Tag Archives: adoption

A Couple of Teeny-Tiny Updates on the Adoption Front

Posted in The Adoption Waiting Game by

The adoption front has been pretty stagnant, but I am happy to report that I have a couple of updates to share. Maybe you remember that our adoption profile was presented to an expectant mother a couple months ago? We never received any feedback or information after that, so we assumed she chose another family. We recently learned that she is taking her time choosing a family because she is not due for another couple of months. Basically that means that (1) our profile did not thrill her so much that she decided then and there that she wanted to place her baby with us and (2) she is rightfully taking all the time she needs to make a decision and it is still possible she will choose us.  Peace be with you, expectant mama, wherever you are.

When we learned about the first expectant mother, we learned there was also a second expectant mother who was having a hard time getting medical records together. After two months went by, we figured that she had either decided to parent or that she was just taking the time she needed to process how to move forward. We were wrong—she was STILL dealing with medical professionals and trying to get copies of her records! Listen up, doctors, insurance companies, and hospitals; if a woman is in a situation where she is choosing to find an adoptive family for her baby, try not to make her life a living hell by giving her the run around as she attempts to gather all the necessary records for the agency. Seriously. Anyway, our adoption coordinator has told us that she will have a profile of the expectant mother to share with us by the end of the week. That was on Monday. Tomorrow is Friday. I have been checking my email every 15 seconds. I do not have a great deal of faith that we will actually see it tomorrow, but patience is the name of the game in adoption. Patience and fertility are two things God did not grace me with, so the adoption wait is basically the ultimate in horrible irony. But I digress.

Target is having a huge baby sale this week so I went and bought a bunch of diapers. Little teeny ones. Although there isn’t much happening and we have no reason to believe we will need wee diapers any time soon, I believe in preparedness. Also, it gave me an excuse to wander through the baby aisles and ogle all the adorable baby things. Okay, let’s be real.  I found out about the baby sale because I was already there looking at the adorable baby things. But the reason I was at Target in the first place was to acquire some Hyland’s homeopathic cold and flu tablets for my little one. It’s complicated, like your classic “which came first, the chicken or egg?” scenario. But I like it there. The first time around preparing for a baby, I had no clue what I was doing. The baby aisle at Target was a scary, frightening place. I wanted no part of it. Now that I’m an old pro, wandering through the baby section is quite comforting.

Also, I completed the nursery and it is baby-ready. That will be a separate post* because it was a rather involved undertaking. But I needed it done, because again, preparedness. What kind of monster brings a new baby home to an undecorated nursery? The horror!

Here’s to hoping we have more exciting news to share in the not too distant future, and to keeping an optimistic heart and mind.

*I’m super excited to share how I redid the nursery and managed to keep it gender neutral. It’s orange and turquoise! And the theme is elephants! And cuteness! But mostly it was a much needed time of creativity and DIY therapy to keep my hands busy and my mind engaged. Details and pictures coming soon.

www.borrowedgenes.com

Hope Shaken, Not Stirred

Posted in The Adoption Waiting Game by

While the rest of the country continues to get abused with relentless ice and snow, our little corner of the world has had unseasonably warm weather, clear skies, sunshine.  Things are blooming that have no business doing so at this very moment, but no one told them that, so they just keep poking their little heads up higher and higher and higher until they burst through the dirt to meet the sun.  I’m afraid that we are going to have a hard freeze one of these nights and it’s going to shock those little buds right back to the ground.  When tender buds that didn’t expect to get blasted by freezing weather do, they often don’t come back until the next year. The ones that stayed just under the top layer of dirt for a little while longer are protected from the frost and come out when the coast is clear.

So, let’s talk about train of thought writing and the unexpected consequences.  I did not expect, as I was looking out the window and writing about my flowers, to write a painfully obvious and cliché metaphor about my own heart.  I did not expect to have to grab a napkin from the dining room table to bawl my eyes out when I realized the reason I’ve been feeling just a little bit sideways is that at some point, I am not even sure when, I seem to have lost the ability to believe that something good is going to happen to us in this adoption journey.  And I totally do not have the right to believe that, because we have only been home study ready for six weeks, and we worked so hard to get to that point.  Really, we should just be enjoying the fact that we made it through to the other side, because it was a lot of emotional hard work.  It’s also worth noting that it is a darn good thing we did not get called right away, since during the month of February I got to enjoy both the stomach flu AND legit influenza. (Note to self: stop justifying your feelings away with practicality and facts, for heaven’s sake! You have a right to be upset sometimes just because.)

I spend some time every day reading the WordPress journeys of other women like myself, women who are going through IVF, or considering using an egg donor, or pursuing adoption.   It’s important to read their stories and remind myself there are other people out there going through this too, because otherwise it is isolating to the point of suffocation to be the only one. One of these ladies recently underwent IVF, was successful, and learned she is having identical twins.  That was last week.  Probably I should have stopped reading at that point, like a total jerk who can’t be happy for someone else because her twins have their own amniotic sacs and mine didn’t. Instead, I continued following her updates and today she was seeking advice about whether she should tell her boss and her coworkers she is eight weeks pregnant, and before I knew it I was shrieking at my laptop, “No, woman, no! Why would you do that?!” Yeesh.  Never mind that when I was pregnant with E, I told everyone I encountered that I was pregnant at about 4 weeks along.  The hubs thought we should wait a while to tell people, and I was like, “Yeah, that’s not gonna happen.  Hey, did you tell your mechanic yet?”

But then we experienced loss.  And more loss, and then nothingness.  Through all of that we had this shining little beacon who was oblivious to our pain and radiated joy through our home like Tinkerbell and her pixie dust.  It’s hard to feel despair when the embryo who did show up to the party is now a little boy full of love and light.  And I’m so incredibly grateful for him, and I think the truth is I just don’t know if lightning really can strike twice in the same spot.  Perhaps the biggest problem is that I’m just not sure I believe it can, for now. When God blesses you with what you desired most above all else, is it fair to ask for another miracle?  When you do, is it fair to expect one? 

Borrowed Genes

 

 

Sitting, Wishing, Waiting…

Posted in The Adoption Waiting Game by

Adoption process updates! We have now mercifully exited the purgatory of Paper Chasin’ and are entering the vast galaxy of Hurry Up and Wait! Some notable updates:

⇒Our background checks finally made it to the top of the heap, and we received our clearances (huzzah!)
⇒Our portfolio (The Adoption Atlas) and the accompanying “Dear Expectant Parent” letter were both approved and have been sent off to print
⇒We have had both of our required social worker visits for our home study and they were ah-may-zing

…which means…which means…
We have reached THE POOL!

The hubs and I are pleased as punch that we made it through the last three months alive and now we can legitimately begin to hope and pray for the sweet baby who will join our family. As far as when that will be, guess away. 

Our home study was the best part of this whole process so far. Well, the visit from the social worker at least. It was the very last step to be pool ready. Our SW is named Connie, and we love her. She listened. She asked incredibly personal questions in a way that put us at ease. She did not look at my counters for dust, or ransack our home looking for drugs. There are all sorts of stories out there about the day the social worker visits, and most of them filled us with terror. Was she going to judge how clean our bathrooms were? Was she going to ask why our son was chewing on a monster truck? Nope! She really just wanted to know the kind of people we are, and understand our motivation for adopting. She made the scariest experience easy as pie. Thank you Connie!

We have learned a bit more about what to expect from here on out in terms of how “desirable” we are as a family.  The expectant birth mother chooses the family, not the other way around (which seems like common sense to me.) We learned that families in Oregon are generally chosen very quickly (about six months on average) because of the excellent adoption laws in our state that benefit both the birth mother and the adoptive parents. We know we fortunately have a lot of characteristics that birth parents seek out, such as financial stability, home ownership, a strong marriage, that sort of thing. We also know that we have one pretty major characteristic that many birth mothers consider to be a deal breaker…and he’s three years old!

It is true, I’m afraid. A couple with a child may have a longer wait because some birth mothers worry that their baby won’t get as much time and attention as he/she would from a childless couple. If the existing child is a biological kiddo, that can present an even bigger problem, because the birth mother might worry the couple could never love an adopted child as much as a biological child. While I know for a fact in my mama heart that could never be true, I have great respect for the birth mother and the impossible decision she has made. It is so important to me that she be at peace with her decision.  The hubs and I are oh-so- ready to welcome our new son or daughter to our family, but we are always mindful of this one thing: at the very minute we are experiencing one of the most blessed moments of our lives, another woman is experiencing the worst moment of hers. I think that if we were adopting without already being parents, I would likely not have the empathy to respect this sacrifice in the manner it deserves.  Since I am already a mother, I am filled with awe at the strength and courage a woman must have to choose adoption for her baby. It means she loves that baby so much that she has decided to find him/her a family that can provide them with what she cannot at that time. Can you imagine anything more selfless? It’s just another humbling realization of the full magnitude of what it means to adopt.  It’s just kinda awesome.

www.borrowedgenes.com