Water everywhere...not a drop to drink

I had my yearly girly exam today. I mentioned it to a friend who said she hates going to those appointments. I explained that after years of infertility treatments, not much bothers me anymore. Wanna bring 8 more people into the room? Why not! You want to put what where? Whatever.

So I get checked in, finish my paperwork, fill the cup (wondering at reason for doing this anymore), and settle down with my adoption homework, reading The Kid by Dan Savage (story of a gay couple doing open adoption). I am able to smile at the lady walking past my chair with the stroller. And the first pregnant lady that strolls by. After about the 5th pregnant lady passes by and the 2nd newborn near me starts crying, I'm thinking they better hurry up and call me back.

Focus on book. Focus on book. Think about how the sound of my baby will be filling my ears soon.

I glance up at the TV screen every now and then to learn about doing my self-breast-exam and the risk factors for breast cancer, followed by a commercial of the beauty treatments the office offers. Next came a slide show of lots of cute baby pictures so I quickly look back down at my book, only to hear the song "You're Having My Baby" start blaring out of the speakers. They played the whole song, showing baby pictures the entire time. Grrr.

An hour after sitting down I get called to the back by a nurse that keeps calling me dear and honey, and we go through my medical history to make sure nothing has changed. I was prepared for the pregnancy question. It bothers me that I have to say I have been pregnant two times, for a grand total of like 9 weeks (I think).

Finally the doctor comes in. I have been seeing her for 20 years (geesh that makes me feel old), and she is really nice and easy to talk to. She asked what's up and I told her we were busy with our home study for adoption. The first thing she asked me was what I planned to do if I got pregnant while in the process. I told her there was about a 1/1000000000000000th chance of that happening. She wrote down the specifics of our infertility (azoospermia, donor, IVF, etc.) so she wouldn't have to ask me about it again. Thank goodness for small favors. She did her thing in about 2 minutes (not joking) and wished me luck with the adoption.

Standing in line to take care of my copay, I realized my shirt was inside out. Feeling like an idiot, I step into the bathroom to fix it and then hurry out of the office as the slide show and song start again.

I didn't get emotional or cry, but I certainly would have preferred not being around so much "baby." Sometimes I ask myself if I am truly upset, or if I just feel like I should be upset.

Home Study Visit #2...check

Our social worker came back today to talk to us about our families and marriage. We also went over the remaining items that we need to complete for the home study and for our agency. After we chatted for a couple of hours, she surprised us by saying she had what she needed. She wouldn't need to make any other visits in order to write up our home study! It is hard for me to imagine that this part of the process used to seem so daunting to me.

Here are the other items we need to complete:

1. state criminal record check (another fingerprinting trip)
2. child abuse registry check (our social worker does this)
3. employment verification
4. letters of reference (4 for home study and some additional ones for agency)
5. physicals
6. TB and HIV blood tests (going to check with health department for cost and lead time)
7. pet vaccination records
8. copy of marriage certificate (photocopy for home study and certified copy for agency)

Mike called the FBI to make sure they had received our fingerprint cards and was told that they wouldn't be able to tell us anything for 10 weeks. I am still trying to find out if our state runs a federal check at the same time they do a state check. If not, we will be waiting until the end of August to go on the books. My goal is still to have our birthmother letter and home study completed before we head back to school in mid-August. If we are using the FBI timeline, I don't want to have the home study done too soon.

I am pleased to report that my dog did extremely well today. She was barking as the social worker came in, but we informed the social worker to ignore her. She immediately stopped barking. Of course, the treats in Mike's hand didn't hurt!

We are continuing to work on the house. Mike asked when we could set up our new entertainment center (with new TV) and I responded with a list of repairs/tasks to be completed first. Little did I know that would help motivate him to take care of most of them in one day. He is feeling very manly.  : )

Here is a picture of our new "library" that we completely shelved in (that was the royal "we" meaning he did most of the work).

Once we get the rest of the books in there and out of the nursery, we can start bringing the furniture over from my sister's house. It is starting to seem more real now.

A child by any means?

 The following was written as a letter to the editor of my local paper.

Children aren't commodities

One recent Saturday as I was about to enter the park for a long walk with Fritz, a young German shepherd I adopted in April, I decided to check out an unusual sign for a multifamily fundraiser for families that wished to adopt children. The people I met were friendly, white and well-off financially. I learned that a few families were pooling together some items that had been gathering dust in an attempt to raise funds to adopt children from foreign countries. I left uncomfortable about the concept of selling castaway items for that purpose.

I wondered: Was there a shortage of children in the area who would benefit from the care and guardianship of a loving and financially secure family? I found out that there was no such shortage. I contemplated how funds that might be raised to secure an international adoption might help the children of our own region who have great need, but who may not be ideal candidates for adoption due to their age or other factors.

I then investigated and found that an international adoption typically could cost up to $50,000 in travel costs and fees -- legal fees, documentation fees, baby broker fees and probably other fees that are needed to grease the wheels of progress. Adoption, particularly international adoption, is big business, with youngsters as the commodity and a need to graft another person into a family tree the motivational force.

I found my skepticism growing toward the altruistic jargon used at the fundraiser. I concluded that the fundraising event wasn't about the child's welfare, but about possessing a child by any means. I asked myself: Why not just donate the money to the foreign orphanages to help the kids? But then the adoptive parents would not gain the child; these people who purchase a wanted commodity by selling off knicknacks are well-versed in the lingo of many websites dedicated to international adoption. Sadly, the commodities were human beings.

Decency mandates that children who have lost their family be given respect and empathy, not a yard sale. Do you suppose that one day the youngsters will ask to hear the heartwarming story of how their loving parents sold off some end tables to purchase them? I suspect they may be told how lucky they are that they have such spiritually generous parents.

Human beings, particularly defenseless and voiceless children, deserve better from society. This practice would be an outrage in a moral society, and is de facto human trafficking.

Seriously?! I love that he pointed out the he adopted his dog. Did he pay any fees to do that? I know we had to pay fees for our dogs when we adopted them. There was a rebuttal letter the next day from someone helping out with the yard sale. She did a good job telling this guy what an idiot he is. She also explained that at least one of the families in question would be doing an open adoption:

This particular couple is working with domestic agencies that specialize in open adoption because of the ability to keep a child connected with his roots and foster that relationship with the birth family. The notion of "buying a child" makes me livid. Parents don't tell their children about the hours they slave away in a cubicle on a 9-5 job to afford maternity hospital bills. Adoptions are expensive because time, effort and resources are not cheap. Most of the money is spent on counselors, prenatal care, food, housing for the birth mother and travel expenses.

I wonder if the writer of the original letter has children or has ever wanted children. I have lots of responses to what he said (i.e. why we don't feel we can do foster care or foster/adopt at this time, why a Russian adoption made us nervous because of the extra fees paid in-country), but I don't want this post to be any longer than it already is. In the future, I just hope I don't have to deal with this type of attitude face-to-face.

Home Study Visit #1...check

Well, our first visit with the social worker went well. She stayed about 2 hours. We chatted about our reasons for adopting, our infertility history, and a mutual love of sci-fi movies and astronomy. The house? She didn't even look at it. The dog? She did very well, and even though she was a bit out of sorts, she didn't bark after the first couple of minutes (love that rawhide).

Because we live in a state with probably the fewest requirements for a home study, we have been trying to figure out how to take care of the additional checks the agency wants. They are in a more regulated state, and I think they also want us to have the additional checks to help with getting clearance to transport the child across state lines if (when) the child is born in another state. My biggest stress the past couple of days was figuring out where to get our fingerprints done for the FBI check. It is still hard for me to understand why the FBI doesn't have an option to do scanned prints. And the current 13 week processing period is longer than I planned for going in the books (insert curses here). But I am trying to think of it as just giving me some additional time to create a great Dear Birthmother Letter. We will be heading to a local police station to get old-fashioned fingerprinted tomorrow to send into the FBI. I need to remember to take the camera!

I also have to clarify what we have to do for a child abuse registry check. Guess I'll be calling our local children's services office to see what they say. In order to take care of the additional requirements, I know I just need to call people to ask questions, and I put in a call to our agency today with some. Some of it is just making sure I understand exactly what they are wanting us to do.

We set up our next meeting with the social worker for next Wednesday morning. She said we will talk about our families and our marriage. She also wants us to come up with a plan for who would take care of our child if something were to happen to us. Guess we need to have some conversations with family. I also need to do some serious work on our letter, looking through and taking pictures. In the meantime, we will continue to work on the house!

No White Gloves Allowed

We have our first appointment with our home study social worker tomorrow. She assured me that this was just an introductory meeting to go over the process and learn what all we have to do, and she didn't expect the house to be spotless. I am certainly hoping this is true because my house is not how I want it to be for this first meeting. It is difficult to spend hours dusting the house when I am having trouble with my asthma. It doesn't help that my allergy/asthma trigger is dust mites. Yuck! So, the house is mostly tidy, but we certainly have lots of work to do in the next few weeks. I just want the house to be presentable for her first visit.

Our other task for the week did not go as planned either. We had some kids come over so we could try to take some pictures of them playing with the dogs. Our youngest dog enjoyed all of the fawning, but his big sister is not comfortable around strangers. She is not aggressive but she barks, loudly. So, we just used it as an opportunity to get her more comfortable with visitors. We certainly want her to be calm when people come over and will continue to work on that. We just have to figure out how to keep her happy tomorrow so she isn't barking non-stop while the social worker is here.

As for the pictures of the dogs with children, we may just have to forego that. The kids that came this week are now out of town for most of the summer. Unfortunately, one of my nephews is allergic to dogs, so that prevents us from asking our nieces and nephews to do the pictures for us. I have a gazillion cute pictures of the pups, so I'm sure I can find some to use in our Dear Birthmother letter if the kid shots don't work out. Again, our agency just recommended "large" dogs be shown with kids in the picture. Our dogs are considered large breed, but the bigger one is not over 60 pounds or so. It is now hard to think of my dogs as large after befriending a Great Pyrenees who escaped the local vet's office in the middle of the night last week, and we saw him in the parking lot as we were heading home. He walked out the front door that wasn't properly latched, after getting out of his closed cage. His head came up to my waist...and I'm 5'8''.

I will continue to make plans for what I want to get done and practice patience as I accept that not everything will turn out that way. Now, I'm off to do some dusting with the vacuum!