On the Edge of a Cliff and Ready to Fly

hubby and I met with the adoption attorney, G., for the first time yesterday. We were sitting in this small chinese restaurant off of a highway. It looked pretty grungy. When we sat down with her, I was thinking “Now, when I tell my kids about their adoption story, I’m going to have to start with explaining this weird little chinese restaurant…”

It was a good talk. I cried (because I cry easily) while talking about adoption and what made us decide to adopt. It’s interesting how it’s done. The birth mother looks at books you’ve made with your history and family photos, etc., and then the birth mother decides if she wants to meet you. You then meet with her (or her and the birth father if he’s involved) and if you feel it’s a good match then you move towards adopting their child.

In addition to making copies of a few life books that perspective birth mothers can read, we have to have a social worker do a home study. We’ll get physicals done, have folks write recommendations for us, and fill out paperwork. I have called one social work but we’ve been playing phone tag, and there is another one I’m going to try to reach tomorrow. We don’t have our new house yet, so we’re going to get the paperwork started and wait to do the rest of it when we have our new house.

The attorney, G., told us the social worker will check out our house just to make sure it’s got room for a baby, they aren’t there to critique and make sure we have a really ritzy house, so that was encouraging. We did tell her we’re open to a baby of any race and we’re open to considering a baby that may have any type of disability. I guess I feel as if most parents don’t get to chose, and all babies need homes. That’s how we feel right now, but I guess when we get further down the road we’ll have to see where God leads us.

We really liked G. and I think she is the way we want to go. She only takes clients by referral of other people, and she only handles 6 cases at a time. We will need to send out letters to doctors, friends, relatives, letting them know that we’re adopting in case they know someone in a situation where they’re having a baby they can’t raise.

It seems weird, I keep thinking of organ donation (isn’t that odd?). Someone has a great tragedy, which is death, which leads to other people being joyful and getting organs and hearts and getting to make a new life. I am excited about adoption and being able to be a mom and have children, but the birth mothers will be going through a very difficult time and very scary circumstances. I pray that I will be sensitive to the birth mother/father and their family, because this will be a very brave decision and a scary decision for them. I also must be willing to accept if we go down the road and someone choses not to give their baby up for adoption, even if it’s at the very last minute. I am so very glad that God promises that all things work out for the good of those that love Him, because all of this is very scary and it seems overwhelming. It seems strange that some young girl could be in a terrible circumstance, but yet this terrible circumstance could lead us to become parents.

It’s almost 11pm. I need some sleep! I have continued to run around with my realtor looking at more houses, and we’ve found a few more that are really nice. I’ll have to blog about those sometime this weekend.

I think my husband and I are stressed beyond anything. We love each other and we’re trying to keep plugging, but this has been a year filled with good and bad news. Trying to buy a house, sell a house, move, proceed with adoption….most days I’m okay but today I feel like I am numb I’m so tired. I want a vacation….we haven’t had any realtors to our house in almost 2 weeks so I’m getting a little concerned. No big trouble, I know other people are going through far worse and are having a much harder time, so I need to count my blessings.

I do not blog at my computer at work. I blog during the workday at a computer in our office’s “study room”: this is a room with three computers that you can use on your breaks to study for insurance exams, check your email, and do personal computer items. I have checked my yahoo account 1 time on my work computer because I was waiting on an important email. I only use Seibel/CRN and other work related boring computer applications to assist customers for their claims.

I love my job and if anyone from my job reads this blog I want this post in there. Someone I know in the blogging community lost her job because her bosses assumed she was blogging at work due to the time stamp on the posts. Just for the record, just beacuse it’s time stamped a certain day and time doesn’t mean that’s when you were actually typing it.

Some people read my blog that I know from “real life” and some people read this from other adoption/infertility blogs that I enjoy reading. I would hope that no one who reads my blog would print it out and accuse me of using the company time or saying mean things about people.

This is my blog, this is full of my personal opinions.  If you say something mean to me about adoption, I’ll probably talk about you on my blog. If you invite me to your house (or vice versa) I will probably mention it. If I’ve talked to you about your opinion on adoption,I will probably add a synopsis of what we discussed. I won’t use your name. People won’t guess who you are. If someone asks me to tell them who someone is, I won’t do it. This is like my online diary, but it is also a way to update all the various friends and family scattered all over what is going on in our lives. Adoption is a big process, and I’m sorry, I have a hard time remember who I’ve told what to. So, I feel a blog is the best way to let people know what is going on.  I can add photos (which I will probably password protect) of our future kids so family and friends far away can see what’s going on. I can add my personal opinions and let people know the basics of what is going on. Infertility is also a very lonely and sad process, so I want to be able to vent my frustrations and feelings with other people who understand how I feel.

What I don’t want – I don’t want this blog to be used for people to accuse me of things or have their feelings hurt. That is not my intent. If I happen to talk about you, it’s because you’re in my life. I don’t mean any harm.  And I don’t blog at work!

I go through periods where I have reoccurring dreams. Sometimes they are nightmares, sometimes they aren’t. I have one dream over and over that a tornado is coming to my farmhouse in Illinois.

 Lately, though, I have been dreaming about what our  children will look like.

You would think that, being pale as my husband and I both are, that I would dream of having blonde haired, blue eyed children. Well, that’s not how it is. When I imagine my children, I imagine a group of 3-5 Hispanic/African American/Unspecified-race-children- of-color. Is that strange? Sometimes I dream that there has been a group of kids whose parents have died and we need to take them all (but at least one of them is a baby) and I’ve had other dreams where there are twins or triplets that need a good home. However, never in these dreams have these children been white. I don’t know if that’s because I associate adopting with adopting a child that doesn’t look like us or if I just really want to adopt a child of color. I am not opposed to adopting a white child, but that is not how I imagine my kids in these dreams. I also never dream about one kid, I dream about us adopting a group of kids at once. (Which is weird, since we’re traveling down the path of adopting an infant)

I was talking to my husband today about adopting children of a different race on the way to work. I brought up the fact that if we adopt a child of another race I am concerned that we will need to go to counseling to help us raise an adopted child who might face racism. My husband brought up a good point: all of us will face difficult obstacles in our lives, some of which may not have anything to do with race at all. However, I just worry about that sort of thing. I grew up in a small town with all white people and some of them were pretty closed minded. Various family members have made some comments about race that worry me. No one else in the family on either side has adopted, so that would be a new experience.

I would hope when we adopt that friends and family would accept these children as ours, because that is the way that we will look at them. I know the insensitive comments will come (as they already have about infertility) and I must be prepared. I just don’t know how I would handle it if my child had to deal with racism, or looking different from his/her parents, or looking different than most of the kids in school. I know this is a long way off in our future, and I don’t want to treat everyone and push people away expecting that they’re not going to accept our children. I just worry about these sorts of things because no one in our immediate group of friends or in our family has had to adopt, so it really does feel like jumping off a cliff into the unknown. You don’t know how people will react. You feel a lot of guilt regarding the whole thing…like “if I wouldn’t have done this or that, I could get pregnant.” Or, people tell you those things, maybe not directly, but they say “Since you did or didn’t do such and such, now you can’t get pregnant.”

To be honest, I think that is a bunch of bunk. I have made some mistakes in my life, and I will continue to make mistakes, and the only One that I can depend on is Jesus. This has been the most frustrating part : I got on FMLA leave from work expecting to go through surgeries, procedures, etc. But to go to a Fertility clinic and be told that you and your husband are fine, that they can’t find anything wrong, is nuts. To get tested by an endocrinologist and have them send you a letter that says “we can’t find anything to treat this” is not what I was prepared for. I was prepared to have messed up fallopian tubes or no eggs or something.

However, everything is fine. We know people that have done invitro and had success, and I am very grateful for those folks that InVitro has worked. For my husband and I, we have decided to not do anything invasive. If we are going to spend that type of money, we are going to spend it on adoption. Everyone has a different path they decide to take. However, I don’t want to go through hormone treatments, artificial insemination, etc. etc. etc. and THEN after all that decide to adopt. We’ve decided that we are going to skip that “final step” and go right to adoption. That is our choice, no one else’s, and we are happy with that choice.

My husband and I saw spider man 3 last night. I enjoyed it. The best part, however, was the trailer for “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.” Thus far, it is definitely my favorite book and the movie looks great. I have enjoyed all the movies, but the books definitely have a lot. I know people that only watch the Harry Potter movies and haven’t read the books (you shall remain unnamed so I don’t embarrass you) but the books are so good! Doesn’t make sense.  I guess I’m a hypocrite because I haven’t read the Spider Man comics, but, oh well.

Also, the LAST Harry potter book is out this summer! I think I’m going to explode with all the fun stuff that is going on!

I am also super pumped about Pirates of the Caribbean. I think that is going to be a good film as well.

Back to work!

Wow….sometimes things go slowly and sometimes everything happens at once!

Our house is on the market and photos were taken yesterday so we should start to be getting more “hits” of realtors visiting our house. So far, we’ve only had 1 business card on the piano when we’ve come home!

Our first meeting with the adoption attorney is May 30th. This meeting should be 1 1/2 hours and I bet we’ll have more questions than answers when we’re through. We have been putting adoption things on hold while we’ve been deciding about moving and getting our home ready to sell, so it’s nice to start moving forward on that again. It’s also nice to have settled on the way we’re going to adopt. When you chose to adopt, there are so many choices out there. International, domestic, foster care adoption, etc. It’s overwhelming. I feel at peace so far about what we’re doing. I’m praying our home sells quickly and moving won’t be too much of a bother.

Our house seems a little crowded with all of our boxes in the non-conforming bedroom and the garage, so I am tossing around the idea of getting a storage unit. It’s so hard sometimes, we’ve put out so much money here and there for new paint, carpet cleaners, organizational and cleaning supplies, new light fixtures…..I feel as if we’ve put so much money into this already it would be nice to save some money and not get a storage unit. However, I just worry the house may seem too crowded and no one will be interested!

Saturday I am going to mulch and make the front yard look a little better, so that should help. Any advice from anyone who has sold a house recently?