On the Edge of a Cliff and Ready to Fly

I haven’t blogged in a long, long time. Mostly, I’ve been happy and busy being a working mom. Since our son turned two, I’ve really had the urge to adopt again. However, I feel depressed and upset when I think about the cost. The cost didn’t bother me as much the first time around…so I guess it must be the fact that I’ve seen how much it takes to not only adopt a child but the money involved to raise a child. Our first agency was fine, but they don’t have very good follow up. I’ve emailed the social worker twice to update our home study, and I don’t even get an email back, so I’m done. The other agencies we would like to use don’t have fees of $8000 like our first agency, they’re $15000. It just makes me nuts.

Also, about a week ago, I swore I was pregnant. I would’ve bet $500 on it. I was late, I was acting strange and couldn’t think straight, I wanted to eat weird things. There was a blissful two week period.

But I wasn’t pregnant. Between that and the fact that a second adoption is going to be expensive, I’ve not felt myself. I sent some emails today at work that were not my style. I didn’t get in big trouble, but my boss asked what was wrong. I am just so numb – normally, I’d cry and be upset. I can’t even cry. I just said ”I’ve been upset about not getting pregnant and the finances for a second adoption.” He told me to go home and do something to make myself feel better. So here I am, blogging.

I’ve also started meeting with a Stephens Minister from church, and I hope that will help, to be able to talk to someone about it. I’ve never felt despondent or lost the way I have been the past few weeks. Even though next week at work is going to be crazy, I am very excited to have the longer hours to keep my mind off of things. I love my son. I love my husband. I have great family and friends. It just makes me sad when I think of trying to get Joshua a younger sibling, just what a big, uphill, tough battle it seems to be.

A friend is in the midst of a contested adoption; it’s contested by the biological dad. I won’t post details for their privacy, but contested adoptions and unfulfilled adoptions are some of the landmines that can hit a family when adopting domestically.

As time has gone on, I realize more & more how relatively quick & free of drama our son’s adoption was. His biological mother wanted a closed adoption, and we just send her best friend photos of him. (which I need to give her an update ). No one contested; and so I thought all adoptions were as easy as ours. It is hard as we think about adopting a second time and it’s made us a little wary of everything that can go wrong.

We know that God is in charge of everything, but this wariness is tempered with our age. When I hit 33 earlier this month, my first thought was “wow, a lot of countries won’t let you adopt babies after you’re 35″. I feel the press of time and this sense of urgency, especially if we go through an adoption that doesn’t go as planned and we have to start all over.

pray for my friend dealing in this contested adoption.

Eileen Huffman passed away on December 1st. Donald and I babysat their kids quite a bit when we were first married. Take a while to read the most recent posts on the site; Scott loved his wife very much. I hope as Donald and I grow old and face these challenges that we can rely on Christ as much as they did.

We are still picking a new Church – there was a baptist church we liked but it wasn’t quite the right fit. We’re visiting Olathe Bible Church and have been enjoying the sermons there. We have been watching for diversity (as I’ve mentioned before since we’re adopting children of color) and Olathe Bible Church had a few African-American families. It is just strange to think as we imagine our family what it’s going to look like. Some folks hadn’t realized Josh was adopted, I just hope when we adopt again and if our child is of color again I want my kids to not be the only kids of color at church or school.

We’re in the middle of consolidating our debt in an effort to prepare for adoption #2. Not sure when we’ll actually START the process, but we need to save more money to get prepared for it.  Joshua’s adoption was fairly straightforward without any bumps in the process, but we could always have a difficult adoption process similar to what our work friends are going through. We also could have an adoption start and then not complete because the biological family changes their mind at the last minute. Whenever you adopt domestically, there is always a chance of things not going through, and it’s just sometimes expected, sadly, through the process. I’ve thought some about foster care adoption and international adoption but I really think that we want to adopt private domestic again the second time around. Originally, we wanted to adopt a total of 3 children, but I don’t know if that is going to be financially possible.

We are currently enjoying Joshua very much. It is fun to watch him develop into his own person and see his likes and dislikes. He is in the middle of learning the art of the full blown temper tantrum – head banging, feet kicking and all. I’ve found the best thing to do is to either ignore him but it’s better to distract him into doing something else. We’re working on a solid night time routine – bath, playtime, putting away toys, reading a book, then bed time. Last night we tried this and used a lot of songs and it worked very well – this was a great suggestion by Aunt Julie. His vocabulary is slowly expanding, he is definitely making a lot of new noises and trying out new songs, but a lot of it I cannot figure out what he’s talking about. He loves to point and say in a sing-song voice ‘Aa-oo’ which could mean ‘look at that’ or ‘I want that’ or ‘I’m sick of this.’

We can understand clearly a few words. Josh says “hi”  “bye-bye”  “Mama”  “dada”  “dog”  and some things that I can’t quite pick out that sound like “huh” or “argh.” He likes to feed Luna her food every morning and night; he’ll go to the pantry, fill up a little plastic cup one handful at a time, then carry it over to her bowl. If we let him, he would do this all day long, but we stop it when she’s had enough food in her bowl.

Joshua’s first birthday party was a blast! It was fun to pack the house full of family and friends. Josh wasn’t really into opening presents, but he kept clapping and wandering around the living room. He knew it was his special day. One of his favorite gifts is a plastic, rubber ball that he loves to kick and bounce on (I didn’t even realize he knew how to kick a ball!) He got some cute clothes and lots of toys.

It’s been so slow, yet so fast, how this year has gone by. Sometimes, when I was up at 2, 4, and 6 in the morning and had to go to work the next day, it felt very long and slow. I have felt strangely about this – I am happy that Josh is growing up: eating more and more on his own, talking, responding to us, giving hugs to us and his cousin, smiling and jumping up and down when daddy comes home, smiling and trying to climb into the computer when we skype with Grandma and Grandpa. He knows people, and I just love that he knows that Donald and I are mom and dad, and how much he responds whenever kids come onto the scene.

I loved him as a little bundle of baby – but I am loving getting to know him more and more. He’s a sweet child and loves to meet new people. When we went on a walk tonight (Josh was in his stroller) he was pointing to things and talking. He noticed a group of kids playing with a ball and was saying “UP” (unsure why.) I took him to a small park by our house and held him while he went down the slide. He was grinning so big and laughing when he slid down it, and he jumped up and down to get me to pick him up and slide down again. He saw some dogs barking in back yards as we walked around the neighborhood “Dog.” When I called Donald to let him know we were on the way home, I told Joshua “that was daddy on the phone.” He replied “daddy.”

On the stroller there is a little “window” That you can see through the cover of the stroller to the baby inside. Joshua kept turning around, grinning, and waving at me as I was walking him along. He would tap the tray in front of him and continue to bounce up and down, turn around, smile at me, and continue.

I know he’s going to keep getting bigger and older every day, and I do miss him being a baby sometimes. Most times, I am so happy that he knows who I am and he talks (small words) to us. I love him so very much I can’t believe it. So many times Donald and I will just, even still, start to cry thinking about how much we love him.

We had talked about starting the adoption process for our second one when Josh turned a year, but I think we’re going to wait a little bit. I am starting training for a new job (I will still be a supervisor) but in a different department. I am hopeful that I’ll be able to move up a little quicker since I have some more expertise in that new department. My goal is to move up and make enough someday so Donald can stay home with the kids and work on websites from home.

It’s weird right now – I have been thinking about how my nephew Jaxon will be a year in just over 2 more months and Joshua will be a year in less than 5 months. They are starting to “catch up” with on another – when Josh was born, the 10 weeks between the two of them was such a big gap in development. Now, they both stand and crawl and “talk” and eat solid foods – but the biggest difference is Jax’s fine motor skills when he eats crackers, he can pick it up and find his mouth and eat little bites at a time. I fed Joshua the same crackers, and he would “lose” the cracker in his palm, not be able to pick it up off the tray, or try to shove the whole cracker to the back of his mouth. So, I need to remember this when I watch Jaxon do something that Joshua may not be quite ready!

It’s neat that Josh & Jax get to spend so much time playing together (Drew told me Josh is a bully and takes Jaxon’s pacifier & toys from him, though). It’s made me not worry or be anxious about adopting a 2nd child so quickly since Josh has a playmate his own age with Jaxon. I think it’s really cool they have the same initials – by accident. When Drew & Andrea were pregnant they asked us what names we already had picked out for our kids, which I thought was sweet. We told them our boy’s name & girl’s name we’d decided on when we were dating & newly married. They picked Jaxon’s name & didn’t realize it was the same initials as Josh’s till after we adopted him.

I was thinking we would start on the adoption list again when Josh is a year old but we are still in debt from adopting Josh – I’d like to get that paid down before we start again. We’ve also still got our home depot credit card to pay off; we had to use the proceeds from our old house & roll it into our new home loan rather than paying off the credit card like we’d planned. I think now that we KNOW adoption can happen fast we need to research adoption loans & grants and get things in order. We make good money and I want to adopt as many kids as we can – but imagine if you had THREE new car payments to make – it just still puts a strain on your budget. I am praying God would make things clear to us, that I and Donald would get promoted in the next few years, and we could find some good financial assistance. We also will probably want to remodel the house (way in the future) to give us an extra bedroom. Well, that’s stuff to consider, but who knows!!

2 more sleeps and I’ll be heading back to Kansas City!

Just got an email from our social worker tonight. She advised us of another situation: a biracial (caucasian/african american) boy that is going to be born in April. She advised that the birthmother does not have insurance, so the costs of the birth would fall on our shoulders. I am calling our insurance company tomorrow to see if they would cover the costs of the birth mother, but from what H.R. has told us is that those costs are not covered by insurance.

I could rant and rave about how unfair this is, that since I can’t have kids, I am forced to pay out of pocket for someone else’s expenses. I could go on and on about how unfair it is that this mother isn’t even on any type of public aid that could help. I could go on and on being mad, frustrated, and hurt.

However, I keep telling myself and I keeping telling other people, and I have to give myself the following pep talk all the time. It is so easy to be bitter, to be mad, to be angry at other people who can have kids the old fashioned way. This is what I tell myself over and over and over, and verbalize to other people:

 I have committed to play this game. I don’t like the rules. I think all the odds are stacked against me. I think this game is completely unfair.  I don’t like what I have to go through to play this game. But if I want to win, if I want the outcome of having a child, I have to play by other people’s rules and I have to play the game.

No, it’s not what you think.

This morning I had my adoption physical. My Dr. and I were laughing today about it because there is a question on there that asks “Do you think this person would be fit to parent?” And she mentioned that almost all adoption physicals ask a question like that somewhere in the form. How in the WORLD do you answer a question like that? My doctor told me that I shouldn’t have any problems as far as the physical goes: she said if there are any problems with me having been diagnosed with depression to let me know and she can do an additional write up on me.

It was funny how she described my depression, though. She just wrote “Depression due to infertility.” Yea, I guess that sums it up. I think that’s been the thing that’s been the toughest to deal with. I also had a yearly female exam (I guess that’s the polite way to say it). I was half naked, with my feet in the stirrups, and she’s asking me all these questions for the physical while I’m laying down in that position. I had to keep myself from giggling.

I also had another TB test that needs to be read bright and early Monday morning. Since all my previous jobs were all in some time of health care field, I think I’ve had at least 15 tb tests. Hopefully, I still don’t have it!

Hubby gets his physical on Tuesday. Then, there is the references everyone should have gotten in the mail by now to fill out. We have to get 2 credit references, fill out our budget and gather up our past 2 years of tax returns. Me and one of my team mates were talking about the irony at work: Anybody can get pregnant if they want, but it’s such a big darn deal to get approved to adopt.

This is what it is. I’m trying to stay focused and give myself pep talks: if it’s meant to be it will happen. I just feel sometimes that all this work will be for nothing: kind of like getting our house on the market and waiting and waiting and nothing is happening. We’ve done most everything we can within our control, but now we have to wait, because there is nothing left for us to do.

Hubby and I spent most of the day filling out our home study paperwork, copying our personal documents, and printing out photos. All we have left are the financial statements, which apparently we get from our social worker at our first orientation meeting. This was the meeting that was scheduled June 13, which had to be postponed due to my mother’s death. S.T. (social worker) emailed us tonight and advised she’s ready to schedule the orientation meeting, so that is exciting.

We have a pretty good draft of our “birth mother” book, but we still have to make a letter that we hand out to everyone we know advising that we are wanting to adopt. I worry sometimes that no one will ever pick us, and we’ll be waiting forever, but we’ll never know until we try. We keep talking about foster care adoption, but all the meetings we’ve gone to about foster care they bring up the fact that most of the children awaiting adoption are older. My husband doesn’t want to adopt a child that’s older than how long we’ve been married, and I guess I see my husband’s point. Maybe if we have been waiting a long time for a private adoption child and nothing is working we’ll go the foster care route, or perhaps we’ll decide just to not have kids, I really don’t know.

Once we get the social work side completed, I am not sure what’s next. I suppose waiting is what happens next. I am not sure when we’re going to work on the “we’re adopting” letter, I guess as soon as possible. Tomorrow I think is going to be a little busy to work on any more of this. We can’t find any copies of our marriage certificate, which is the last document we need for the home study. We’re planning on going to the county courthouse Tuesday morning to pick another copy up.

I hope this is a little easier the second time around. I think we spent so much time thinking and debating and hoping and waiting it feels like it’s taken FOREVER to get this done. I have been looking back in my blog posts and thinking back to when we started on this journey, and it seems like we have been taking such baby steps to get here. I wonder if it’s different for couples who are given a very straight answer that they will not be able to get pregnant. I wonder if what has taken us so long to move forward with each step is that the doctors couldn’t find anything wrong, so there is always a hope that we will get pregnant. I think I’m okay with not being pregnant, but I’m not okay with not having any kids at all.

As we’ve been waiting and praying for kids, I just keep praying that God will make me not want to have kids and make me stop thinking about it. I’ve also been praying for it to get easier. I have been thankful that most people have been supportive and given us kind words of encouragement as we’ve gone down this path, rather than judging us or telling us what we’ve done wrong. That would make it even harder if people weren’t excited for us or supportive.

A lot of my husband’s family friends have adopted children, and there are a lot of adoptive families at our church, which is good, it makes me not feel as weird. In our circle of friends we’re the only ones, so that will be interesting as our kids get older. I definitely want to be open with them and let them know they’re adopted right from the beginning, but I just worry that they will feel weird if all their other friends are not adopted. I suppose it won’t really make a difference.

Those are things I want to start researching and reading about, now that we know this is the path we’re taking, and we’re going to keep plugging along until God definitely slams the door. I want to find out more about raising kids, how to bond with adopted babies, and how to deal with these different issues. I guess it’s not going to feel real until we have our child, I know we’re going to have a baby someday, but there is no set due date, no set time frame. When we first sat down with our attorney at the end of May of 07, we asked her how long it would take. She said about 1 year. We’ve given our birth mom book to one person and we weren’t selected, and no one else has wanted to see our birth mom book (but we also haven’t sent out the letters to all the different people we know). So, we’ll see if the time frame is a year, or longer. I’m trying not to think too far ahead, just trying to take it one step at a time, one meeting at a time.

We got out homestudy emailed to us today, 15 plus pages of what I call “the extra-nosy job interview.” Except it is much more personal. Describe your childhood? What is your dad like? What are your tax records for the past 2 years? Can I get a copy of your marriage certificate? What are good and bad childhood memories?

Emailed everyone that I could think of that I have asked to be a reference for us the past couple years, since there is 1 whole page with about 15 spaces asking for references. It feels better to have it, it’s been making me nuts having to wait, I am less frustrated when I can at least feel like I’m making progress towards having a child. I am trying to not think about how “regular” parents don’t have to fill this stuff out, that’s not my journey, this is our journey. Rather than carrying and birthing a baby, we’re going to get ours with paperwork and prayer. This will be our story, our family’s story, and our kids will still be our kids, no matter if I birthed them or not. If we really are against abortion, we need to be willing to give these moms an alternative. If we (I mean, we, proverbial, as Christians) really believe that life starts at the beginning, we need to be willing to put our money where our mouth is and give children a home that need a home. We aren’t going to be perfect parents, we aren’t going to be rich, but we can give a child love and a roof and clothing.

I was going to bed last night and I’ve been thinking and praying for this baby all last night and all today. I really can’t listen to the news before I go to bed, too many terrible stories like this.