On the Edge of a Cliff and Ready to Fly

Our last meeting with our social worker was finished today. It lasted from 1:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. YIPES. But we’re done!

We need to work on sending out our letters to friends, family, crisis pregnancy centers, etc. letting people know that we’re going to be adopting, so that should be fun! We gave out 2 copies of our book to our social worker to hand out to birth moms, so we’ll need to work on updating our book and making more copies of it. Ah, always more to work on!

I am pretty excited about tomorrow. Our home is a total mess because we’re remodeling it, but our social worker is coming over tomorrow at 1pm to complete our home study.

I realize another step in this process will be completed, but I feel sort of frustrated at the same time. Our attorney is on a vacation/sabatical, and all we’ve done is let people know that we’re looking to adopt. This seems so strange to adopt this way, just kind of waiting for a situation to present itself. I feel a little lost about what to do next once the home study is done, and when I asked our attorney, she basically said just to send out the letters letting people know we’re adopting and wait. I have nightmares and worry a lot that we will never be matched with a birth family and we’ll have to deal with not being able to be parents and learn to live as a childless couple. If that is God’s will that is His will, but I don’t feel that that is the direction we should go right now.

I just hope once the homestudy is done we will be able to focus on another step of the adoption process.

I have my interview for a supervisor position at my job on Thursday afternoon. I’m pretty excited and nervous; I already had to interview to get into the TRAINING to be a supervisor, and now I’m actually interviewing to be hired formally as a supervisor. This week, we’ve worked on packing more things at our house, put in upper cabinets in the kitchen (Donald and my father in law have done that), and then once we get to a good place I will start painting the inside of the ENTIRE house. Yes, I am super excited (Yuck.) It will all be beautiful when it’s done, but the house better sell, as we’re going to be updating/redoing everything but the carpeting, but including a carpet allowance.

Random stories:  

1. Hubby and I went to the post office together to mail off our FBI background check request and fingerprints for our homestudy. The social worker specifically told us to write “adoption” in big, red letters on the outside of the envelope. When we did this, the dark red ink smeared. Hubby commented, “It looks like we wrote adoption in our own blood! Was that part of the deal, to write it in blood?”

2. I had a good session with my counselor a couple weeks ago, since lately dealing with this has been very, very rough. Every month we go through the roller coaster of hoping, wishing, and finally disappointment. I have come to face the fact that we will not be able to get pregnant. We have been trying for 4 years, and you have to be realistic and stop hoping sometime. I don’t want to sound cruel or cynical, but for pete’s sakes, half of what I talked to my counselor about was the stuff people say to me that makes me nuts. “Oh, when you adopt, you’ll get pregnant” or “You shouldn’t feel bad or grieve that you haven’t gotten pregnant, because you haven’t been told for sure that you can’t.” I don’t even know what to say to those comments. I want to talk about ADOPTION. I am done talking about getting pregnant, trying to get pregnant, ideas for how to get pregnant, or fertility centers. When my counselor and I were talking, I think she expressed it well. She said “You can’t live in this place where there are ‘what ifs’, you’ve moved on and are ready to embrace adoption, but it feels like no one else around you is ready for it. They aren’t ready for YOU to give up, so they keep bringing it up. You’ve moved on to adoption, and other people aren’t following you. They think they’re telling you what you want to hear, they think they’re giving you hope, but they don’t understand they’re dragging you backwards to a place you don’t want to be.” That’s exactly what it feels like, I’ve moved on and other people aren’t ready to move on, they’re holding onto hope that I gave up on. I keep talking about adopting, our homestudy process, and people keep bringing up pregnancy, or the hope that I’ll get pregnant, or the fact I might get pregnant, but I am done with that. Ask me about ADOPTION, because that’s what we’re dealing with. 4 years is a long time to not get pregnant when you’ve been tracking your cycles. Even though I haven’t been told for sure why, I think we qualify as belonging to the Infertility Club, I think 4 years gives me the right to move on, so please, move on with me.

3. My hubby, whom I love more dearly than ever, said to me the other night, “Hey honey, the roller coaster is starting. Put your hands up. WEEEEE!” I couldn’t stop laughing at him and the way he said it, and the way he dramatically flew his hands up over his head.  I find it suiting that I hate roller coasters in real life as much as I hate the proverbial infertility roller coaster. Yuck.

We scheduled our last visit with our social worker for the week my hubby and I are on vacation to get our house ready to put on the market. Our social worker will come to our house, make sure our home is fit for a baby, and finish up our couple and individual interviews. It will be a marathon day!

After that, everything is done. We’ll just be waiting again for the next step.

We’ve been “almost done” with our home study for a few weeks now. Our social worker has had to deal with the death of a close friend, so she has had to cancel our last few appointments. We have sent in our background checks to the state, but we still need to send in our fingerprints and background check request to the FBI. Hopefully, we can get the homestudy done in December or January at the latest.

Hubby’s dad is staying with us for a few weeks. He works at a golf course and gets laid off every winter, so he’s using this time to make some extra money by helping friends and family with handiman type work. It’s amazing the things he can do. He’s specifically going to help us get our house ready to put back on the market. We’ve planned on finishing repainting, new flooring (laminate, which should be cat proof), and a new kitchen stove.

Tomorrow morning (if it doesn’t ice over) we’re supposed to take some boxes to our storage unit to begin clearing things so we have more room in the garage for the remodeling project.

A week ago we got a puppy! We’ve been waiting and looking into getting a corgi puppy for the past few years, and we finally decided to get one. I’ve been in the dumps emotionally about everything lately, so a puppy has been a good distraction. My medicine I think has kept me out of a deep, dark depression, but I’m pretty upset and heartsick about the infertility issues. I scheduled an appointment with a counselor for 2 weeks from now, and I cannot wait. Some days I’m fine, some days I can hardly function. It’s hard to explain or understand.

Thursday at 1pm I have my individual interiew with our social worker. The Thursday after Thanksgiving hubby and I have our couple interview. EVERYTHING in the homestudy is done except: fingerprints, tax forms from the past 2 years, and letters from our bank and 2 creditors that we’ve dealt with. WOO HOO.

There is a guy at work, D.S, he and his wife adopted 2 3 and 4 year old boys from the Ukraine. I have had such a good time talking with him. He will come up to me and ask “How is the adoption coming? What stage are you at?” People who have adopted just get it. You just want to talk about it with somebody, but it’s nice to talk to someone who really understands what you’re talking about! He told a great story about one of his boys that made me cry. When one of the boys was taking a bath, he would put all his mom’s shoes in the bathroom with him. His logic was is that his mom couldn’t leave the house without coming in the bathroom first to get her shoes! It’s so strange the way kids, and orphans, cope with separation and the logic they use. Even though we’re going through a lot of pain in our infertility struggles, there are orphans out there, like D.S.’s little boys, who were left without family, without much food, and without much hope for the future. Now, they’re with parents that love them.

Just listening to D.S. get all teary talking about his boys really warmed my heart. THAT’S what all this is for, those babies and children that are orphans that need homes, or those babies born to moms that love them but just can’t take care of them right now. It’s also great to have someone at work to just chat with about it. He said to me on Friday “It feels like forever, and it feels like with all the paperwork it’s never going to end, and it’s never going to happen. Just keep going. Once you have your kids, it will be like you’re always had them. You’ll even forget sometimes that they’re adopted, you’ll always think that they’re your biological children.”

I keep thinking about that as we fill out all these papers, go to all these meetings, and lay our life out for the “Really Big Nosy Job Interview,” that it will never end and we’ll never get a child. I know others have been through this and we can make it through as well. I finally feel like it’s getting closer: just a little bit left on the home study and then it’s up to the social worker to complete it.

On Wednesday I had an interview to be accepted into a Claims Leadership Development program. The CLD program is an 8 week program in which you learn about leadership, managing people, follow field claims representatives, and take a trip to home office for a week. In order to be accepted, you have to pass a difficult interview and pass various exams.

I passed the interview on Wednesday, and then on November 7, 2007 I have my final exam. Between now and December I am going to be filling in for supervisors. I am very excited about my promotion and I am glad the interview is over, it took a couple weeks of preparation. Now, I need to begin studying to the exam.

We’ve turned in half our paperwork for the homestudy and completed our physicals. We’re going to meet with our social worker for one on one meetings sometime in the next two weeks. We have a few forms left: our budget, fingerprints, and an affidavit that needs a notary. We haven’t heard from our attorney on our “we’re adopting” letter, the last we heard she just emailed us to say she was swamped and she woud look at it when she could. So, we’re plugging ahead and it’s exciting that we’re almost done with the home study part.

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.

WARNING: This post is very bitter and mean. I’m having a bad day. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.  

Thursday hubby and I met our social worker for the first time. Turned over our stack of paperwork, our names and addresses of references, and $50. We have another stack to fill out: The financial stuff and our physicals from our doctors.

I am happy that this is done, but I have found myself very depressed this week. Ironically enough, it’s because I’m up for a promotion.  Why would a promotion cause depression, might you ask? Well, it’s hard to explain. I only have so many hours in the day, and right now, my extra time has to be spent studying for exams and interviews for my promotion. This is time that I won’t have to spend on our homestudy. It seems as if every time we get a little further down the road a roadblock comes up. Now, when you’re pregnant, you’re pregnant. The baby is coming in 9 months whether you like it or not. But when you’re adopting, everything is relative to you having meetings, filling out paperwork, and waiting for an opportunity to come along. Our social worker did say to us “Now, this is your labor.” and I understand the reason for the paperwork; they want to protect the children being put up for adoption. But I find it frustrating, and slow, and the process depends on me pushing it along. Every crisis that happens, every extra hour I have to spend on work, slows it down, and it feels as if we’ve been on this journey for longer than 4 years, it feels like 30.

We went to a family reunion today and stayed 15 minutes. I just couldn’t take it. Some days I’m fine, sometimes it feels like someone has hit me in the chest with a brick. We were sitting at a table with a baby in a car seat on the table. The mom starts talking about her labor, and how she was induced, etc. etc. There were two or 3 pregnant women, and lots of children running around. I feel like an evil witch, but I couldn’t take it. I feel like I am the freak that can’t get pregnant in those situations. I can’t be around kids sometimes, and I hate that, because I love kids, but it just hurts. It’s just a reminder that I don’t have them, I have no idea why, and then on top of it the process seems so slow. I know others out there have had longer to deal with this, or have miscarriages, or have lost children when they’re born.

I like to think of myself as a strong person that has been through a lot, and been successful, and barged through, and made it, and carved things out for myself. But not being able to have kids has just knocked me down, knocks the wind out of me, makes me feel miserable and like a failure and as if it’s all my fault. I don’t want to see people, I don’t want to see moms with babies, I don’t want to hear your birth story, and I am a bawling mess. I hate myself when I am like this — some days I am strong and I keep focused on adopting and I think about our future children and how much fun they will be — but some days I hate everyone that has kids and I don’t want to be around people. I know people don’t mean it, but I feel like it’s being rubbed in my face, and so I need to go away by myself and cry and pray for a while, and then I’m better. It’s just a bad day. I have to have faith that it will get better, and we’ll get through, but I hate myself when I’m like this.

It’s like I turn into the Evil Infertility Monster or Debbie Downer or something, I am angry, crying, sad, and I don’t want to be happy. But I know it’s a bad day, I’ve had them before and gotten through them, I’ll probably have them some more and get through them, but today it feels like it’s the end of the world, and I would rather cry and be by myself than be reminded of what I don’t have.

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.