I was actually adopted so I grew up with a lot of exposure to adoption and my family was very open about it. It was never something that we didn’t talk about. My brother was adopted too. I found out I was pregnant in 2019 when I was 17. I freaked out and set a timer on my phone for 2 hours. I was like I will give myself 2 hours to cry and then I’ll figure out what to do.
Later that night, I started thinking about different options, and I found the Adoptions of Wisconsin website. I was looking through all of the waiting family pictures, and I found Dave* and Stacy’s* profile, and right away I was like oh my gosh, these are the parents. There was no hesitation, I just knew that they were the family I wanted to choose after seeing their profile and how active they were and how similar their lifestyle was to mine, and all of these super cool things that they had included. I also noticed that they posted that they didn’t have any concerns about the appearance of the child or skin color and that was super cool to have that pointed out because my parents are both white and I am African American and Puerto Rican. It was cool to see that no matter what color this child turns out it will work out.