The Beginning of My Family’s Journey to Adoption

By: Dawn Grittmann

There are many ways to be a pharmacist mom. You may have biological children, or you may have a marriage that includes welcoming step-children into your life. Each pharmacist mom’s story is unique, and I would like to share the beginning of my family’s journey to adoption.

I met my husband Derek in 2011, and we were married in 2015. It did not take long for us to start our family, as our son Dexter was born exactly two weeks before our first wedding anniversary. I have endometriosis, so I was amazed at how quickly I got pregnant. Other than some moderate morning sickness, the pregnancy was also uneventful, which I greatly appreciated.

We waited about a year to try for a second child, and since then I have struggled with secondary infertility. And, while we have considered procedures such as IUI and IVF, we currently have decided that it is not the right path for us. We continue to optimize our health as much as possible to help me to get pregnant again should that happen, but in the last year we have focused our efforts on adoption.

After a year or so of talking and thinking about it, my husband and I decided that we were going to start the process of domestic infant adoption. This was in the fall of 2019, and we lived in Iowa at the time. We worked with an adoption agent to get our home study completed, but we chose not to work with an agency. We also advertised on several adoption websites. Unfortunately, we did not find any matches, but we also moved to Arizona in the summer of 2020, so we didn’t have a lot of time for a match to be found.

Since we moved to a different state, we have had to start the home study process again since each state has their own requirements. And, while we have completed as much as we can on our end, we now wait for our home study to be written and then we will need to be certified by a judge. We anticipate that we will be able to start looking at potential matches in March 2021. Another big change is that we are looking to adopt from foster care, after deciding that we wanted to expand our range for a child or children to adopt.

It is my hope that I will continue to share my family’s journey to adoption with my fellow pharmacist moms. I would also love to hear from you. I have and continue to learn so much about foster care and adoption, so if you have any questions please feel free to reach out. Also, perhaps you have already fostered or adopted or both and have some wisdom to share with all of us. I would definitely welcome that wisdom. Overall, I want to encourage pharmacist moms to spend some time thinking about adoption and foster care and how they might advocate or help in this arena. As we reach the end of National Adoption Month (which is November of every year), I look forward to my family’s journey and to discussing yet another meaningful path to motherhood.

Dawn Grittmann is a Clinical Pharmacist at TotalMed Staffing

Contact information and more information about her family’s adoption journey can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/openadoptionarizona