Pink or blue?

One of the intriguing things about adoption is you may actually be able to choose the gender of your child. There are pros and cons to this option - and plenty of articles on whether or not a couple should be able to do this. In fact, some agencies believe that this is wrong, and won't allow the parents this choice if you use their services. It's an interesting debate that has so much emotion tied into it. Interestingly, when adoptive parents do specify a gender - they are more likely to specify girl than boy.

For us, it was definitely a topic of discussion. We've had the delights and the trials of both sons and daughters - the joy of parenting a preteen girl takes up a lot of our time and emotion right now! The kids are more than willing to share their advice - the boys would like a brother and our daughter wants a little sister.....o.k., to be perfectly honest, the boys want anything but another sister, and M says, not another brother! A definite quandary, but, in the end, they have said they are excited about either one.

So, how do you decide? One thing we definitely took into account was time frame. The more specific you are (you can even choose hair color, eye color, complexion...), the longer it could take. Was it that important to us to have a certain gender that we wanted to add even more time to the process? Another thought was that if you don't specify in adopting from Russia, you will more than likely get a boy referred to you. This isn't because there are more boys put up for adoption, but because there are more girls requested. However, as we've talked with other adoptive couples that did not specify, we've seen girl referrals almost as much as referrals of boys.

In the end, we decided not to decide. We felt, and told our kids, that God had the right child for us, and He would decide if a boy or girl was the right choice for our family. Can't wait to find out what He picked!!!