I though it wasn’t a great situation for parent or child/ren and I didn’t want to put my kids through that. I just wanted to grow up (ha!), get married, and then have kids. The good old-fashioned way.

Time passed. Somewhere along the way I grew up, but I never got married. At 38 I finally decided it was time to get some health insurance, which led to a very sad conclusion. I had to decide if I wanted to add maternity coverage to my policy. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be able to add it at a later date unless there was a significant change that would require rewriting the policy as a whole - such as getting married.

Initially, that didn’t seem like an issue. I wasn’t dating anyone, so marriage wasn’t going to happen anytime soon so why bother, right? Wrong. The maternity coverage had to be in place for at least 12 months before there would be any benefits paid. Now it was an issue - what if a miracle happened and within a year I was getting married? If I got married at 39, I probably wouldn’t choose to wait before starting a family. After all, we know how hard it can be for "old" women to get pregnant. If I didn’t add the insurance until I got married I’d have to wait an entire YEAR before even trying. By then I’d be 40 and it would be extremely difficult to conceive naturally.

But to pay the additional premium ($300 a month) just in case? I decided that there were too many other things to spend that kind of money on than to gamble with it that I might get married in 12 months and be pregnant shortly thereafter.

Knowing that the older I got the harder it would be to get pregnant, I basically decided that I had to give up those hopes and dreams. I actually found myself mourning the loss of the children I wouldn’t have. All I ever really wanted was to be somebody’s wife and mother.

A few years later the Lord enabled me to move to a small farm with a nice home. It was too much for just one person (though I wasn’t complaining). After living here just a month or two, I found myself looking at the adoption profiles posted by the state. Maybe I could provide a home for a nice girl whose age made her less adoptable, but who didn’t have too much baggage in tow. Then I heard a commercial on the radio about an informational meeting about international adoption.

The memories came flooding back. At one time I had been giving serious consideration to adopting a little girl from Russia. Maybe I should check into this. Sure enough, long before the meeting had come to a close, I was filling out the application. The agency director mentioned that the fees would be going up January 1st the following year. This was the first week of December. I didn’t waste any time getting the application submitted and the I-600A form sent off.

Click here for Part 2....the journey to Russia