Being shown

We got two expectant mother profile emails in one day after not hearing from the agency for about 3 months. We are having our profile shown to both expectant moms. These adoptions would be much more complicated than H's. Unknown birthfathers, perhaps methadone, etc. Are we ready to deal with these things? I'm not sure. But if we keep an open mind, we are more likely to be parents sooner. I suppose we can back out if things get overly complicated. These things happen.

I see babies and I feel ready. Babies don't make me sad, like they did when we were waiting for H. I feel a little scared. H has had a good week and I'm hoping we're over the horrible 3 hump and headed for a slightly better 3 1/2. What will happen when a new baby is introduced? I don't know. We do talk about it sometimes.

He likes giving things to babies, so that's good.

I think babies born with methadone addiction have a rough start as they detox, but generally do well if they weren't exposed to other drugs in utero.

We have to send our prints in to the FBI again and do the CORI and SORI and stuff again. Paperwork sucks.

Waiting to hear that we haven't been chosen sucks, though. I can't help but wonder when things will work. It will have been a pretty short wait if we got chosen now.

Home Study Complete

I was feeling pleased that our home study is finally complete, but I see it's been 6 months since we started. Oy. That doesn't make me feel so great, but it is what it is I guess.

I'm starting to worry about the wait again. I don't mind 12-18 months of waiting, but I know around month 16 I'm going to be freaking out a bit. Hell, I'm freaking out now. But I have to let it go because I just have no control over this.

I just feel old. (I turned 40 earlier this month.)

Anyway, I guess we're officially waiting.

Plugging along

We definitely have the winter sickness thing going around this house. H had a stomach bug around Thanksgiving and then we all got head colds. I seem to have got the head cold the worst, which is odd since I'm usually never sick.

Thanksgiving was good. Lots of cousins were around. H wasn't the youngest as we met his 6 month old cousin for the first time. A lovely time was had by all.

Hanukkah is happening now, so we're doing the exchange of gifts on Sunday. I'm only like 66% finished, but hopefully I can do what I want to do tomorrow. Though we have our adoption group tomorrow and things will be busy. Things are always busy. Good busy, though.

We're doing a re-fi on our mortgage and that's almost done so I have to face the fact that we need to complete our home study for #2. I'm actually getting outside pressure to do this. I need a deadline, so it's going to be Jan 1. We're going to have all our paperwork for kid #2 complete by Jan 1. We've got to do it. I expect the wait to be a longish one, and even if it's not, it's time for us. At this point I feel like everyone I know either has 2 kids or has one with another one on the way, so I guess I have to get in that line.

This decision feels really different this time. Less monumental, I guess. Being a mom I guess changes my perspective on things. I'm not nearly an anxious about it.

H is awesome as ever. He's getting really strong willed and opinionated. He's still only saying, "Nononono!" but he understands everything we say. I sent off an email to CC and O. after his 15 month checkup (25 lbs! 16 teeth!) but didn't hear anything back.

A family friend at Thanksgiving told me that she thinks her son and his wife are considering adoption and were asking about me and T and H. I again said something about how adoptive parenting is different than bio parenting and felt like I was being judged... like I was saying my son is less than or something. This bothers me. I need to figure out how to better express what I mean when I'm saying this. How do you say "not the same" but not mean "less than"? I need a better choice of words or something. I'm finding this frustrating.

Here is my little man sleeping in the car with his balloon. He loves balloons. He was clutching it and staring at it with so much love as he fell asleep.

One holiday down...

Got through the holiday okay. Nothing too bad. My extended family has become slightly difficult to deal with, but in general it was fine. I did get to do that paint your own clay thing with my nieces. One of them, H (age 9), saw how excited I was to be there and do the painting and she said to me, "If you adopt a girl you'll take her to places like this all the time." I thought that was cute and very interesting -- the kids definitely think about us and kids and the adoption. I was a little surprised, but it was a nice thing to hear.

T and I also drove up to Portland, ME to see a college friend of mine. The weather was nice and it was great to see her and she and T get along really well as they are both political junkies. We got to walk around and have some great beer and coffee. It was nice.

Now it's back to work and it should be a pretty busy month for me. Tonight we are meeting someone who is also a waiting parent -- she is doing international adoption as a SMC and is just looking for some compatriots. We'll have a meal and share angst.

Got a hard copy of our home study today. There were some tiny changes to make, but overall it was a really nice document. It made us sound like a good couple and good potential parents. It also made me feel like we are the way we think we are. I guess that's good, right?

So, we have a few more weeks of Xmas crap. (Sorry to those of you who love the holiday season. I've never been much for the whole Xmas/Holiday thing.) Then it will be a new year and we'll have a new president and I won't be a taxi driver any more and I will start a new position in my company.

I am looking forward to the change toward the new year.

Support

We went to a support group for waiting parents today. It was good. There was nothing mind boggling nor was there any sort of breakthrough, but it's nice to be around people who are in a similar situation to us and for us to talk about it. The biggest thing I realized at the group today was how far we've come in terms of our willingness to be open. We feel very ready to have a semi-open adoption. We are not in a place where we want to exchange identifying information, but we are more than willing to have more frequent communication that just sending a picture and letter once a year. We are neither scared nor threatened by this. We feel that this type of relationship will be a benefit to our child. I never thought I would be able to say those things and mean them, but I am doing that now. And it makes me feel good.

We got a little feedback about our book and have a few final changes to make. These last changes are the most difficult because I don't really have a similar but better photo to substitute for the three we want to change. But we will find something and we will "glue it down and move on." And then we will be done. And then we will be officially a waiting family.

We mailed in our "Matching and Placement Consideration" form today. We tried to be as open as we could with our choices, but to be honest we could only go so far. We are open to situations we would have never put ourselves in had we been able to get pregnant, but we are not really willing to enter a situation that we would never expect (a drug addicted baby) or would have been a surprise (a special needs adoption). This is where we are right now, and we can always change our minds in the future.

Sometimes I feel bad about this decision, and sometimes it makes me sad, but I refuse to allow myself feel bad because I want a similar situation to what I would have had were we able to have biological children. It would be unfair to a child to accept a situation you are not ready for. And that's the way it is.

Today was a pretty good day. We both got our hair cut. We had a lovely lunch and then went to the support group. I looked at some yarn and we visited my parents before they left for a trip to AZ. I feel much more relaxed this evening.

Tomorrow we will have a mellow day at home and we will take care of some things around the house. I will work on getting those final three pictures together and Monday is the start of a new week. I hope it will be a better one.

Things that are happening.

I interviewed for a new position in my company today. I really want this job. I answer the phone all day and I'm just ready to move away from the phones and find a new challenge. This job has been great for me. It's been 6 months and I like the company and I just feel ready to grow a little bit. I think the interviews went well, and now it's just a waiting game. I know that several other people are interviewing for the job. They are also internal candidates, so it could be close. I will be very disappointed if I don't get this job, but I am not confident it will be mine. I have a good shot, don't get me wrong. But I don't feel like it's a slam-dunk. I think I did as well as I could, though, so now I just have to wait. I hate to wait.

In other news, I finished my photo album booklet thing for the adoption. I still have to finish up the final version of the Dear Birth Parent letter, but I send my version of the book off to the agency for 'approval' from them. It was a lot easier to make than I thought it would be. It was actually kind of fun in the end. The letter is much more difficult. I only have one or two passes left on that one, but it's not as fun as putting photos together.

The only big thing left on the adoption front is deciding how much exposure to drugs and alcohol is okay. I need to talk to a pediatrician about that, but I haven't had time to make the phone call and I'm really not sure what to say. I think I just want to have a phone call at first, but how do I introduce my situation to the secretary who is going to answer the phone?

"Hi. My name is Rachel and my husband and I are trying to adopt a baby and want to understand more about the effects of drugs and alcohol on a fetus, so we were hoping to talk to the doctor about that."

I dunno. I think that's weird. Maybe it's not.

T and I don't have plans for the weekend, which is great because last weekend was so insane and it's supposed to really rain tomorrow. I'm excited to stay at home, maybe watch some Net.Flix and knit. Then we can watch some football on Sunday. Fall is here, but the weather is really warm so I can't really tell. The traffic is bad again, though, which is always an indication. I like the fall when it gets really cool at night so you can sleep with the windows open and pull up the covers, but during the day it warms up a bit and it's nice to go outside. I love that kind of weather. That means there will be apples soon.

A long long weekend

We've been full of house guests this week. It's been good, but busy. Jess was in from Wales, my friend Jen needed a place to crash and a little bit of help moving, and we had dinner with my parents both with Jess and E&R with toddler S. It was a crazy long weekend. It was fun, but I'm glad the house guests and plans are coming to an end, though. It's fun to have them, but it's always fun to get the house back.

Tomorrow is our last home study visit. I'm desperately trying to make the house seem as clean as possible. It's clean enough, but I kind of want it to be even cleaner. I also want our yard to look better, but I suck at stuff like that. I'm going to try to force myself to work on it later today as it cools down. I'm 2/3 done with the book for the potential birth parents, and 2/3 done with the Dear Birth Mother letter. I'm feeling pretty good about all that I accomplished (of course, with the help of T). Our home study will be complete soon, and we will be a waiting family.

Kinda freaky. But good.

There is a waiting family support group meeting in the middle of September that I'll want to go to. I think if we're not officially in that stage by that date, we'll be only a week or two away from it.

Then it's going to be time to work on our search. We're going to contract with another agency to do a national search in addition to the local searches that our agency does.

Things are finally coming together.

Book started

I finally started to work on the book. I feel like I have a completed draft of the Dear Birth Mother letter and I have about 25 or so pictures in somewhat of a layout for a book. I'm feeling pretty proud of myself for getting all of this down. I'm getting much closer, and I'm trying to keep my "glue it down and move on" motto in the back of my head while doing this. We are going to do the booklet in "landscape" format (which hopefully is okay) because the computer program that I am using won't let me switch the pages around. If this isn't okay, all of my work will be for naught, so I suppose I should check on that. Hm.

It's funny how few pictures we have of the two of us. We have some of one and some of the other, but not a lot of both. I'm going to include a montage of my knitting/crocheting and some pictures of the "baby's room." I have pictures of the house and yard. I suppose we should go to some of the nearby parks and include that in there too.

The captions are really difficult. I want to be informative, but I also want to make sure our personality shows through.

I've also noticed there are more pictures with one of my brother's family than the other. This is probably because we spend more time with one than the other, but I wish I had a couple more of that other side. There are only a few pictures of my nephew and they are only in big groups. He and I are pretty close, so I want to get something in there.

This book is so hard. It feels so inadequate. I feel really accomplished with what I have done, but I just am not feeling too good about all of this working out. Sigh.

Tomorrow's Monday and it's off to work again. I wish I could take a couple days off, but alas that is not in the cards for me. Next week is a long weekend, so maybe that will help a little.

But I did start the booklet, and that is a really, really good thing.

Blogging for the sake of blogging

Thanks for the carpool comments. I think I'm going to do the quiet time thingy. I like carpooling because it's good for the environment. I'll try it for a while longer. Neither of the other carpoolers have cars, which is why I drive all the time, and I don't want a later shift and there is no such thing as an earlier shift, so my hours are my hours. We'll see how it goes. I exchanged 3 sentences with the genius today and didn't get annoyed. If I can keep him quiet enough it might be okay.

There's still a lot going on. My friend Jess is coming from overseas on Wednesday and I need to prepare the bed for her. Then my friend J is staying at my house one night over Labor Day because she is moving and has the out by the 31st/in on the 1st problem. Meantime our last Home Study Visit is Tuesday 9/2 and our yard looks like crap. That probably won't make us fail, but I'd like to have pictures of a nice yard for our book. Maybe we should hire someone. We are not do-it-yourselfers at all. I can do a little bit, but my darling T is really no help at all. He's much more of a pay-someone-to-do-it type.

I wrote my paragraph about T. T has started his paragraph about me, but I need him to finish it. I'll make him do it tonight.

We have plans to see E&R and baby S this weekend so we can take pictures of us with little S so that expectant parents can see us with a kid.

Work's feeling a little tedious this week. There is a lot of moving around going on in my department, so I'm hopeful that this will open up a promotion type position for me.

Our poor girl kitty was feeling ill and went to the vet and is now on antibiotics. She is doing much better now, though. So this is good.

I feel so busy. I know busy is good, but I also feel like I want to slow down a little. I want to take a day off work, but I don't have the vacation time and I requested time off for the Jewish high holy days and I need all my hours for that.

I guess that's about it from here. My mind is spinning.

Yay weekend

I am so happy that it is the weekend. This weekend our nieces L&E are coming to stay for Saturday night. They're 10 and 11 and we'll take them into the city, probably to Fanueil Hall to go shopping and maybe out to dinner. We just bought a Wii so we hope to set that up for them. They are so excited to come, and we're happy to have them. It should be fun.

I think I've finished a first draft of my Dear Birth Mother letter. We are missing a bit and I'm sure it needs a large amount of tweaking, but it's something. I also have 22 photos for the book. We're supposed to have more like 40, so we have a lot of work to do. We're both pretty camera shy, so we have to break out the camera and start taking pictures of everything.

I have a couple of busy weeks coming up. I'm supposed to set up our appointment for Home Study Visit #3, which should be the final visit. I haven't done that yet. I just sent some emails.

I have to go clean the house a little to get ready for the girls.

I'm just so happy it's the weekend!

Home Study Visit #2

The second visit was better. I didn't cry afterward.

The social worker told T that I was "cute and endearing." I guess that's a good thing.

She asked about the neighborhood. There are pit bulls across the street which made her seem a bit skeptical, which freaked me out a little. (We had the meeting at our house for convenience sake.) But the pit bulls are generally under control and always behind a fence, so I guess that was okay.

She asked about my childhood. I had a ridiculously happy, suburban childhood so I didn't feel like there was much to talk about. I was a good kid. I didn't get into much trouble. I did well in school. Of course I rebelled against my parents, but I was and still am generally a goody-goody and I said so. I didn't get punished much because I was good. My punishments when I was a kid taught me to be a good teenager and adult. My parents instilled strong values in me and I think I am a good person because of how they raised me. I just feel like there's not much to say there.

We talked about the letter and the book some more. I told her that doing these things made me sad. She told me to try to get a new point of view with it -- that this would be a book we could show our child to help tell his/her birth story. But the fact that we will get an actual child out of this is not something I can even begin to fathom, so it's difficult for me to think about it that way. But I'm going to try.

She's going to try to hook me up with other waiting families. I am also having T come with me to a waiting families support group after work next week (even though it's kind of far) because I just need to find some other people doing this adoption thing.

I got a survey from the cryobank asking why we haven't ordered a vial in a while. I told them we were on hold due to pursuing adoption. I guess we're not the only ones who are doing that, even though it seems like it sometimes.

Status Quo

Things are generally the same. I spent time with my friend E and her son S on Sunday. E and I were pregnant at the same time way back in the day and now she has S. He is two. She also recently had a third miscarriage trying for a second child. We talked about that a little bit -- how much it just sucks, but how having S helps her so much.

S is a delight. He's a wonderful kid and was so happy to see me and spend time together. We ran through the sprinkler and kicked the ball and splashed in the bucket. He's really talking well now and can communicate what he wants and doesn't want quite well. I was struck with how tall he has gotten since I've seen him last. He's also the spitting image of his father, which is a slight kick in the gut for me.

It made me much less sad than I thought I would be to hang out. It does hurt a little to see what we're missing -- toddlers can be so great. But I really did okay with the visit, and that made me pretty proud of myself.

We told my brother and SIL (and their kids) that we have submitted an adoption application. They weren't surprised at all. The kids were a little excited. It seems weird that they weren't surprised, but I guess that is to be expected. They knew we had trouble. They knew we wanted kids. They knew about the DIs. Since none of it worked, it is the logical next step.

Tomorrow we are having our individual visits with the social worker for our home study. We haven't done any work at all on our Dear Birth Parent letter or our book that we have to make. I am trying to collect pictures for the book so that I can be choosy about which ones I put in there, so I suppose that's something. We really need to sit and work on it, but doing so is incredibly depressing and I don't know how we can motivate ourselves to work on this very important but very difficult thing. Getting T to write his autobiography was like pulling teeth. I suppose I can do most of the meaty work for this stuff and have him approve and proof read and edit. So I need to get off my ass.

I've been so busy trying not to be sad, and doing a reasonably good job of it, that I find it really difficult to take care of this stuff. But I guess I just need to get a draft out of me and give it to someone who can help us tweak it.

Things are as they are. Work is fine. T's work is busy and a bit difficult. People are pregnant and having babies all over the place. We are still here.

Home Study Visit #1

I cried. During and after.

I feel so empty and alone. And I don't feel one bit of hope at this point. Even though intellectually I know it will work out in the end, I cannot bring myself to truly believe that will happen. And we have been warned and know that it will take a long time, so I have to steel myself for that wait. It will most likely take more than a year. Probably closer to a year and a half. A year and a half ago I thought that IVF with PGD would work for us. A year and a half is a damn long time.

The interview was informal and went generally well. She could see my sadness and I couldn't keep it in. She said that she could tell we weren't feeling hopeful. I hope that's not bad.

I know we are moving forward. I know that we will write a dear birthparent letter and make a book and it will be shown to people and some day, someone will choose us to parent the child that they created.

But it doesn't feel real. The concept that this possibility exists doesn't make me feel any better. It doesn't make me feel like I might be a mom someday.

I only feel pain and failure and misery. I just feel like I've missed out on what so many people take for granted. I see only empty time left where we wait and wait and wait some more.

Haven't we already done this? Yes, there were differences. I do not have to inject myself with hormones or spread my legs for some doctor or midwife. But it's still all of this fake "trying" while nothing happens and we just get disappointed.

Why, why, why do we have to do it again?