"Just watch - once you start the adoption process, you'll get pregnant!" This, from a well-meaning acquaintance who I'd just told about our plans for adoption.

"I hope not!" I said, meaning it. I'd already been pregnant five times in the past year and a half, accompanied by five miscarriages, and the LAST THING I wanted was to get pregnant again. I'd had enough. Adoption was a blessed relief to me. Yes, I could get pregnant. In fact, probably. But I sure didn't want to.

She just chuckled. Silly old Adrienne. It had happened to so many people she knew - just as they were about to adopt, whammo! Pregnancy.

So how often does it really happen that people get pregnant after they adopt? According the adoption encyclopedia on adoption.com, the reality is that between 3 and 10% of adoptive parents later become pregnant.

The act of adopting a child cannot erase a woman's or man's infertility problem, and individuals who suggest adoption as a psychological "cure" to infertility are sadly misled. What is likely to happen in those instances is that infertility caused by unknown factors was somehow diminished. Since about 20% of infertile couples have "unexplained infertility" for their diagnosis, this is likely to account for such a phenomenon.

I think the thinking around the 'you'll get pregnant if you adopt' philosophy is that once you've made the decision to adopt and have given up on the bio pregnancy then you'll both relax and it'll happen naturally. Like being uptight is a clinical diagnosis in infertility. But typically women get pregnant after adopting because they think they cannot get pregnant, and so avoid birth control. So it just happens...as it probably would have whether or not they adopted.

What's so ironic in my own situation is that it took me about 2 years after adopting Little J, but I (note I say "I" and not "my doctor") figured out why I kept miscarrying those babies. I am gluten intolerant, triggered by my pregnancy with Big J, and I treat it by not eating gluten-containing foods. So I probably could get pregnant now...if only my husband hadn't had a vasectomy!