If you’ve found out that you may never have children because you or your partner is infertile, you should know that not all hope is lost. There may still be solutions that will allow you to have a child that will carry part of the couple’s genes, or you could bring children into your household through other means. You could also be very surprised by how organic your family dynamic could be. Let’s take a look at some of the things you could do if you can’t have children with your partner naturally.
Look at Surrogacy
As long as you don’t mind the child having a surrogate mother, then surrogacy could be a way to have a baby who will still be biologically yours. If in-vitro is possible, an embryo could be conceived this way and placed in the surrogate mother. The other way to do it is to have the surrogate mother fertilised with the father’s sperm or have an egg that was fertilised by someone else’s sperm and place it into the surrogate.
In this case, the child will only have the DNA from the people who donated their biological material, so this is something you need to be conscious about. The surrogate mother will have a connection with the child too, and there have been cases where it resulted in custody disputes, so this is another thing to think about.
Adoption
Adoption is another way that you can make an addition to your family. The process to adopt a child can take a while, which is normal since agencies need to know if you’re mentally, physically, and financially fit to adopt children.
The whole approval process will take around 6 months on average. You will first need to attend special classes where adoption will be explained more in detail to you. You will then have to agree to have multiple appointments with a social worker who will come to your home and perform an assessment. Once this is done, you’ll have to go through a medical and police background check. Once you’ve been cleared, the agency will start the process of matching you with a child.
Foster Parenting
Foster parenting is another great option if you were always eager to have children but can’t. You can decide to go for short or long-term arrangements and will be remunerated on top of it. This will allow you to get the benefits of adopting while still having some flexibility. Some parents later decide to adopt the foster children they welcomed in, so you could truly get the best of both worlds. If foster parenting is something that really interests you, check out Foster Care Associates.
Conclusion
Not being able to conceive children naturally might be a tough pill to swallow, but you shouldn’t despair. Consider all possible solutions. Take the time to sit down with your partner and go through every solution until you find something that works for both of you.