I'm Gonna be a Mom!....Someday.....Maybe

No, no, no, I’m not pregnant.


I was standing, crammed into a combi this morning and all of the sudden I had an epiphany.

Having kids or getting married is not something that passes through my everyday thoughts . I’m certainly asked on a regular basis not if, but when, I’m going to get married and have kids. I always take this chance as a learning opportunity that a woman doesn’t have to be married or have children to validate her life.


I’m 25, single and have no idea what I want to do with my life exactly. How on earth would I know if I want to have kids?


But then this morning, out of know where it hit me. If I ever do decided to have kids and I have the ability, I want to adopt a child from Peru.


For a few months now, I’ve been feeling that all my work with the kids is not enough. I can’t help but have this hopeless feeling that no matter what I do, these beautiful boys and girls are destined to fall back into a life abuse and neglect. I wouldn’t have the opportunity even if I wanted to take home any of the kids I work with. None of them are technically orphans or “up for sale” anyways. But there are so many children in Peru who are.


Last month while I was traveling, I met a Peruvian woman and her beautiful family. She was born in Peru and moved to Paris to study, married a French man and has been living in Norway for the past 8 years. As I had drinks with her one evening, I told her about my work in children’s homes and she confided in me that she adopted both of her children. She came from Norway on two different occasions to adopt her children and told the story of the adoption process and the actual experience of going to pick up her children.


It was a really inspiring, beautiful story. It didn’t occur to me at the time, but all of the sudden I am seeing the great honor it is to adopt a child. Especially from a country that has come to mean so much to me.


I have never understood how people pay tens of thousands of dollars to have their seed and egg harvested into another donor carrier just so their spawn can live on. To me, this is one of the most selfish acts a person can commit. There are so many children out there who need homes. The want to have your own flesh and blood live on is understandable and biological. But by all standards, if you are unable to have a child naturally, surrogacy is completely not practical.


I believe in Darwinism. Even if you don’t and you believe that God created everything and has a plan, maybe God’s plan is that you shouldn’t procreate. I know that can come off a bit harsh. Many women I’m sure would tell me that I couldn’t understand unless I was in their position. Maybe, but I have felt this way for as long time. And now that I work with abandoned children and see just how many need homes, I have become quite passionate against surrogacy.


A woman unable to bear her own children may tell me I couldn’t understand unless I was in her shoes. Well, I’d like to tell that woman before she goes and spends $70,000 to artificially place her spawn in another woman, to come spend some time in my shoes. Come work a few months with all the abandoned and forgotten kids of the world. Then see if conscienceless she could turn her back on them and go create a test tube baby


I feel after I leave Peru, this feeling that my two years wasn’t enough may find it’s relief in the adoption of one child who won’t be forgotten. Again, it is too far away for me really consider. But if someday it ever happens, I will remember the morning in the combi when I thought to myself “hey, maybe someday I’ll adopt a Peruvian child”.