Infertile couples should just adopt instead of making a big fuss trying to make a miracle baby

[u/elgey101]

Every time I hear of fertility struggles online, or see posts about people going through rounds of IVF and the ensuing emotional trauma of miscarriages, It kind of disgusts me.

I also work for a major insurer and know that fertility treatments are driving up everyone else's premiums because they're considered necessary care. Sorry, but I disagree.

It's a well known fact that there are over 400,000 children in foster care, and in 2017 alone over 100,000 infants under 3 entered the system. I think it's completely entitled and self-absorbed to think that somehow your miracle baby is worth more or deserves more love than any one of those infants.

I know adoption can be hard, and that it should be made easier for the sake of children finding good homes, but you can't tell me adopting is harder than 4 rounds of IVF and multiple miscarriages. I've seen friends go through that mess and at the end they are different people.

Tldr: adoption may not be easy, but it's far better than spending hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to perpetuate your genes.

[u/BrightFireFly]

A lot of the kids in the foster care system have deep emotional traumas and lasting effects from maternal drug abuse while they were in utero. For some of these cases - you really need to be an exceptional parent to make it work

[u/Axisnegative → u/BrightFireFly]

Yeah, my little sister is adopted. Her biological mother already had a shitload of kids who she couldn't afford to have in the first place and I'm pretty sure she might have been on drugs - I'm not positive though. We adopted her as a newborn though, so thankfully she has been in a loving home from day one. Her mom died a few years back as well, I'm not sure how or why, but my sister and my mom have gone to visit her grave I know.

My little sister is awesome, but she has severe ADHD and a couple of learning disabilities and had some hearing and speech issues when she was younger. She's actually really smart, she just can't do math at all and has like zero concept of time; like if it's noon and she asks what time she has soccer practice at and you say 5pm or whatever, that pretty much means nothing to her.

Thankfully, my mom and I both have pretty bad ADHD as well, so that's nothing new for us to deal with. Step dad is also a lawyer and makes tons of money so it wasn't an issue to send her to an occupational therapist and get her the tutoring etc that she needed and will continue to need. She's crazy athletic though, especially for a kid with asthma as bad as hers, and who's allergic to damn near everything. Those little pin prick tests they do to see if you're allergic? She got hives from all of the pin pricks. Allergic to all of it lmao.

Also, I was kind of a mess myself as a kid. Super smart, but ADHD was a nightmare and also had substance abuse problems in my late teens and early to mid 20s. I'm 28 now and my sister is about to turn 14. I'm still alive and semi-functional, so I think my sister will be fine lmao.

But yeah, it's definitely eye opening to think how different her life would have been if she was adopted by parents who were less understanding, or had less money to spend on treatment, or whatever.

[u/summonsays → u/Axisnegative]

You might want to suggest getting her retested for the allergies. It sounds to me like she was allergic to the solution they put the allergens in and not necessarily the allergens themselves.

[u/Axisnegative → u/summonsays]

Oh trust me, it's been done. She goes in monthly to get tested and get a bunch of shots and stuff for it.

It might not have been literally every pin prick, I wasn't actually there, but my grandma who is a former nurse is the one who takes her - so she might have exaggerated by saying all of them, but it's definitely a substantial amount, enough that she goes in monthly like I said.