The joy that new parents feel after adopting a baby is just as great, if not more, as giving birth to a baby.

For example, speak with any adoptive couple about adopting a baby and you will hear the same sentiments time and time again: “We didn’t know we could love something this much”; “Our dreams have finally come true”; “We don’t know why we waited so long to adopt our baby.”

Those same people had dreamed their whole lives of becoming parents, yet struggles with infertility made it impossible for them. Some spent thousands of dollars, months and even years on infertility treatments, trying to make their dreams of parenthood come true.
 
One day, however, they had an epiphany: Their dreams were to become parents – not pregnant.

Nearly every adoptive parent has seen that from the moment their baby was born, there were no differences in raising an adopted child versus a biological child. The baby cried in the middle of the night, experienced the “terrible twos,” was nervous about the first day of kindergarten, reluctantly became interested in the opposite sex, worried his or her parents when receiving a driver’s license, attended prom, graduated high school, got married and had children, making his or her parents, grandparents.

Along the way, the whole family shared the same memories, learned the same lessons, and experienced failure and triumph, together.

Clearly, the journey that adoptive parents take with their children is no different than that of biological families, so why are adoptive parents so overly joyous about being parents? It’s the sense of loss they felt during their struggles to conceive, resulting in many questioning whether they were ever meant to become parents. Once the chance to reclaim parenthood is again realized through adoption, they value the idea of having a child even more than they did when they assumed pregnancy would be easily achieved.

This results in the adoptive family valuing the little things even more than they would have without their challenges of infertility. Milestones, such as the baby rolling over by herself for the first time, her first words and her first steps – these moments are treasured by adoptive families forever.

For all of the reasons mentioned, adopting a baby is not a substitute to become a parent. Adoption is a very real way of becoming a parent, resulting in everything a person dreams of about parenthood, and sometimes more.