It just goes to show, some people have everything and are still not happy. Healthy child, healthy loved and loving wife, healthy baby-in-the-womb, and yet still complications need to be sought after and created. Like this one.

Is it childishness that makes the concept of choice so difficult for some people? Forget morals, this is about energy, resources, priorities. Unless there is an army of nannies and maids hovering to clean up all the fallout, as well as cook dinner, mind the kid and change the baby, there is just no space or time for this kind of infantile 'I want everything' in the LW's life right now.

Perhaps it's about pulling focus. After all, usually a pregnant woman might feel that any extra attention or energy would be focused on HER. Once the baby is born, it will be focussed on the baby. Maybe LW is feeling left out, and nothing gets a woman's attention like making her jealous.

Which brings me to my next point: the pregnant wife. She is in a vulnerable enough position already right now without the LW bringing another, younger, non pregnant and no doubt svelte free spirited woman into the mix. The wife is so vulnerable that the survival instinct in her may be driving her to cover up her resentment and paste a smile on her face, while a small insistent voice whispers, deep down within, 'just you wait'.

If that's the case - which in most cases it would be - then tread very, very carefully LW. You aint seen nothin' yet.

Thanks for so clearly articulating the arguements and thoughts about adoption I've been struggling to articulate for a long time. I particularly appreciate the following; that 'biological families' aren't called upon to justify their choices; and that pregnant couples aren't asked to give all the money they would be spending on that child to Unicef (or whatever) instead.

What strikes me so clearly about all of this is that so many people regard child rearing as a privilege. This is such a change. Just a generation or two ago it was commonly seen as a duty or a job to do at any rate. Those who couldn't have children were pitied, in much the same way the unemployed are, or the afflicted. But I don't think having children was seen as something that you'd necessarily enjoy or see as a gift. To the extent that this is questioned now it's wonderful.

Having recently had a child I want to add my observation that nothing brings you back into the public arena, where you are vulnerable to judgement and comment on every front, like having children. In this regard, having a child is very much like being a child. I remember when I was young how people felt entitled to comment on me, to tell me what to do, judge and criticise and compliment to their heart's content. I was taught to smile and take it. Well, now I am learning to smile and ignore it.

So to that extent I would like to remind, or reassure, Mary Kane and other adoptive parents that to a certain extent there a whole lot of poeple out there who just want to get involved in your business, one way or another.

Secondly, my husband and I are seriously thinking about adopting, if we decide to add to our family at all. There's no question that we would be adopting, instead of having a biological child, out of a sense of compassion and wanting to help and respond to the suffering of orphans. The actual decision to have a child though, at all, would be, as it would be with a biological child, that we would see it as a privilege, and something that would add to our lives immeasurably. But children are one of the greatest sources of meaning in our lives I think - at least they are to me. So it seems entirely appropriate that this decision of how we go about finding that child should be in a context of the situation in the world at present, and the part we have to play in that. Maybe the part I have to play is to provide a loving home for a child who right now is desperately in need of one. maybe ...

Your presumption is incredible. Firstly, to presume to tell someone else how they should think and feel - Lili's mom is incredibly gracious to even reply, let alone give you such a good one.

Secondly, you are extremely sheltered and/or naive to imagine that the biological capacity to have a child renders a woman a loving mother. Not at all, sadly. A lot of children in foster care attest to that. Many women don't choose to get pregnant and they don't choose to have a child. On top of that they may experience discrimination and shame for having a child in certain circumstances. For these women adoption provides a very important and wonderful thing - a way for them to move on with their lives and for their child to move on with theirs, apart. Of course many many other children come from very different circumstances, where they are loved, and would have been wanted if the resources were available to provide for them. But it's impossible to know. Finally, whichever the circumstances, I know that if I had a child and for whatever the reason gave him or her up for adoption, the absolute best, most wonderful thing I could hope for would be for my child to find a family like Lili's.