At age 33, I made a shocking discovery: I had already undergone menopause. My fertility specialist's most promising option was a technique called GIFT: The doctor could combine my husband's sperm with a donated egg. If the fertilization worked, the embryo would be implanted in my womb. As I pondered what that process would mean to me, I realized that I preferred to adopt. And so, my journey began.

Now, over a decade later, I proudly mother two fine children, a boy and a girl, as different from each other as East from West yet similar as only two children of the same parents can be.

An Independent Domestic Plan
First came Thomas Michael. We connected with our dear son Thomas by word of mouth, can you believe it? In this age of dedicated toll-free adoption phone lines and nationwide advertisements in small-town newspapers, we actually found our baby just by talking. While researching agencies and how-to books, my husband Bob and I told everybody we knew that we wanted to adopt. Our desire for a child seemed to bubble into every conversation.