Instant Take: Jennifer Newell On Her Adoption Journey

Small Batch Sound: Yeah. Hi, welcome to our very first slow cooker instant takes episode. It's all in the name. Usually we take about an hour to talk to guests about their various stories and expertise and what have you. But what about repeat guests? And what about updates and stories you've already heard the first part of? And what if a guest forgets to talk about something important to her? Or him? There's no podcast schedule for these instant takes, so we'll just Call them bonus episodes and they'll come out as they come out. ⁓ I forgot to mention, I'm Ashlyn Blue. Our first instant take comes from Jennifer Newell, aka Farmer. She was my guest in episode six, and we talked a lot about her journey with primary ovarian insufficiency, her personal story with women's health care, and how she aims to change the norms around that, and her overall general passion for women's health. So as Chatty Kathy's do, she forgot to talk about something very important to her. Which is not surprising, because we did talk a lot about pretty much everything, and she called me up to see if we could do a little mini episode. And when your best friend of over twenty years asks you to make up an entire mini series around her one request, you do it. Welcome. Thank you. I'm so sorry. What do you need to talk about? Again, very important, very important things. Well, it's a big, you know, infertility is a big topic. And people who are have been on this journey for I mean, now for mine's over 20 years. ⁓ there's just so so much to cover. and I just remember leaving that episode, and it was maybe even a week later, I was like, I did not even talk about this one stretch that was, you know, pretty major and some of the at least personal revelations during that season of my journey. ⁓ and thought, hey, let's do another little another little sh a little short thing. Yeah, it was a great thing. I'm making fun of you, but it was a great idea because I have had that's the that's the problem with like having that was the reason that I was like, ⁓ a book. If this was like the wh a book, I'd have to have another edition every time someone had either something new like in their fertility journey, like s somebody who's gotten pregnant and had trouble And then they didn't have trouble the next time. Like how do you do like a whole new edition? That just seems like a lot. So this is that was kind of the point of the the podcast in general, but we still didn't address that. So now you have and thank you. I what would I do without you? Not much. No. We we we need each other. We are we do. We very much need each other. We do. And we need to see each other more. So this is how we do that on the podcast. That's true. We'll try to keep it actually short this time instead of doubling our time like we did the last time. Yes. Okay. What are we gonna talk about? I I think we should talk a little bit about adoption journeys. Okay. Because in my infertility journey, because I as a quick refresh, I found out that I could not have biological children when I was 17 due to ovarian failure. And ⁓ so I always had in the back of my mind that okay. These are my options going forward. I could use and my issue was with ⁓ because of the ovarian issue, my issues was with my eggs. ⁓ so I could either use an egg donor and go through IVF or I could adopt. Like those are basically my two paths for ⁓ you know, kind of building building a family. And ⁓ so when my husband and I met, you know, we had these conversations early in our relationship. And, you know, once we got to the point where we were starting about starting to think about, okay, do we want to have children? Do we want to expand our family? You know, we went down both paths. We kind of explored IVF and egg donors and we explored adoption. ⁓ and I think a lot of other people who face infertility think about adoption. And some of them think about it as a backup plan, some of them think about it as a first choice. and everywhere in between, right? But That in and of itself, I think, just maybe deserves a few minutes of discussion and I had some interesting revelations when exploring that process or exploring that path. And I we did, by the way, speaking of, we did think about adoption when we were faced with the idea that we had never gotten technically pregnant, so we didn't know if I could. And we wondered what would, you know, what would the next step be. ⁓ and we, you know, that was it in it, but it wasn't our first. thought it was our I don't want to say last resort because that sounds like it's it's it's the least thing you want. ⁓ but when you're faced with those things like it's it's on the list for sure. Absolutely. And I you know I would done it. You're like I I would have baby. I would be a body exactly. We ⁓ so when we started exploring both paths, we started with the IVF route. And the only reason we started exploring that path first was because I needed to go see the doctor anyway. That was really it. We moved to San Antonio. I had an established care with ⁓ an either an OBGYN or a reproductive endocrinologist here. And so I got recommendations from my doc in Nashville. And she actually recommended a doc in Austin, which is about an hour and a half drive from us. And it was a fertility specialist because that's who I needed to see for my ovarian failure or ovarian insufficiency. And so, ⁓ you know, called, made an appointment for a consultation and went up and, you know, just had a really good conversation with the fertility specialist. ⁓ and it was, you know, in that, I I would say I think Justin and I were probably both in a state where we're like, okay, we could do either. We were really interested in adoption already. We that's something that I think could Been on our hearts and our minds before we met that we thought that's a path we want to go down. It might not be the only path. ⁓ and then for me, IBF with egg donors was ⁓ a possibility and I wanted to see what it would entail. But I would say my at that point, my my preference and probably Justin's too was slightly leaning toward adoption. ⁓ well, we went and we had this meeting, and this was the first time that someone looked at us and I think appropriately said. Adoption's really hard and it's the harder path. It it's quite possibly the harder and more expensive path. And no one had said that to us before. And so ⁓ I think for people who are experiencing infertility and they kind of think of adoption as, and I won't say backup plan, it you know, just it's it's there as a possibility, but it's not the first choice. w as we were going through the process, it became the first choice. And we started to guide our friends who were also having fertility issues as You need to look at this as a first choice or you need to look at all of your other options because it is extremely difficult. and so he was the first person that said that to us. And I I really got the sense that it wasn't because he wanted to be our doctor. He didn't want to sell us IBF services. That was gonna be my question. He was really pragmatic. Yeah. He gave some really good reasons for it. ⁓ and so, you know, we we actually had a really funny appointment. That's probably another instant take. That I won't get to talk about today. ⁓ had a really funny appointment with this doc. And ⁓ but we left and we were having the conversation thinking, okay, we'll we'll explore IVF. You know, we'll we'll kind of keep going down this path and let's look at adoption. We're still interested, but I would say that conversation weighted things differently. Okay. so from there we were the thing that hit us both is we were, you know, we're we're both faithful people. You know, we were regular members of a a pretty large church in San Antonio, went to a a church. ⁓ it wasn't like a regular church service. It was like a it was a weirdly big church service. We had a lot of campuses and they brought us all together and I don't remember what it was for. But we're sitting there with like a huge group of people. ⁓ but they spent a really big chunk of time talking about various adoption initiatives that the church was undertaking. And We left that. I especially left that thinking, this is it, this is what I want to do. This is all I want to do. This is what matters to me. ⁓ if we're gonna build a family, I I did not have, and maybe this was because I had the knowledge of my infertility from a really young age. But for me, the concept of having a biological attachment what it wasn't there for me. ⁓ and I think it is for some people, and I think that's perfectly fine and healthy. ⁓ but for me it wasn't there. And so I was like, This is this is what I want to do and talked to Justin about it. He was on the same page, and it was so nice to think, okay, we have a church organization that has a lot of resources and they are putting together this group that is dedicated to helping church members go through the adoption process. And we joined like, well, it would be literally God sent. Exactly. Yes. Right. And that's what it felt like to us. So it was like this is an answer to our prayers. We had been praying about it so fervently. and you know, we we went and we saw it. So we started going to the introduction the introduction meetings, ⁓ learning as much as we could. They would put on like adoption 101. And then they go through the path, right? Adoption is really complicated. You have to decide from where you're going to adopt. That's your first decision. Yeah. And not just international, you can't just say, Well, I'm interested in international versus domestic. ⁓ it's like domestic private or domestic through foster to adopt. If you're international, you have to pick a country because every country's regulations and requirements are different. Like it's a rigorous process to try to figure out what do I do. ⁓ and it was nice to have a support group through that because then much like infertility of the decision of like IVF versus adoption, how do I know what the right direction is? Like There's there's a huge need there. There's a whole world, literally. Yeah. A whole world. And you read per you read opinions and you know, everything on like, gosh, is international adoption bad for the countries that you're adopting from? Is it better for them to stay in their home country versus being removed to be a part of your family? You know, there are plenty you hear all the things, right? There are so many, you know, children available for adoption in the United States. Should we focus here? We we did not know. We ended up going with international adoption. and to, you know, give away the end of the story, our adoption process was not successful. We were in in it for two full years going through the home study, going through the dossier prep to send our information to the country we were adopting from Nicaragua. And we had everything complete. We were a week out from sending it. We had done the final. review process through legal and everything with the agency. What are those? You wrote a recommendation letter for us. Yes. Thank you. Yeah. A letter of recommendation. We did all the things as a home study. And I'm like, no, I wasn't her homestead. Like I was right. I wrote a recommendation. Was it? I can't No, I didn't do a home study. No, I wrote a recommendation letter. I was looking But it might have been part of so the home study process that could have been part of the home study. That might be where you attach to that. Yeah. ⁓ okay which is Which is for local domestic purposes. And then outside of the home study, you do the dossier prep, which is all the stuff that's required to send to the country you're adopting from. And you have to meet their specs. So you have to find an agency that specializes in both your local requirements and the country you're adopting from. ⁓ and then of course there's all the costs with it, right? Like your home study was probably $10,000. Whoa. I can't remember. We were, I think we s we ended up spending about 12K. Our estimate for what the whole thing would have cost had we gone through with the full process would have been probably around thirty five K and this was fifteen years ago. But that's not what was that? Three years ago, I paid more but that's because again, you don't know what you're gonna come up with, you know, what what's gonna happen and what your what meds you're gonna need and if it's gonna work or if you're gonna do a second transfer. So yeah. God, that's enough. ⁓ Well, no, no, no. So the thirty for yeah, for the home study, yes. For the full process, I don't think that quote includes travel because for Nicaragua, we would have had to live in the country for I remember you telling twelve weeks to six months. Which like that also means potentially, depending on your job, if you have you know, if you're a working at least mother or a father for that ⁓ purpose. I Yeah, that means loss of income potentially too. So like it's gonna cost you, but it's also gonna cost you. Yes. Yes. There's so much there's so much to think about. And that's an unusual thing for Nicaragua. so, which is one of the reasons we liked it. We we were looking at it. And the reason we were looking at that ⁓ country is because we have ⁓ my brother in law, my husband's sister's husband ⁓ is from Nicaragua. And we have our nieces and nephews who ⁓ you know. routinely see their grandparents and of course their their father. ⁓ they speak Spanish. You know, we thought there could be a better cultural assimilation with that. We live in San Antonio, which is very Hispanic. ⁓ so we were trying to be thoughtful about that. And then we just after learning about the program, really liked it. Really liked that you have to go stay in the country and you essentially foster your adoptive child during the time that you're there to create attachment and bonding. It's like pluck them out of And take them to a new place to know you. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. And you know, you go deep down the rabbit hole, just like you do with IVF or any other fertility solution of like reading all of the forums and you know, trying to get recommendations from people who have adopted from that country or gone through a similar program. And and so yeah, we we did all of that. But ⁓ it was a it was it was a process. It's an expensive process, a time consuming process. We also did A few conferences and several just like education journeys. I think we maybe had probably about a hundred to two hundred hours in just adoption education that were, I think a hundred was required. Some of it was required. Okay, so this is required. I didn't know that. Okay, okay. Yep. And there are different Well, I think the extra hours were us being studious. ⁓ and there was like there was a conference here. It was called the Connect. The Connected Something Conference, The Connected Child, I think is the book that we read. ⁓ and then there was a conference that we got free attendance to if we volunteered. So we volunteered for the conference so that we could have access to it. ⁓ and so learned a lot through that, including, you know, in addition to the costs, in addition to the time. with adoption, I kind of thought we're looking to adopt very young. You know, we had we had decided, ⁓ infant to toddler, rough age range. and you know, going into it, one of my assumptions was the younger we adopt, the more likely to attach similar to a biological child. No, no. One of the things we learned is that in adopting, your sweet child is going to come to you with trauma, no matter what. And you were going to have to I would have thought the same thing though. Yeah. You're gonna have to parent a child with trauma. ⁓ and attachment can be difficult. It can be, it's a lifelong journey. There's just so much that goes into it. and that's why I wanted to reopen this and discuss that because, you know, we talked a lot about the biology of it and living with infertility and what my personal experience was as a woman. ⁓ but then also as a potential parent who's exploring those options. And I would never discourage somebody from adoption. So I hope that's not the takeaway here. ⁓ because we were really excited about it. Glossing over it either way. And I guess it wouldn't feel like a gloss if it was In the negative, but like just painting anything with a broad brush and assuming like I think that's the where the problem is. Like you just think, well, it's hard. Can't stop it hard. Why is it hard? What makes it hard? Because your version of hard maybe someone else is like, Yeah, that sounds great. Let's do it. Well, like, what's next? You know, versus IVF, no, I don't want to do all the fertility stuff. I would rather go down the adoption route. Right. Like, once you see and hear everything. I feel like that just it it reveals itself to you as a as to what if either is what you want to do. Like for you, like, no, I don't really want to do either of them right now. So I think it's better to give not your horror stories, but like even your difficulties, because if I've learned anything from doing this podcast and just, you know, living, it's that if you don't talk about the harder parts, when someone else stumbles on something that you've already actually gone through and come out the other side of or you know, made your decision about, they think that something's wrong with their journey as opposed to being like, ⁓ no, no, no, this is actually normal. I've just I'm ready for it now because I have a little bit of a background. So keep exactly. Yeah. And so I think, you know, s some interesting things came out of it after we once we got to the point where we were ready to submit the dossier, the country closed its borders to international adoption, which is why we ended up not having a successful adoption. ⁓ and we kind of stayed in that process for another full two years and but I would say actively awaiting information, keeping up with the news for probably another year. And then we just led our home study labs. ⁓ we had options to transfer our homestead to a different program and some of the fees we paid to a different program to adopt. But when the time came, we just did not feel like that was the right path for us. ⁓ which is also another, you know, kind of reckoning I I think through infertility, through the adoption journey, one of the things I've loved about the community that I have been exposed to that has been around me is just like there's not really a wrong answer. And yeah, when you're making really hard decisions, you need to let go of the guilt of that decision making. Because, you know. Whether it was us choosing adoption over IVF, choosing an international country over a domestic adoption, choosing not to transfer all of the work we had put into it to another country, ⁓ or to another adoption program. You know, those are all just decisions we had to make with the information we had at the time based on where we were in our lives at the time. And I can see how it, you know, it it can be easy to look back and think about the what ifs, you know, the shoulda, woulda, coulda's. But I hope that women who are facing these really difficult decisions, parents, women and men, you know, parents who are facing these difficult decisions, ⁓ let go of some of the guilt and remorse. You know, we're we're doing the best with the information that we have. And so we decided not to because we were launching a business. We didn't feel, you know, we we do a lot through prayer and faith and and, you know, kind of believe in things that motivate us in certain directions. And ⁓ weren't really feeling, you know, I'll use Christian terminology, called to go anywhere else. ⁓ and so so we didn't. But what's really interesting too about that decision, which I think was the right decision, one really cool thing about adoption and about this whole acceptance of at least for my status and infertility, ⁓ is we're not on a time schedule. And that was something that I even had to let go of when we started adopting because first of all, we can still adopt. We could still adopt at any age range. We could adopt out of birth order. The right, right. We can like you think of older sibling, younger sibling. We right. I could probably still I could still go do IVF if I wanted to have an egg donor so do I VF, you know, with my health updates these days. It's very unlikely, but there's still a small possibility that my eggs might actually still exist and have some functionality. Do we need to talk more about that? Just kidding. We can. We we can we should close this one out and we should start another instant take. And so we all at five because we're at twenty five minutes. ⁓ pick it up. No, no, I know. Just kidding. But I think this whole concept of If you are going the route of including adoption in your family planning at all, it's really cool to disconnect this preconceived notion of birth order from that journey. Because we could adopt a two year old in three years and we could adopt an eight year old, you know, in four years and have an older child that is newer to our family than the younger child. Right. And that's and that's so cool for like somebody like, you know. People ask me all time, are you gonna have another? And the word have ⁓ you know, like it's a connotation of ⁓ literally growing it in your body or going back through IBF, I guess surrogacy, if if that was our original thing. Excuse me, my nose is itchy. ⁓ but that all relies on my body, my eggs, you know, my slow cookerness to be fully functioning. And that's just like not a Problem for the adoption part. You don't have to like time clock, the ticking clock time clock is just not there. It it it could it's ⁓ there in other ways, I'm sure. You know, like do we want to start this now? But like not in the physical childbearing years side of the equation. So that is something that's really neat and that keeps the door open, so to speak. It does. Yeah, it does. And we have conversations about it fairly regularly. I would say. Every six to twelve months we kind of just look at each other and we're like, Hey, how are you feeling about our decision, our current decision to not have any children? You know, are you are you feeling differently about that? Has anything changed? And we just kind of do little check-ins periodically to see where we are. ⁓ which has been good just to keep the door open. So the door's never fully clothed. Clothed. That was weird. Clothed. Closed. Fully closed. please be fully clothed. ⁓ and so I'm picturing a door with clothes on it now. ⁓ gosh, I'm so tired. I'm keeping this. It's only Tuesday. They it just we we get to have those check-ins and you know, age is an interesting thing ⁓ you know, getting into your forties and then feeling like, you know, and then as you probably have seen when you are Around family and friends who went a more traditional route of, you know, having children. And so their kiddos are getting to the ages of now it's like middle school, you know, for me. Most of my friends have kids. My nieces and nephews are spanned from well, my nieces and ⁓ they're all she's old. So my My oldest niece is a C is going to be a senior. Yes. So she is 17. I can't believe it. She's 17 years old. She's the eldest. The youngest in the family is, ⁓ my gosh, when was he born? He's maybe six months. Okay. I think he's about six months old. But that's also because Justin and I have much younger siblings. But we have like 13 nieces and nephews between the two of us. Nice. But I know. But there's a wide variety, right? As in most of my friends and peers my age have kiddos around middle school. And it's kind of like, you know, and then a little bit younger, but it's we again, we we could adopt when we're in our fifties, depending on where we are in our lives and what we want. They would have like a cousin like near their age, it sounds like. So that's great. We could adopt teenagers. We could foster. They're just it does feel like that is one of the things that's overwhelming about adoption, but also freeing about the adoption path is it's overwhelming to pick Where you're going to adopt from, the age you're going to adopt. Are you open to siblings? If so, how many siblings? What illnesses are you open to adopting from? Yeah. And when I say medical issues, we probably had 10 pages worth of medical issues that we had to say yes or no to. And again, when you're getting to that point of really like, what do we have? The capacity to take on. ⁓ it's so hard to write down on a piece of paper. No, I cannot take care of a child with Down syndrome. I cannot take a care of a child with this particular, you know, medical issue. ⁓ that's really hard, right? Because Yeah. It it it's a h that's that's that's tough. But it's also a moment to kind of really get real and well the options aren't endless. On the on the on the flip side, it's hard for you to do an it should be, you know, it should be Because if you are like, Yeah, I'll take anybody, but you're really not being hon not you, but someone else is not really being honest about that. And then a child with special needs comes into the house, do you want that child to be put with just anybody who was who if they were like, ⁓ I just wanted a child, I assumed it would be fine, and here I am now. I don't actually want this child. Like that's the opposite of what you want. And you have to think of that stuff ahead of time. So I get it. ⁓ that doesn't make it easier for you at all. But You need to be prepared. Yeah. Especially for the child and the parent. Mm-hmm. And it is really it's also an eye opening process to all of the things, all of the difficulties you could face with becoming a parent and raising a child. And you could you know also when you have your own, same thing. Exactly. Exactly. You know, ⁓ with less of a a check mark situation. But yeah, exactly. Becoming a parent is not for the it's It is how we like keep this whole thing going, you know, this whole like life on earth thing going. But you know, I I had someone on talking about that recently and she was like, You have to get a certification for everything else, but not being a parent. And it was like, Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And people screw it up royally. So like this is just like a this is a this is kind of in between the certification, you know. And being and just being able to get pregnant whenever you're whenever you get pregnant. Right. So and the the adoption courses that we took, the process we went through, I think would be extremely helpful for anyone who is considering having a child, whether it's biological or through adoption. So if it's even a question of I might want to consider adoption one day, there's a lot, there are a lot of free resources out there. You have to dig in to find them. But you know, again, the the course I remember the most was the one called ⁓ The Connected Child. But it's And we'll put a notes in the show notes or we'll put rather links in the show notes for any that you can think of or that you come across and we'll update them accordingly. Yeah. Yeah. Well that's all I really think else. Yeah. Anything else? That's it? I mean That's all? Gosh, there's always so much. How long do you want me to keep calling? This is an instant take. I know. It's it's The Alpha Date Microwave is about to ding. ⁓ Thank you for coming on today to talk about this. I if you have any questions about adoption, I mean, don't ask me because I will not steer you in the right direction. I will steer you to Farmer. ⁓ and also the resources that she ⁓ sends us and we'll look for some on our own just to see what else is out there. But I hope this was helpful to anyone who's considering this. ⁓ and I do think, ⁓ just having gone through like someone who's like, I don't know what my path is gonna be. ⁓ I I actually also thought about IVF and ⁓ adoption after my divorce ten years ago because I didn't know what the future w held. I thought, I wanna be a mom, ⁓ what does that look like? And so, ⁓ I think it's a great idea to start studying it and just, you know, getting yourself immersed in it so that it's not all emotion. It's a lot of also just prac practical ⁓ information that you can digest. So if it's even in the back of your mind, I would suggest maybe going ahead and talking to your partner if you have a partner, if you want a partner ⁓ with this. And then also, yeah, doing your doing your homework. Thank you so much, Jennifer Farmer, whatever we call you now. And ⁓ we'll be back with more ⁓ slow cooker instant takes whenever we have them. ⁓ I hope you have a great rest of your day. We'll see you soon.