Breastfeeding and Adoption

For years now, my husband and I have talked about adopting. We like the idea for so many different reasons. We are now at the point where this discussion has come to a head. We definitely do not want anymore biological children (world population, as well as difficult pregnancies for me). If we were to adopt, the baby would be either bi-racial or of a different race from us. One thing that is very important to us is that I breastfeed the baby. Besides the health benefits, we both believe that the bonding aspect would be paramount. He or she would receive the same love and bonding from me that my biological children have. We would want to adopt while I'm still nursing my youngest so that I have an established milk supply. That puts us on a timeline because she's already 20 months old. I know that many people, especially ones adopting in the US would tell you that the wait could last for years. From my research and experience, though, that isn't really an issue if you aren't waiting for a white baby.

When our middle child was about a year old, we requested an info packet from a local adoption agency. I never even spoke to anyone; it was all online. I checked off the box saying we were looking for a minority newborn. Within two weeks, we got a call from the agency. Keep in mind that I had not filled out any forms or contacted them after receiving the info. The woman was offerring me two different babies! One was a three month old African-American girl and the other was an unborn, bi-racial baby. I had to tell her that we weren't at the point yet to adopt. One thing that struck me was the cost for the babies. She said that it would be about $22,000. I had already looked into prices at other agencies, and that amount was way out of scale for what other places charged. It sounds creepy to talk about baby prices, but the reality is that white babies are much more expensive. We were a bit outraged that these two unwanted (by the adoption community) babies were being priced this way. From what I've seen , no one would ever pay that much for them when other agencies use a scale based on your income for their minority programs. Can you imagine finding out that you might have had a family if you hadn't cost too much? By the way, cost has nothing to do with our choice. We are just open to a baby of any race.

Since then, we had our third biological child. Our discussion now is about having a fourth child. We are both on board with the idea of adoption, but we wonder about the costs of raising four children. I recently found another local agency and requested info. When the woman emailed me and said that the newborns are cared for by volunteer families for the first five days (until the birthmother can legally terminate her rights), I asked her about allowing us to take the baby home from the hospital instead so that I might breastfeed. Sadly, she has never had anyone ask her about breastfeeding their adopted child before. She was caught off guard by the whole thing. She wondered if it would turn off a birthmom because if she changed her mind during that first week, the baby would have been nursed by someone else. In a world that wasn't ignorant about breastfeeding, a mother would be happy that her baby was receiving human milk instead of a synthetic product. In our world, she would be weirded out. It wasn't that long ago that rich women or families of women who died in childbirth used wet nurses to feed their newborns. How far we've come :(

The happy news is that I looked into the possibility of nursing a newborn who has been bottlefed for the first five days of her life. My contact at the La Leche League told me that it was totally possible. Someone gave me a link to a website totally devoted to breastfeeding adopted babies, which I haven't had a chance to read. There is a wealth of knowledge out there about the benefits of breastfeeding adopted infants and instructions on how to accomplish it. It's really too bad that a woman in the business of adopting out children has never head of it...