A Fulfilling Child

When a life has priorities, it’s time runs faster than they really thought it would! Well that’s exactly what had happened to Nutrition teacher, Jill Gromberg of Anoka Ramsey Community College.       

She had been married to her husband for a round amount of years and they had both been deep into their professions. Continuing in school and busy in work, they had both finished with masters degrees. Due to such fast paced life, they constantly postponed having kids and then it hit them that they needed that one thing to continue their family. So other options appeared and one that was most convenient was, adopting.

Coming from a family that had been in a typical situation, Gromberg had a brother with Down syndrome. Doctors had predicted that the likely cause of this was, of her mother’s age. Jill had agreed that having a Down child would not be problem but she had her mind on doing something that would benefit someone and benefit her and her husband. That’s where their journey of the adoption process began.

            She stated boldly, “In our family our relatives have adopted kids in the past and so we knew how it would go and we were prepared for it.” Beginning with the choice of what gender they had most wanted. They did not care if it was either a boy or a girl. They were happy with either one. There was one thing that had made them get a boy in particular. “We knew that there is a tendency for people to adopt girls. They say that girls are easier. Because the majority of people adopt girls and if we didn’t choose, they would choose for us and it would most likely end up being a boy. That was fine, we were open for either.” Explain Gromberg.

Picking a gender was one of the easy points of the process but when it came for from where they wanted the child, it was tougher than expected. Going through the Children’s Home Society and Family Services, they were offered from multiples of countries. Gromberg expresses, “For example when we were looking at the options, we were thinking about, Russia, India, and China. But china was going through SARS, and something was going on in India. Russia was open and we were actually comfortable with it. So we aimed at Russia.”

Adopting their son, Ryan, had been a long process and tough. He has lived with them already for six years, being adopted at age 3.5. There were only a few struggles that they had gone through, such as attachments, bonding and language. Gromberg expresses a humorous moment, “ There were times when we were in Moscow, we stayed at a hotel and there were other families that were adopting also, and they would start talking to him and we sensed that he’s telling them stuff like, ‘these people are idiots. They keep talking about yellow buses and red cars.’” But learning and working together they figured things out!

Jill Gromberg and her husband had thought of adopting more kids but there were a few complications that just got in the way of another child.

“I thought the process was really positive. I don’t and never regret it” stated Gromberg, closing the conversation.