Franklin couple shares adoption experience, gratitude in changing environment
FRANKLIN, Wis. - There used to be pretty strict rules when it came to adoption.
Adoptive parents are still put through checks of course, but gone are the days of a child being placed in a home and never seeing them again.
The face of adoption is changing and one Franklin couple is proving that in many ways.
You’d think 8-year-old Jayce would have asked the tough questions before school got out, but she saved the toughest one for after class.
"She ran up and said, ‘Hey mom, am I adopted?’ And I said yeah, you know that you and Quinn are both adopted," said Lauren Garcia.
"They were kinda like who’s your mom, who’s your dad? And Jayce was just like, I don’t have a dad. She just brushes it off. She doesn’t think about stuff like that yet."
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Maybe not yet, but when it does happen, Lauren and Riley Garcia are going to be ready.
"We’re going to be as honest and open as we can," Lauren Garcia said. "She was just the most beautiful miracle in the world."
Especially since the couple never thought she would happen.
"We were doing IVF and IUI to try and get pregnant," Riley Garcia said.
But it didn’t – and the pain took its toll after years of trying to conceive with no success.
They hadn’t given up, but had thought kids for them might never happen. But one phone call would change everything.
"I had a relative who actually reached out, knew that we were trying to have one of our own, and had reached out and say hey, here’s the situation, she ended up pregnant and not ready to take on an infant," Lauren Garcia said. "Obviously, being a relative and family, we had to think that process through, but after not very long we were like, absolutely."
Adoption wasn’t even on their radar.
"We knew we wanted to grow our family and not knowing how it would go from there on, we were going to do it," Lauren Garcia said.
They said yes to adopting the baby and Lauren was even there after the birth.
Their family was complete, and they didn’t think they would continue with the IVF treatment that had only brought pain and disappointment.
"At this point, we’d gone through the IVF journey again for close to five years, we did two rounds of egg retrieval," Lauren Garcia said. "We had closed that chapter."
But when Jayce was seven, they received another call that there was another baby on the way – this time in just days.
"Got a phone call saying hop on a plane and it was go time," Lauren Garcia said. "At that point, we had already adopted Jayce and adoption wasn’t even, you know, we really didn’t think of it as an adoption, we were just having another baby."
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Executive director of Adoption Choice Angie Flannery said that’s because – in part – the "face" of those who adopt is a lot different than it used to be.
"The family dynamics have changed significantly over the last decade over who’s adopting," Flannery said. "It’s single women, single men. Grandmas. Grandpas. Same-sex couples."
And that’s not all.
The once "closed" adoption – where records were sealed, has become a thing of the past. Now, the majority of adoption papers allow contact with the birth mother.
"Probably 95% of adoptions have some type of openness," Flannery said.
That was a big reason the Garcias were chosen to be parents to Jayce.
"It says a lot of what people think about us," Lauren Garcia said.
"To be able to reach out to us as a couple and say, hey, this is the situation and I want you, to you know, be able to raise the baby. I feel like we’ve just been given a miracle," Riley Garcia said. "And then we got a second shot at a miracle. I feel like we’ve gotten our greatest blessings on the most random things that could have ever happened."
The Garcia's are certainly a snapshot of the way families are formed these days.
Officials with Adoption Choice say biracial or multiracial children make up about 25% of domestic adoptions and there's been a 15% increase in relative adoptions over the past five years in Wisconsin.