopted. He was born ~50 miles from where we live and my wife and I were there when he was born. I even got to cut the umbilical cord which was a pretty major head trip for me due to the symbolic significance. He’s been with us since the minute he was born, he’s 6 now and is my Mini-Me.
Found my birth mother 20 years ago. Living 25 miles north of where I had just moved to (for graduate school). Even weirder, my youngest birth sister had worked for the exact same professor that I signed up with 2 years before.
My daughter is adopted from Guatemala. We brought her home a day before her 1st birthday, she’s now 15.
We adopted our daughter.
We have two adopted daughters. Sisters, with the same biological mother but different biological fathers. They were 4 and 7 when the adoption was finalized, now they’re 18 and 21. Because they have special needs, we now have legal guardianship.
Giving this a bump because I think there are number of adoptive/adopted Dopers who haven’t seen it.
The Newest Nephew is adopted, as is the son of a first cousin and that of a mumble-mumble cousin once removed (her father and my paternal grandmother were first cousins).
We adopted the Firebug a little over eight years ago, from Samara, Russia, at the age of a year and a half.
I count myself lucky every day.
I didn’t see it the first time around, so good bump.
The youngest Torqueling is now 5. We adopted her in 2013 at age 21 months from China. All the information we have about her background is, she was abandoned on the orphanage steps when she was about 1 day old, and she lived there until we adopted her.
She is fearless and artistic, and cracks me up constantly.
Both of our children are adopted.
A 19-year old daughter and a 12-year old son. Both domestic adoptions as infants. Forever thankful for their birth parents’ decision.
I am a natural child, but have two adopted cousins and three adopted second cousins. My husband, while not adopted, spent 10 years as a foster child in the same foster home.
My daughter and son are both adopted from Korea. He’s 6 and she’s 8.
Both of my grandkids are adopted. My daughter and her husband signed up with the Foster Program and they were lucky enough to get both of the kids while they were still infants.
I adore them both. They make me laugh and the joy on their faces when they see me makes life worth living.
I wasn’t adopted, but my aunt and uncle had guardianship of me when I was in high school. I was in my aunt’s care a lot as a young child as well, because my mother was working on her Ph.D.
After my youngest (biological) cousin left the house for college, my aunt and uncle took in several foster kids, and adopted one of them. So yes, sometimes people with four kids do adopt a fifth. They adopted her when she was a teenager, and totally turned her life around. She is a wonderful person, who has a graduate degree, and is a social worker. Who knows what would have happened to her after aging out of foster care if not for my aunt and uncle? Life can be brutal.
She was good for them too, in ways that it’s hard to explain. My aunt says that it was a special kind of blessing to be able to adopt a child, and she feels like she’s had more of the measure of goodness of life because she got to experience having children both ways. Yes, she really does say things like that. It’s one of the reasons I love her so much.
Two adored adopted daughters. One was adopted at 2 days old (I was present for her birth), one at 18 months.
I was adopted at age 3 in 1961, after my biological father placed an advertisement in the paper seeking a home for me. A few years ago the SDMB helped me get a copy of the classified ad, which had been lost (my father always carried it in his wallet, but his wallet was stolen).
As very close readers with excellent memories will know, I did not have a good relationship with my mother at all. Nonetheless, I still am a strong proponent of adoption and, despite the unhappiness I experienced as a child, I’m quite certain that my life was vastly improved by the adoption. I know enough about my bio-family to be pretty sure the alternative was far worse.