I have always loved babies. I starting babysitting at 10 (don’t freak, it was the 80’s/90’s, a different time), always wanted to help in the church nursery, and played pretend being a mommy all the time. I have thought about adoption since I was little, maybe it was reading The Orphan Train and Boxcar Children books that made an impact on me. Or, it could have been the magical, classic Christmas movie I made my grandma watch with me every single year…. A Smokey Mountain Christmas. The sisters who owned the orphanage were the Applegate Sisters – even if they were mean, it felt so cool having my last name in a movie!

The longer it took for me to meet someone where we both decided we wanted to put up with each other, the more adoption entered my purview as an adult. I scheduled going to foster informational nights twice, but twice something stopped me from going. The first, a horrible stomach bug where leaving my house was not an option, and the second, my car wouldn’t start. My battery was dead. I am not a religious person, but I am a spiritual person and figured there was a reason I was stopped from going. I told myself, if I haven’t met someone by 45 I would start fostering with the goal of adopting then.

Fast forward to 2025. I am 45, I have been married for just over a year, we weren’t “trying” to get pregnant, but weren’t preventing pregnancy. Pregnancy hasn’t happened, and after doing some preliminary testing for us both, we know the likelihood of conceiving without medical intervention (and who knows if I could carry even if that worked) was low. We had talked about wanting kids and both being open to adoption on our first date – OK, I brought up the kids and adoption talk on the first date. When you are 40 and dating, I was over the games and brought up my deal breakers on the first date. I had too full of a life to add someone who didn’t want what I want or had beliefs that were a completely opposite of mine. We decided to start the process, neither of us want to be in walkers at a kiddos high school graduation haha.

There is so much about adoption out there and it was another job sorting through it all, researching all aspects (just local? national? agency state? full service agency? adoption consult? foster to adopt? the cost is WHAT? etc). I spoke to some adoptive parents, followed adoptees and adoptive families of social media. Spoke with social worker friends for advice and recommendations, spoke to friends of those friends for more information. Interviewed local and national adoption agencies, then finally started the process with an agency we felt good about, and came recommended from people in the adoption world. And trust me, it is its own world!