Happy Tuesday! For our father’s series for June we are excited to have another Dad on our blog! Meet Michael – Kira‘s husband. Kira is one of our regular contributors and she and her husband Michael have a son and a daughter. Their son Beckett was born at 29 weeks, and Brooklyn they added to their family through adoption. Kira herself is an adoptee, and recently she reconnected with her birth family. You can follow a little of her story here!
We are excited to share this interview with Michael with you! I think other dads and hopeful adoptive dads can relate to his experience.
What were your thoughts towards adoption when you and Kira started talking about adoption as a way to grow your family?
It was not on the top of my list as the next option for us to grow our family. I had never considered it growing up and never thought about the possibility that we wouldn’t be able to conceive. When we found out that carrying any children beyond the first wasn’t possible, I just figured we’d go the route of surrogacy. It wasn’t really until Kira expressed her desire to adopt that I gave it a real hard look, and the idea was pretty scary to me. It was a gamble, it was still pretty expensive, and I honestly didn’t know if I could love a child that wasn’t my own blood or if I could provide equal love to the adopted child as I did to my biological son. I think the tipping point for me was after Kira and I had a long talk about the situation and I did some soul-searching. Having a second child, and a daughter at that, was more important to me than the ‘risks’.
How has adoption surprised you?
I think what surprised me the most is that I am able to love my adopted daughter as if she is my own. It was my greatest fear through the process and even at birth I had my doubts. I absolutely adore our daughter and I couldn’t imagine life without her; she’s daddy’s little girl.
Something else that I wasn’t expecting about adoption was the extensive process. I’m amazed by the persistence required and efforts families go through to adopt a child. The process is emotionally draining and I think it’s sad that there are so many people out there trying to expand their family but don’t get selected or don’t have the financial means to adopt, especially when it is because of a loss of at risk funds from a failed adoption.
What have you learned watching your wife search and reconnect with her birth family?
First and foremost I think I got to see how lucky she got. If her biological uncle had not been on ancestry.com I don’t know where she would be in the overall process. Since finding her family, I learned that unearthing her story and meeting her biological relatives is a very emotion experience and that there is literally no play book on how it is going to pan out. I didn’t expect that Kira would be actively communicating with birth parents and extended family, and I learned that I just need to back off and let her have the time necessary to process and do her thing.
It seems like everyone always wants to know if it was love at first sight when meeting your adopted child for the first time. Since you and Kira have both a biological son, and a daughter through adoption, can you tell us what seeing them both for the first time was like? What were the feelings and emotions you experienced?
It wasn’t love at first sight for me. As I mentioned before I was pretty terrified of all the unknown in this process, all the way to the delivery room. When I held my daughter for the first time, I felt like I was just holding someone else’s baby. I was excited knowing that she was going to, most likely, be ours but it definitely wasn’t love at first sight for me. I had so many questions running through my head, some relating to her appearance (not knowing the father), others wondering if she had been exposed to any substances while in utero, so many questions that you don’t have when you have a biological child. Then there was knowing that the adoption process wasn’t done kept me on edge. Just because that baby is in your arms doesn’t mean everything is a done deal. I felt like I couldn’t give my whole heart to the baby because birth mothers do change her mind and decide to parent, or the thought that something might happen during the home studies, etc. It’s not a normal situation and I wasn’t able to emotionally commit to her. I can’t say how long it took exactly but it was probably a week or so after she came home with us before I really felt like I was hers and she was mine.
Looking back at pictures and thinking about those first days with Brooklyn, it’s hard to believe that I could have any doubts about our connection. They always make me smile.
What is your advice for Dads just starting the adoption journey?
I think the best advice I can give is to be honest with your spouse. If you don’t think you can handle a special needs child, say so. If you can’t deal with drug exposure, say so. Only want to look into specific genders or ethnicities, say so. Of course it might make the process longer, but you need to be comfortable with this lifetime choice. This isn’t a piece of furniture or something you can swap out in a year, this is a person and they’re going to need you to be all in.
How has being married to an adoptee affected your marriage, and prepared you for your own adoption process?
Being married to an adoptee really didn’t have any effect on our marriage until very recently. Kira hadn’t expressed a strong desire to find her birth parents while we had been together, but then she used Ancestry to look up her ethnicity and had a match that spurred her interest. It wasn’t really getting her very far and I really wanted to help her find more connections, so I decided to also get her a 23andme test. Of course 10 second after she sends it in she figures out that her connection on Ancestry was her uncle and everything just unfolded from there.
As she started figuring out who was who in her biological family who was related to who, it was exciting but also a bit of a struggle for me. As I’ve noted in other questions responses it isn’t something there is a manual for, so sometimes it gets complicated and feelings get hurt unintentionally. I had a hard time with how consumed Kira was with the “new” family.
Kira’s biological family has been amazing, receiving ours with open arms and open hearts. It has been a real blessing to have them added to our greater extended family and I know they’ll have a positive impact on us and our children. I think there’s a lot that will come up in the future that Kira and her biological family will be able to share with our daughter once she’s able to comprehend what adoption is, so I’m thankful for that. They’ll be able to talk about the subject and it be from a first person experience rather than just through assumptions or guessing.
What are your dreams for your daughter and son?
I hope that I’ll be able to provide the best childhood that my daughter can have. I want her to be successful in whatever she wants to do with her life and for her to have all the opportunities to be the best she can be. Most importantly, I want her to be happy with her life.
