RIANNE WAS IN AN ADOPTION PROCESS: "FELT AS IF NOTHING WAS PRIVATE OF US ANYMORE"

The fact that while I'm typing this two toddlers tearing down the living room, screaming with laughter, doesn't really make any sense from a medical point of view. My husband and I had wanted a child for years before their arrival and did our best to get it, but to no avail. There was nothing wrong with his sperm, the cause was mine.

Or more precisely, with my endometriosis, a condition in which the lining of the uterus grows outside your uterus – which not only causes a lot of pain, but often also infertility.

Because our desire to have children continued to be great, we finally decided to sign up for adoption. We were sure we were going to love a child who hadn't grown in my womb just as much, and we weren't deterred by the fact that for many years only children with so-called 'special needs' were eligible for an intercountry adoption process.

Those 'special needs' could be anything from a missing limb or a baby with HIV infection, to mothers who had used drugs or alcohol during pregnancy. We learned all about it during the compulsory adoption course that every aspiring adoptive parent in the Netherlands must follow. Six half days in an impersonal office, somewhere on an industrial estate, with about five other couples who also hoped to hold a child in their arms through adoption.

That course was not the only requirement to qualify for an actual adoption process. Our finances were checked extensively, we had to undergo a medical examination by an independent doctor to check that our risk of death was not too high to allow us a child, we had to fill out 1001 forms and had three conversations with someone from child protection who had to determine whether we would be suitable parents.

In addition to the fact that it sometimes felt as if nothing was private of us anymore, the process took a very long time, also because there was a few months of waiting involved at approximately every step. It took us more than three years before we got an agreement. And we weren't there yet, because then we ended up on the actual waiting list for a match.

But then, five years later and still without a child (although in possession of a baby room for a year and a half, also a requirement) I was suddenly pregnant. A miracle, conceived around Sinterklaas and therefore the best surprise I've ever received. In August 2020 I gave birth to our twins, we had already put the adoption plans on hold: apart from the fact that we were already quite busy with two babies, we didn't think it was fair to an adopted child that already had two little ones crawling around who were biologically seen of us.

We were very lucky, especially when intercountry adoption was suspended immediately in February 2021. There were several reasons for this, the most important being a large report by the Joustra Committee, which showed that quite a few things had gone wrong with adoptions between 1976 and 1998. Children who had been robbed from their parents, whose papers were found to be forged, who should never have been snatched from their homeland.

Of course it is good that something as complicated as adoption is being looked at extremely critically. In an ideal world, children will grow up with their own parents anyway, or at least in their own culture and country. But this is not an ideal world. There are children who are raised in poorly maintained orphanages, by employees who do their utmost, but have too little time to take good care of everyone. Children that nobody wants to have in their country of origin, especially if they have a disability or a serious illness.

I also give those children to parents. Just like I grant people who would like to raise a child to be parents.

.