40 Days and Counting

So I added a ticker to this blog.  I'm now trying to figure out if I stare at it long enough if the days until D-day go by any faster.......I'm gonna say no, it does not help to stare at it. 

Dear Adoptive Parents

I'm reading a book called Twenty Things Adopted Kids Wish Their Adoptive Parents Knew by Sherrie Eldridge.  I'll comment further on books I've read in a later post but I wanted to share this from the book.  Its an imaginary letter from God to adoptive parents.

Dear Adoptive Parents,
One of my children needs a home - a mother and father who will love him and provide for him.  I know how much you wanted to have children.  I know the tears and anguish you have experienced.  But the only way I could make a place for this child in your home was through the open door of your infertility.  I am loaning him to you for a while to take care of.  Do the best you know how to do, for he is precious to Me.  Someday, when you are gone I will be his mother and father.  He will learn to trust Me and depend on Me as he did on you.  Thank you for being willing to love My son and give him a home on earth.  Love, God

When I find this whole adoption and parenting thing so overwhelming that I just don't feel like I can do it, I remember this.  This little baby that we will bring home will always be God's son first and his birthmother's second and mine third.  God and his birthmother have given me the task of raising him for the next 18 years and then I give him back over to God's control.  I can't do it on my own, I can only do it with lots and lots of prayer.  Adoption has taught me that I am only an instrument of my Father and I'm here to do the work He has planned for me.  And there is no way I can do something so huge and so important without Him.

Second Birthparents Meeting

Last week we met with our expectant birthparents for the second time.  This meeting was SO much easier and stress free.  I was not nervous at all.  We were there early again and their social worker came in a few minutes before they did.  She told us that they really like us and she thought our last meeting went well.  She said I was a little too quiet but she understands that's my personality and DH did perfect.  Well thanks to that comment I spent the rest of the visit thinking about how I'm being too quiet and I should say something but didn't know what.  She should never have said that to me.  They had not had their hospital planning meeting yet so we really had nothing new to talk about.  We had lunch and visited for about 2 hours.  I hate how I have to spend 8 hours in the car for a 2 hour lunch but I know that at this point that is what needs to be done to strengthen our relationship with them.  I always feel unsure how to act about the baby.  Do I act like we are going to be his parents or do I act like we still aren't sure if they will follow through with it.  I feel better about them going through with their decision after they talked some about why they chose adoption.  And with it being an open adoption they understand that they are not saying goodbye forever. 

One concern I have is that this is her second pregnancy and the first time she had a stillborn at 36 weeks.  She never went into detail about the circumstances but it makes me extremely nervous.  And what makes it worse is that she hasn't been to the doctor since her gender ultrasound.  She said work is too busy but that she feels the baby moving all the time.  After we got home I talked to my social worker and she said she will have their SW talk to her about seeing the doctor and take her there if necessary, although they can't force her to go.  I just get all these scary thoughts in my head of us going to the hospital ready to meet our baby and its stillborn.  Its hard enough to think about them deciding to parent but to end up with no healthy baby at all for anyone to take home is just horrifying.  So then of course I google it and read even more scary things.  Since she didn't say why it happened the first time there is no way to know if it was preventable.  I'm just praying that she will go to the doctor and everything will be fine.

Next week is Bmom's birthday.  I sent her card and wrote a nice note about how special she is to us and we can't wait to grow our relationship and spend many more happy birthdays with her.  Our agency doesn't let us give gifts until after placement so I sent her pictures of the nursery.  I'm not sure if it will make her happy to see we have a place ready for him and we will take good care of him or if it will make her sad that he has a home ready with someone that's not her. 
We are down to almost 6 weeks until due date.  I'm getting so anxious.  I can't imagine if I were the one that was pregnant.  I just want to bring this little guy home.  Everyone says we need to enjoy our last few weeks of freedom but I'm ready for this.  We've had 8 years of married freedom and we're ready to move on to the next phase.  Of course I'm hoping she'll suprise us with an early delivery but not too early because we want him to be healthy.  Everyone keeps asking me for updates and there is nothing to update.  Other than our next meeting with them later this month, I'm just working on being patient.

First Meeting with Birthparents

This is the last of my retrospective updates......On May 9th we drove 4 hours for lunch with our birthparents.  We knew nothing about them except that they were going to college and the baby was healthy with no known drug or alcohol use.  So we had a vague idea that they were younger and making good decisions for their baby.  I had 10 days between getting the call and our first meeting.  Honestly after the first couple days it took for reality to sink it that week went by pretty fast.  Somewhere I've come up with a new coping technique and have been applying it to our entire adoption journey.  I'm not sure if its good or bad but I don't think about things, I don't try to control them, I just let God worry about it.  In some ways its a form of denial and distancing myself from the situation, on the other hand it is complete surrender to Him and His will.  So the entire time I told myself I was just taking a road trip to have lunch with my hubby.  I hate being late for things and we always end up driving around lost so I planned an extra hour into our driving time.  Of course this is one time we didn't need it.  So we were there an hour early, drove by the restuarant so we knew where it was and then hung out at the nearby Petsmart to kill some time.  Our meeting was scheduled at 12:15.  At 11:30 reality hit that this wasn't just lunch with DH.  This was a huge deal!  At 11:50 we left and sat in the car for 10 minutes.  Arrived at the restaurant at 12:00.  The hostess asked if we wanted seating for 2.  I said we were meeting some other people.  She asked if I would like to go look around and see if they were there.  I said well I'm not really sure what they look like, a puzzled look comes across her face and she says "okay, that's weird".  Your telling me this is weird?!  So she seats us and we wait, wondering if they are already here or not.  It was seriously the most agonizing 15 minutes of my life.  They say in situations of stress creatures are wired to fight or flee.  Well the devil was on my shoulders filling my ears with doubt again I wanted to flee.  I told DH I can't do this, its too huge and I desperately wanted to go hide in the car.  He reassured me like he always does and we kept waiting, staring everytime some couple walked in.  Finally I heard them come up behind us and tell the hostess they were with us.  Immediately I felt better.  They were like us.  I didn't realize I had so many fears that they would be snobby or think we weren't good enough for their baby.  Their social worker introduced us but did a poor job of it.  She got my name right, called my husband by our last name (which is sometimes confused for a girl's first name), then said oh well good thing its an open adoption.  Called BMom by the wrong name and couldn't remember BDad's name.  I don't think she instilled confidence in any of us with this situation.  And it made me doubt if she was giving them necessary counseling they needed.

This restaurant was a mongolian grill so we had to get up to get our food and wait for them to cook it.  We didn't say much at this point except about the food.  Once we all sat down I can't remember what was all said.  They showed us ultrasound pics and told us it was a boy due in July.  For some reason the ultrasounds made me uncomfortable and DH said later that I didn't seem real excited about them.  Now I feel bad that I didn't hide my feelings better.  I guess ultrasounds go into the same category as baby showers when it comes to infertility wounds that still cause pain.  While I feel I've overcome and moved on from our infertility there are obviously some things that will always be with me.  Pregnant women in general always made me uncomfortable and feel a little bitter but it has gotten better this past year.  When we went to a marriage retreat weekend there were all kinds of pregnant women there that didn't bother me, because I knew I was an expectant mom too.  But sitting across the table from a pregnant woman did still make me uncomfortable.  What is wrong with me?!  She is pregnant with MY future baby and I still had issues with it?!  I feel so guilty that I'm so jaded about pregnancy. 

The meeting went really well and everyone left happy.  I expected our social worker to direct the conversation and ask questions but she basically just sat there and let us talk.  Which worked out fine because we were all getting along so well but I didn't feel like we talked about a lot of things we should have.  They had 3 pages of questions but only asked us a few.  And I didn't really ask any.  We mostly shared stories about our families and childhoods.  We have a lot in common and even though our SW discouraged us from putting things about our farm life in the profile that was one of the reasons they liked us.  What does she know anyway?  God is in charge here!  On the way home I texted our SW and she said that she talked to their SW and that they thought everything went great too.  Even though I could tell everyone was happy it still made me feel really good to hear it from her.  The following week we got a call that they want to meet again on May 29.  I was expecting to meet again, I know they were doing their hospital plan the following week and would want to discuss it with us.  But I thought they would wait longer.  I wish they had since I'm not looking forward to another day spending 8 hours in the car.  With these meeting so close together I'm afraid we will be meeting a few more times before July.  And I get it, if your making an adoption plan for your child you want to meet the adoptive parents a few times and make sure your happy with the decision.  While I'm excited to see them again and get to know them better, it is definetly a burden for us to take off from work and make the trip just to have lunch.  To me, we have the rest of our lives to get to know them better but I know from their point of view its different and I know I'm being selfish.   Maybe they don't realize we live several hours away.  Maybe after our next meeting we can have phone or email contact. 

I know I sound ungrateful but I'm not, just a little stressed and overwhelmed with the whole situation. 

April - Exciting News

It seemed like we waited forever for our homestudy to get approved.  We were used to everything moving so fast that this wait was killing me.  At least if we were waiting to get a match the possibility was out there but this just seemed like wasted time.  It took a month from our last homestudy meeting for our homestudy to get written by our SW and approved by the agency.  On April 4 we officially became a waiting family, our books were out and our profile was online. 

In the month waiting for approval I had 4 grant applications ready to go.  Our agency has a list of possible grants but I could only find 4 that worked for our situation, many of them apply to international or special needs.  Once I got a copy of our homestudy I got those in the mail ASAP.  Most grants you can't get after finalization so I wanted to have them out right away in case we got a fast placement.  I'm still not sure how that works if I don't hear from them before placement since we owe $18k at placement.  Hopefully if we do get awarded a grant after placement, the agency will still accept it and refund us the over payment. 

Once we were officially waiting I went nuts buying baby stuff.  It was addicting!  I NEVER thought I would be that way.  After all our years of infertility I was conditioned to hate and avoid all things baby related.  I always said if we did have a baby I would only buy a few things we needed only because we needed them.  I don't know what happened to all my bitterness but God slowly worked on my heart and took away much of the pain and anger over infertility.  I feel like we hit the rewind button and were expecting our baby after just starting to TTC.  The pain of the past 5 years is mostly forgotten.  I felt God urging me to go ahead and be prepared.  Also around Easter He really put it on my heart to start praying for our birthmom.  I thought that meant our baby was on the way and she was maybe just finding out she was pregnant and deciding what to do.  But I was wrong :)

After less than 4 weeks of officially waiting I came home for lunch to a grinning husband.  I asked what was up and why he looked so happy.  He said we had a message on the machine from our SW asking us to call her back.  At our final meeting she had said that she wouldn't call unless she had good news, anything else she would email or text.  So hubby told me to call her, I said I can't I'm too nervous, he said he would, I said no I want to.....we went back and forth a while before I finally did it.  She said we had been chosen by a birthmom already!  Holy cow that was fast!!  I was literally shaking as she explained the details of our upcoming meeting.  She would not say when the baby was due or if it was a girl or boy.  After hanging up I went from excitement to panic.  I can't be a mom, what happened to my several months of waiting and adjusting to the idea of adoption?  Guess who cried all night again?  Yep, this girl.  Adoption is so much more emotional than I thought it would be. 

In 10 days we had a meeting scheduled with the birthparents.  I had no idea what to expect but was trying not to think about it.

March - Homestudy & Profile

Our homestudy consisted of three 3 hour visits with our social worker.  Our first was at our house which I was totally not ready for.  I felt like we had to clean everything and make it look like we aren't slobs.  I was nervous that our first visit was at our house, we hadn't even met our SW yet.  Some agencies require you to have a baby room ready, ours did not.  In fact she barely looked at the house.  She mostly asked us questions about our childhood and what situations and condition we would be open too.  We went out and bought a fire extinguisher and carbon monoxide detector and she didn't even ask about them.  But it needed to be done anyway so I'm glad the homestudy motivated us to do it.  I was learning more about adoption but still sort of naive to it and she acted offended by my questions, like I should know better.  How do I know that in an open adoption the birthparents can't just show up on your doorstep?  I've never done this before.  Mike made a joke about his family and she took him seriously asking if they had mental illness or something.  So we decided no more jokes.  I cried all night and begged hubby to let me back out.  I was having some serious doubts.  Adoption is too much work, too invasive, too expensive and too huge for me to go through with.  I didn't feel like our SW liked us and to go through all this without her in our corner seemed too much.  Hubby assured me that this is God's plan for us and even though it seems hard and Satan may be on my shoulder trying to get me not to do, we had to keep going.  I settled on the fact that once we were done with our homestudy and waiting, I would have some time to relax and get used to this whole situation. 

I made our profile book on shutterfly and it turned out really well.  I was worried that some of the scanned pictures wouldn't look as good when I got the books in the mail but luckily it was awesome.  I did have a two typos but hey no one is perfect.  I was offended when sour SW said not to include very many pictures of our farm or animals in our profile books because that turns people off.  Turns out that's one of the reasons we got chosen by our birthparents but more on that later.   We needed 5 copies of our books at about $25 each.  No one mentioned that, I assumed I would only need one or two.  But its reasonable for how well the books turned out.  Not sure what I'll do with 5 profile books when this is all done but its still totally worth it.  Before printing I emailed our SW the online version so she could see it.  She suggested I include more racially diverse pictures.  She must have forgotten I live in rural MN and there just isn't a lot of racial diversity in my family or neighborhood.  I wasn't trying to be racist, its just how it is around here and I can't very well put pictures of strangers in my book. 

Our second meeting we met an hour away in her hometown at a bakery.  At least this was a neutral place.  This meeting went much better after tons of prayers from us and our close friends.  She asked about our infertility, our house, our marriage and our plans for parenthood and our feelings about adoption. 

Our third meeting we met in the middle at a restaurant.  This time she asked a lot of the same questions and I said I think we already answered these.  She said she has to ask some of them again to make sure our answers are consistent.  So not much new happened at this meeting.  The middle of March we were done with our homestudy and it was submitted for approval to the director of our agency. 

February - Training & Homework

We had to attend one meeting with our agency.  Others we looked at had required attendance at several short meetings.  Ours had it all rolled into one 8 hour day.  It was a long day and we were given a lot of information.  But I was so glad we only had to make one 2 hour drive to the home office.  We learned about their different programs, attachment issues, how things with with birthmoms and open adoptions, different parenting issues that may come up and racial issues.  We then had to go home and do 3 hours of online classes.  We chose one about racial issues and one about attachment.  Up until this point I was starting to get excited about adoption.  I didn't mind doing paperwork and I was excited to think we might finally be parents.  I was slowly putting many of fears about adoption to rest and realizing that I was very naive about all things adoption related.  There are just so many myths out there and I didn't know any better than to believe them.  But now I started having doubts.  I cried all the way home from this meeting.  Adoption is so huge.  Someone doesn't just hand you a baby, say congrats and its like you just had your own.  Even infants can have attachment issues, if you are open to different races you may have to deal with others reactions to it, there may be a lack of medical history on the birthparents, your child may have been exposed to drugs or alcohol, you may have a failed adoption where they choose to parent at the last minute, you have to protect their adoption story and share the age appropriate details with them, if its an open adoption you have to arrange visits and send updates and its just so much more complicated than having a biological child.   It takes special people to be involved in adoption, on both sides of it.  And sometimes I don't want to be special, sometimes I just want to be boring and go unnoticed in the background.  So I moped about for several days.  Why did you make me special God?  Why did you call me to do something so important?  What if I fail?  So what if you've been preparing me my whole life for this, maybe I just don't want to.  I'm definetly one of God's whiny children, always complaining about something.  After a few days, I started to work through and accept all that and began to get excited about adoption again.  We got a totally unexpected call from our social worker, ready to set up our first homestudy meeting.