Any day now

I simply can't wrap my head around the fact that I could be holding a baby in my arms any day now.

Mike and I traveled to see A yesterday for the match meeting, and although it went well, it was heartbreaking. Unfortunately, P wasn't able to make it home in time. I know that made it harder for A, but she did have a friend there with her. This friend, E, has been a huge support for A so we were glad we got to meet her. The initial part of the meeting was all of us talking about our past - how Mike and I met, our relationship, why we decided to adopt, etc. A answered some questions about her family and support system and why she decided to make an adoption plan. Then we started talking about A's wishes for the hospital. Mike asked me later how I felt about A wanting only P in the room during the actual delivery. As much as it would mean to me to be included during that part of the experience, I realized that I want whatever A wants. I begrudge her nothing.

The meeting took 1 1/2 hours and we sat around and talked for another hour or so. I asked A if she wanted to go get some lunch or if she needed us to head on out. She agreed that she needed the afternoon alone. During the meeting, we told her that she just needs to tell us when she needs time. E said she would make sure A speaks up if she needs time alone at the hospital, with or without the baby.

A's doctor told her to come in for an appointment on Tuesday, but he (jokingly?) predicted that he will see her at the hospital at 3 a.m. Wednesday morning. I asked A to call me Tuesday night to let me know what her doctor says. I may go on up to stay at my aunt's house so I can be closer. We are only about 4 1/2 hours away, but Mike says he is okay if I want to be in the area. The plan is for me and Mike to be at the hospital. After the baby is born, A's family and friends will have the opportunity to hold her and take pictures. Mike and I will await our turn as patiently as possible.  : )  

And on this Mother's Day, the first one where I contemplate the reality of becoming a mother, I know how hard this day is for some and always has been for me. This year, my thoughts are also with those women who have given so much to allow other women to experience motherhood. For every beautiful, caring, nurturing woman who shares herself with others as a mother, grandmother, aunt, sister, mentor, or friend...Today I celebrate you.

Edited to Add:
I just got a text from A wishing me "happy soon to be mother's day." She humbles me.

And we're waiting to wait

Any day now we should hear back from the agency that we can get our letters printed. I would love to be official before the holidays, but I don't know if we can get the letters to CA by the 22nd when they close for the rest of the year.

There was something missing from the home study, but after writing her a very nice email (and stressing the importance of communicating with me) our social worker took care of getting our child abuse registry information to the agency the next day!

I did have an interesting dream last night. We went to pick up our new son from the hospital only to discover he was a toddler when we got home. I remember remarking on how he had a mouth full of teeth! I kept telling everybody that we would have to give Tim back (not sure where that name came from) because he was over a year old and we couldn't afford to take 6 months off work, as recommend/required by our agency. That marks my first adoption dream. I'm worried where they will go from there!

Due to the craziness of our school schedule leading up to the holidays and the fact that I was sick over Thanksgiving, we are still working on our personal webpage. We will be able to start working on it again this weekend. It should be up and running by the time we get the official nod from the agency.

So, not much new!

Past, Present, Future

Well, I attended my first baby shower since moving out of fertility treatments, and it went well. Mike and I had fun purchasing little girl socks, bibs, and onesies for our friend that is due next month. The only thing I wasn't able to do was pick out a "congratulations on your new bundle of joy" card. Couldn't do it. So, I found a nice "I'm glad you're my friend" card instead. I did fine at the shower and even enjoyed cooing over my other friend's 6 month old that she brought along. I think it helped that there weren't any games and not too much talk about being pregnant.

While at the shower, in addition to sharing updates about our adoption, I was able to share my wisdom (what there is of it) with an acquaintance that is starting her IVF process. She asked how I did it all while working, so I had to explain that I didn't - we did them over the summer for just that reason. Good thing too because the weight gain from the hormones meant I didn't fit in anything I owned, other than sweatpants. I finally lost the rest of the weight this past spring, only to gain it back over the summer. Darn those tasty treats, especially a great cake recipe I saw at Here We Grow!

As for where we are with the adoption, we met with our local social worker earlier this week and handed over the rest of the paperwork she needs. She said she would be in touch this coming week. Yippee! We also went and got our certified marriage license and worked on filling out forms for our agency. Still have to work on the profile form stating our preferences for drug use, ethnicity, etc. I want to try to get those forms done this week, if possible.

I am still waiting to hear back on the birthmother letter draft I sent in for review, and I have been working on the layout for the letter. We also still have some pictures we need to take, but that will be fun with my new camera! If the number of pictures we have already taken of the dogs is any indication of the number of pictures we will have of the kid, I'm going to need a bigger hard drive.

I am still debating about how open to be on this blog. I have shared it with friends and family, so I'm not worried on that end. I also have it blocked from being searched through browsers. I guess I question sharing pictures and general info about the actual adoption with our names and faces attached to it. I would appreciate any feedback any readers want to share!

We are starting teacher in-service this week. Let the fun begin!

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.

Open Adoption Roundtable #16

This will be my first time responding to a roundtable prompt, and I've been waiting to join in! Heather at Production, Not Reproduction provided the following prompt. Check out what others have written here.

 
Imagine your child as an adult describing their open adoption experience. What do you hope they will be able to say about you? How did you view their other parents? In what ways did you support their relationship with them?

Since we are just starting out in our process to adopt, this has been a big part of our discussions recently as we sort through everything. Since we hope to have two children someday, I will write in the plural sense. It also avoids all those awkward his/her references.

We are hopeful that we will have an open relationship with our children's birth parents and that everyone involved is committed to maintaining the relationships. If that is the case, we hope our adult children will feel that the relationships were natural, meaning that they never had to feel awkward about asking any questions or expressing any of their feelings or concerns. I want our children to look back and see that we encouraged them to freely communicate with their birthparents and that we were able to visit them and other birth relatives when possible. Having a sense of family history has been important to me, and I want them to have access to whichever of those stories interest them.

Another blog writer (sorry I can't remember which one) talked about her daughter (?) coming to her with a question about her (the child's) birth for a school assignment. The mom responded that she should call her birthmom to ask those questions. The relationship was such that this was a natural response to the situation. I want our children to have that option. I know we will have to do some work to start and strengthen those relationships, but I think that will be easier to do if we think about having this conversation with our adult children. I want them to know we did everything we could to support the framework of those relationships so they would have them if/when they wanted them.

Ready. Steady. Go!

Last weekend we attended the Weekend Intensive training session at our agency. They went through all the steps we will need to go through for the adoption and covered the decisions we need to make prior to "going live." Mike and I will have to discuss various issues such as race/ethnic background and whether or not we are open to twins. One great thing about both of us being teachers is that we now have a lot of time to devote to this process. My goal is to finish our home study and Dear Birthmother Letter before school starts again in August.

Because we live in a state where our agency doesn't have an office, we have to work with someone else to complete our home study. I have chosen a social worker and will call her tomorrow to set up a meeting to discuss what we need to do to complete our home study, but I already have a general idea of what we will need. My biggest concern with respect to our time frame is running our fingerprints through the FBI, currently a 13 week wait according to our agency. I have a feeling that may be the holdup on my schedule.

In addition to cleaning the house prior to the social worker's visit, we are setting up a few photo sessions this week. The agency recommended we take pictures of our "large" dogs with children, so a friend will be bringing over her kids for a play date. It seems funny to me that I am not that concerned with the writing part of the Birthmother Letter, but finding the right pictures is stressing me out!

We have already jumped through what I see as the first hoop. I had to contact a psychologist we met with back in 2006 to discuss our infertility issues. The agency felt it would be best to have a letter from her saying that we had no lasting issues and could move forward with adoption. The psychologist was very sweet and sent the letter within a couple of days. I felt really bad about calling her back to tell her my name was spelled wrong! She sent the new letter that same week. She just asked that we send her a picture of the baby.  : )

As others have pointed out, we are still mostly in control with much of this part of the process. Mike and I know that giving up that control will be one of the hardest parts to deal with once we are approved. As someone who is learning to let go of being in control of everything, this should be good practice for me!

From Open Donor to Open Adoption

Entering the world of donor insemination was a bit surreal. Our introduction was a catalog of donors that our first reproductive endocrinologist gave us. Being techies, we soon found the up-to-date online catalogs that the larger donor firms create. We were able to select our donor based on any or all of the following: blood type, height, weight, religion, college major, years of education, hair color, eye color. Once we narrowed down our choices, we could download a more detailed health history to see if we were comfortable with the family history. Some donors also had recorded interviews and a baby picture you could purchase. For an additional fee, you could send in pictures of your spouse, and they would find a donor that looks like him!

A fairly recent movement is to have an option for open donors, meaning we could have at least one contact with the donor once the child turned 18. Mike and I felt we couldn't choose any other type of donor. Our child might one day have questions about the donor, and we wanted him/her to have that option of contacting him. Unfortunately, this severely limited our choice of donors, leaving about 30 donors out of a pool of 200. In choosing the 3 donors we used for our fertility treatments, it essentially came down to us liking his interview answers and being comfortable with his family history. It was while looking at our first donor's toddler picture that I realized our child wouldn't have Mike's physical characteristics. Tough night.

Mike and I had discussed adoption before beginning fertility treatments, and we met with an adoption consultant to learn more about the different options. The outcome of the meeting: 1. If we could get pregnant, that would be the easiest, potentially least expensive route. 2. If we decided to adopt, we would go to China. At the time, the wait time for China was about 18 months.

Now, move forward in time to just after the second IVF. The wait time for China has jumped to about 4 years. Seriously? Now what are we going to do?

I had previously ruled out domestic adoption thinking it would take too long, cost more money, and we would lose all of that money if the adoption fell through. But I started to do some research on the internet and checked some books out of the library. One of the books had a list of agencies by state, and I started looking them up on the internet. One of the first ones I came across, Independent Adoption Center, had an informative website, a national presence, and did not discriminate against anyone wishing to adopt. So Mike and I drove about 8 hours (their closest office) to attend a Saturday information session and came out of it extremely excited about the option of open domestic adoption. We decided this was the agency for us!

The openness part of adoption just seemed natural to us based on our previous discussions in selecting an open donor, only now we have the potential of developing a lasting relationship with our child's birth parents. Of course, this time we would be the ones selected off a website.

(in)Fertility 101: The Recent Years

In the last post, Mike and I decided that donor sperm seemed the best way forward with starting our family, and my RE (reproductive endocrinologist) wanted us to see a counselor to discuss the ramifications of using a donor to have a baby. Apologies for the long post!

Those four counseling sessions were extremely emotional for both of us. Mike and I have based our marriage on our ability to communicate with each other, and our struggles with infertility have certainly led to an improvement in talking things out. It had to. Mike did not comprehend my gut-wrenching need to have children. He was fine parenting or not parenting. Not have kids? That was not an option for me. I do need to point out that Mike never had an issue with using a donor. He accepted that he would not have a biological tie to any child we had. I had to mourn that child that would have belonged to Mike biologically, with his eyes, his laugh.

Needless to say, we came out of the counseling sessions with a better idea of where each of us stood and the knowledge that we have to talk about all of our feelings on the subject, no matter how inconsequential those feelings may seem. We decided that we would try the medical route for a bit before moving on to adoption. We wanted to limit the funds we put into fertility treatments, especially since our insurance covered none of it. Nada. Zilch.

So, we began moving forward with fertility treatments at our new doctor's office with the help of donor sperm. We tried 5 IUI's that first year. Lots of doctor visits for blood work, ultrasounds, and the actual procedures. At end of every month...disappointment (stupid pee stick pregnancy tests!). Because of the cost, we decided we could afford to try one IVF. Maybe we would be the lucky ones who get pregnant the first try. This led to months of taking pills, giving myself nightly shots in the belly, Mike give me nightly shots in my hip, and planning our lives around the timing of giving those shots. We scheduled it over the summer (2008) when we would be off work. I don't know how anyone could go through that while trying to work.

After my eggs were removed and fertilized in the lab, the focus turned to waiting for updates on how many of them would survive and properly divide. The good news is we had two blastocysts put back in me 3 days later. The bad news was there were none that were good enough to freeze for another try later. More good news...we got pregnant. Unfortunately, I started losing the pregnancy within a few days of getting the positive test. That was tough. We took some time to mourn and to think about our next steps. Because I was able to get pregnant, we decided we would try one more IVF cycle, but we would wait until the following summer (2009). Meanwhile, we had to choose another donor and tried a couple more IUI's to pass the time.

Same story, different year. Two blastocysts put back (better quality), but none made it to freezing. We did get pregnant again, and this time we got to see the heartbeat on ultrasound. Mike was super excited, but I was having a hard time letting go of the anxiety, because I was having cramps. The day after seeing the heartbeat, I miscarried. I was fortunate to be at home and to have my mom with me at the time, and we all went to the hospital to make sure I was okay. This miscarriage hit Mike harder than the first one. The pregnancy and future child seemed more real to him. It didn't hit me quite as hard following the initial grief because I had held onto the fear of it happening all along.

We took some more time to mourn our loss and to figure out our next move (again), and financially we could afford to do another IVF. Thinking as scientists, we felt we did not have a full set of data...I can get pregnant, but had two miscarriages. The results were inconclusive. By trying something different, could we get the next one to stick? We started looking into adoption again and came to the decision to stop the fertility treatments. I couldn't go through the shots and hormones and uncertainty again, not to mention dealing with another miscarriage.

I know I probably need to mourn the loss of my biological child, as I did for Mike's, but overall I'm in a much better place. As I mentioned in a previous entry, I don't cry every time I see a pregnant woman or hear another coworker has given birth.

So far, the move from fertility treatments to adoption has been a smooth one.

At least it doesn't make me cry anymore

I love where I work, but sometimes I wish I didn't work with so many people who are young enough to be growing their families. We have had 6 babies born to faculty/staff in the last 5 weeks. No joke! Dealing with infertility while working there has been extremely tough. Over the past few years, I have had to avoid or walk out of several meetings where the new or upcoming babies were being celebrated. My friends had to find a time to tell me about their own pregnancies when no one else was around to see my emotional breakdown. It is not fun to meet their wonderful news with tears. Those same friends have been so supportive and understanding about my emotional state - no questions asked about my missing a baby shower. To make it even worse, a lot of these new babies are the second ones being born since I started fertility treatments a few years ago. We were supposed to have our kid already!

I guess the point of this post is to show how moving on to adoption has totally changed my outlook. I haven't cried once these last 5 weeks, or before that when another friend shared her pregnancy. I have even held a baby in my arms for the first time in years (except my niece). No longer am I on this emotional roller coaster of maybe this next time the pregnancy will last. I see a light at the end of the tunnel, and a baby is waiting there. (Ok, so I just started crying, but it is a good kind of crying. I swear!)