Promoting Adoptions

Just as there is Godwin's Law stating that every argument will eventually wind up with a comparison to Hitler or the Nazis, so there should also be a law that all idle Internet meanderings will result in watching an Ellen DeGeneres video on YouTube.

The last few days have seen me trawling the Internet even more so than usual, thanks to picking up a whole litany of lurgies simultaneously: an ear infection accompanied by a chest infection and tonsillitis does not a Happy Jane make. Battling just the one is hard enough, but the unHoly Trinity is genuinely exhausting. I'm shattered.

Incidentally – going spectacularly off-topic here, but all in a good cause – I was urgently googling in the middle of Friday night for 'home remedies' to cure an ear ache. For reasons I cannot fathom, one of them actually worked: if you're ever wanting to claw your own ear off thanks to an infernal pain inside, take a small piece of onion, warm it in the microwave, and pop it in your ear. Leave it there for a few minutes and you will soon forget your ear ever had an issue. An equally pungent alternative is to create some garlic oil (chopped garlic and olive oil) and pop a few drops of that into the lug hole. (What the devil did we do pre-Internet?)

And now swerving sharply back towards my topic of the moment...

There was a DeGeneres clip that was something or another to do with adoption, and via a series of twists and turns I ended up on the website of an American couple asking for donations to help them adopt a Russian child. More specifically, a little girl with Down's Syndrome who had been abandoned at birth. My immediate reaction was to proffer up a mental face-palm to a site asking for donations for this cause, before I bothered to read on a little. They've broken down the costings and, in doses of $100 or so dollars at a time, demonstrated why it costs around US$40,000 for an American to adopt a child from Russia. (Bear in mind that thanks to Putin it is now impossible for any American to do so, but this is harking back to the good old pre-2013 days.)

Out of curiosity, I googled the cost of IVF treatment. In a nutshell, the sum is unlimited: you could be lucky and have success on the first course of treatment, or it could take you many cycles. And don't forget that what the clinic quotes is only a fraction of what you'll really pay: there is the time needed off work, the travelling to and from appointments, the scans, the tests, the checks, the drugs – and the emotional strain it inevitably puts a couple under.

Did you know that, in the UK at least, one in seven couples struggle to conceive? That's a far higher figure than I ever imagined it to be, and rather marginalises the typical argument of, 'it's so unfair that we can't have a child – everybody else can'.

There are two aspects of this wretched situation that are playing on my mind: 1) why don't more couples readily accept their inability to create a child between them and move towards the adoption route? There are literally hundreds of thousands of children already hanging around in desperate need of loving parents. 2) why on earth is it so damn difficult for people to adopt? Never mind the rather complex relations of the Russia/America controversy, it's difficult enough in your own country to adopt a child. Why? Who the devil is creating these rules and regulations?

Regarding the latter, I know of a couple – both solicitors, both respectable, hard-working and high-earning individuals – who struggled to conceive and so decided to adopt. They battled for years, having to prove themselves to squadrons of social workers, and finally, finally, they have a little boy. Even then, they didn't actually know until the day they picked him up whether they would be allowed to walk away with him.

That one in seven statistic is still knocking me sideways. Why don't more of these couples head down the adoption route? However stressful, it is infinitely preferable to the prodding and probing involved in IVF – and at a mere £160 in the UK it is a bargain in comparison. Women also have the benefit of not needing to go through that whole pregnancy and birth business: no stretch marks, no aching back, no impossible decisions between slicing or splitting. Yes, it might seem tough that you are unable to have a child of your own – but those are the cards you've been dealt, and those are the cards you must play with.

People are always so intent on fighting for their human rights that they forget to be human themselves. Maya Angelou – a phenomenal woman who, along with the likes of Ellen DeGeneres, raises the bar for the rest of us – reminds us that, 'People will forget what you said; people will forget what you did – but people will never forget how you made them feel'. It's a simple but profound truth that if people stopped demanding for themselves and rather thought what they could do for others, life would be rather more worth living for all of us.

I am fully aware of my own faults and I know the areas I need to work on. But I am often entertained by those who sigh and say, 'my, you always meet such interesting people! I never manage that!' The trick is to genuinely believe that everyone has a story worth telling and to ease it out of them. They say that art of pleasing is to be pleased, and I would add that the art of seeing someone as interesting is to be interested.

'Trust that little voice in your head that says, 'Wouldn't it be interesting if...' - and then do it.'