not a "baby-person"?

sure. I'm definitely not a baby person. i didn't rule them out, but boy am I relived my DD could speak and go to the bathroom on her own prior to meeting us

I didn't have infertility, but my husband had a vasectomy, so biological children were out. Since his 2 boys were older when we started this journey, we were looking for "older" children anyway. When the 2 we have were placed with us, they were 5 and 2. While I love them both, I really like them more as they get older, and I would go even further and say my preference is a child 6 or older. I love the 3 year old (soon to be 4), but the tantrums drive me crazy. I really prefer being able to take them out to do things as a family that we can all enjoy, play board games, and have conversations with them - especially about behavior and what is and is not acceptable.

Thanks to both of you for your insights. In the past, someone told me that I'm not necessarily going to avoid the sleepless nights and crying with an older child, but at least you can communicate with them about what they're feeling. I look forward to any additional feedback as well :)

I love babies!!! For a little while.;) LOL! For example, I love being an aunt & spent a lot of time with them as babies but really did like going home after a day or night, kwim? My youngest had just turned 2 when placed and I did put him back on the bottle & did some other "baby" bonding activities with him, which I loved. Still, he wasn't an infant & I liked that aspect too. Had we adopted an infant, I think I would have been just fine with that but I don't feel like I missed anything I longed for. I never had that "pull" to be pregnant either so that might have something to do with it for me.

I wasn't at the time of the first two adoptions. I wanted children i could communicate with and do things with etc. I didn't feel a pull to a baby and all the things that go with that. And I found adopting an older child EXTREMELY rewarding (as well as extremely challenging!!) I would recommend every PAP at least consider itHowever...over a decade later, I DID want to have a baby - a newborn. I don't know why, but something inside me changed. I did try to become pregnant...but failed. Maybe I will adopt again some time in the future, but I want a baby more than anything..so am considering saving up the money to try again

carmen90 - first, omg hilarious quotes! Thanks for sharing! I'm glad to see I'm not the only one that didn't initially care too much about the newborn/baby stage... except in our case, we weren't sucessful in our adoption pursuits, but we were certainly looking at up to age 8 at one point, and then most recently being approved up to age 6 for our international adoption (that's on hold). Then in the midst of that I started to long for pregnancy again, and we are "adopting" donor embryos and transferring in October. It's not so much due to wanting a newborn, though, as it is not wanting to have our parenting challenged or a referral fall through, as that's happened everywhere we've turned. In fact, the first donor embryos we were matched with also fell through, so nothing seems to want to go right for us, but maybe October will finally be it.

My husband is "not a baby person." That's putting it mildly. He'll tell you he HATES babies. That's what brought us to older child adoption! He told me he never, ever wanted a baby two weeks into dating. Of course, I thought he'd change his mind and married him a year after we met. He didn't. I got pregant on accident (forgot to take my BCP for 3 days during a stressful time) several years into our marriage. I had a miscarriage before I even realized I was pregnant. My husband was sad that I was hurting, but relieved. That's when I knew he wasn't changing his mind about babies and realized I just wanted to be a mom, and didn't care how it happened. He'd said previously that he might be open to older child adoption , so that became my new crusade! We started the adoption process about a year later. Once we were matched to our daughter (age 9 at the time) he got a vasectomy! I haven't regretted becoming her mom instead of having a baby for an instant. She's who I was made for.