Monthly Update

Once again, nothing has changed on the adoption front. It's sort of sad that this is becoming our standard. I wish there was some sort of something coming from our agency that we could share!

In the rest of our life, we're both gearing up for a very busy July. Ann is looking forward to spending a week at the county fair working a booth for her parents which will be followed by a week in Florida with family - yay! David is super super SUPER excited about the ComedySportz World Championship which is taking place in Indy for the first time. Our house sustained some hail damage in two storms in June, so we are now in the process of choosing a contractor to complete the repairs - a new roof for both the house & the garage as well as new siding on the house. It will be great when it's done, but there are soooo many decisions to be made!

Same old same old

Nothing new to report on the adoption front.

Same "status" from the agency as always - our book has been shown and it was positively received.

In other "life" related news, we planted a garden in our three new raised beds (built with gracious help from Ann's dad and brother), we've planned a little vacation to Puerto Rico to visit Ann's best friend, we've been to Wisconsin a few times in the past few weeks to visit Sweet Pea & Skinny Minny, and we've starting talking about the plans to redo our kitchen cabinets.

The world still keeps spinning even though we wish it would stop for just a minute!

So many people...

So many people around us are having kids. Lots of them. Since we started this journey, there have been literally dozens of kids born to friends, family members, coworkers, and acquaintances.

And I'm happy for most of them. A few of them, not so much, and I'm a little ashamed it takes me to a place where I compare Ann and me to them as potential parents, and judge myself a superior candidate.

Which makes it all the more disheartening that we haven't been selected yet.

I'm so tired of hearing that the one we get will be the one that God wants us to have and all of that sort of stuff. I'm not saying I don't believe it; I'm saying that it's not all that comforting.

I've half-joked with some friends that I feel like the last kid on the playground getting picked for kickball... but really, it sometimes feels worse than that. Because in this playground, other kids keep showing up and getting picked before me.

I thought about not writing this post, because I want people who read this to know that I'm fighting the good fight and remaining patient and optimistic and all that. But the truth is that there are days where there's a hole in my heart, where I want to ask God why years of praying to be somebody's Daddy has resulted in nothing.

You all know that poem about a dream deferred? And at the end it asks, "...or does it explode?"

When we get this kid, he or she is going to be directly in the blast zone of all this ready-to-pop parental love we have. This kid is going to be drenched in love.

A minor update?

Nothing much has really changed. Still waiting.

We did change our preference with the agency though to an open adoption OR a semi-open adoption. In the past, we just went with semi-open. In talking with our co-ordinator though, most of the adoptions in the past year were open.

What does this mean?

It means that the birthmom and ourselves will have more direct access to one another. All contact will not have to be filtered by the agency. We will share an e-mail address with her and most likely one of our cell phone numbers. We could arrange to see her at a location away from the agency offices. We can still meet at the agency, and their counselors will be available to us at any time. If the open-ness of the relationship becomes an issue, the agency will gladly step in to help all parties reach a satisfactory state of being.

It's a little scary to be that open about letting a "stranger" into our lives in this way, but this person will really not be a stranger. We'll be connected in the most awesome way.

No news.

We are now in the "average" time span for waiting -- 15 to 18 months.

I'm trying not to get my hopes up that this means our time is coming soon... but I'm also trying not to be too pessimistic about it.

Unbelievable

Unbeknownst to us, the rules have changed in Indiana for adoptive parents. We have to update our home study paperwork, including getting brand new forms signed by our doctors, new background checks from the counties we have lived in for the past five years (which means taking a day off work), new financial statements...

I saw an e-mail from the agency and my heart skipped a beat. I thought maybe there was news of a birth mother who had chosen us.

Instead, it was more hoops to jump through.

MORE HOOPS.

Nothing new to report.

Still just waiting & praying & waiting & crying & waiting.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

I am getting started on the quilt that I am making for myself. I have it all cut out, David has created the pattern, and the pieces are stacked - now, I just need to get sewing!

Sometimes, no news isn't good news

Until very recently, I thought that there were times when I manged to be a very patient person, and there were times when I was a very impatient person.

I'm now not sure about how patient I really am. It may depend on how you define patience.

If I have to wait for something, I'm generally fine as long as I know exactly how long I'm going to have to wait. I can wait for Christmas just fine. I can wait for a convention I'm excited about happening here in town next July. I can wait for hours for some of Ann's cooking.

But when all I know is that I am enduring something unpleasant with an indefinite end time, I can't relax. I can't sweat it out. I can't be patient.

It used to be that the worst, for me, was when I'd get sick. I'd have this completely irrational fear that I'd never get well again... not that I would die, but that I would spend the rest of my life hoping to be able to keep down soup and buying extra boxes of tissues. I know it doesn't make sense, and frankly I blame the fear on the fact that I'm sick at the time... but that's a miserable experience for me. I'm a total baby when I'm sick because I don't know when it's going to end.

I have a grandfather who has Alzheimer's. (OK, technically I'm aware they can't say for sure that it's Alzheimer's without a post-mortem test, so words like senility and dementia get tossed around, but I'm not a doctor and I'm guessing you're not a doctor either, so let's just go with this as the default. If you are a doctor, I'd really like to know how to tell the difference between the good pain exercising brings that means you're getting stronger and the bad pain exercising brings that means you've injured something, because I really can't tell. ANYWAY, moving on...) He has been in an assisted living facility for years, and he never recognizes me anymore. We know that at this point, we are essentially biding our time. Anyone who has ever been in this position knows the feeling -- you don't exactly want your loved one to pass away, but you almost feel like it's already happened and you're just waiting for the physical body to catch up. People feel guilty when their relatives with Alzheimer's finally do pass away, because they feel a sense of relief.

We can console each other with the very true observations about quality of life or disappearance of the person we knew and all that, but I think part of our guilt is that we feel just a little bit of joy that we get to stop waiting for that undefined end point.

Unlike getting healthy after a sickness, which is just returning to normal, or a loved one passing after a long bout with illness, which is a sorrowful event that relieves some pressure, we are waiting on an adoption.

An adoption. A moment in time that will forever change our lives, that will turn us for a couple years into the completely insane creatures that all new parents become: exhausted irrational insomniacs madly checking our diaper supply while telling anyone who will listed that the baby made a new consonant sound today and will certainly be as eloquent as Martin Luther King Jr any moment now. The most joyful moment I can currently imagine that does not involve a million-dollar book contract, and frankly all I'd use the million dollars for right now would be to try to "grease the wheels" a little and get this adoption going.

But this is somehow more difficult, and I think it's because the waiting has no moments of progression.

When I'm sick, I can start to notice changes. Hey, I'm keeping down food! Hey, I haven't coughed in ten minutes! Hey, I can sleep for a few hours at a stretch! Things start to get better. You can start to predict when you're, say, going to return to work.

When someone has an illness like Alzheimer's, it's a little tougher because it's slower, and because the milestones aren't good ones. Oh, he no longer remembers my name without help. Oh, he no longer recognizes me. Oh, he doesn't know that he's not in his twenties.

But with the adoption, we're not on a list where we keep moving up until we're next in line. We don't get updates about anything, because there's nothing to update. We wait until we have been selected by a birth mother. We are essentially taking part in a static, unchanging series of auditions.

This waiting is harder than anything I've done before, simply because there is no way to monitor, to gauge, to even guess when it will end. The average wait is between 15-18 months. We have waited 12.5. It seems odd to me that the fact that we are still under the average is supposed to be comforting, but if we go over 18 months we're supposed to ignore the very same average so as not to be distressed.

In the meantime, I have so many friends and relatives who are having children. I've lost track, honestly, of how many of my friends and relatives have had children since we started this process. It's getting harder and harder to share their joy, which feel very selfish of me. I am happy for them, deep down. On the surface, though, I'm starting to question if it will ever happen for us.

Abram and Sarai didn't believe God when he told them they would be parents at their old age. I have to admit that sometimes I think that perhaps it wasn't so much a disbelief that it would finally happen, but an astonishment that God thought they'd be able to keep up with a kid. Or maybe even anger that if He were going to grant that miracle that He hadn't granted it sooner.

Either way... I'm tired of waiting, and I'm tired of not having any news for anyone who asks. My only answer now is "still waiting," and with nothing to monitor I can't give you any more than that other than to tell you that waiting with no updates is a terrible feeling.

--David

One Year

One year ago today we had our homestudy and went "on the shelf".

This is not a happy anniversary.

This is gonna be ugly

It's been three months since we updated, and nothing has changed.

We are still just waiting.

And I am growing weary of this process. No one tells you at any of the meetings or classes how heartrending this process will be. And, our agency is offering little support in this regard. We were told to subscribe to an adoption focused magazine so that we could read some articles that should help us deal with the waiting. That was less than helpful. Also, though I know the sentiments are well intentioned, I do not want to be told again that "the waiting will all be worth it" or "it will happen in God's time". Because you know what? At this point, all I know is that waiting equals pain and sorrow, and no one knows what "God's time" is, and I need something more concrete than that. I need an answer. I need hope. I need something to hang onto. I need to be able to go upstairs in my own home and not cry over the empty unused room that is waiting for this child.

In two weeks, we will have been "on the shelf" for a year. What a horrid anniversary to celebrate. A year of nothingness.

In a few months, it will be two years since we started this whole process. I feel like we've gone nowhere.

I warned you. This was gonna be ugly. But this is me right now, and I am tired to smiling and saying that we are "just waiting" when I am falling apart. I am tired of putting up a good front, so here it is - all of my ugliness on display.

Yes, we're still here.

Has it really been over two months since we last posted?

I wish we had something to say that's not the same thing -- we're waiting, we're in a holding pattern, we just have to be patient -- but that's basically it.

Sometimes I wonder what our child will think about being adopted. So many adopted children talk about feeling like they were abandoned by their birth parents, unloved and unwanted. That's a supremely painful feeling to have, I'm sure, and I will never be able to fully understand it.

Logically speaking, though, the birth parents loved the child enough to give him/her a better opportunity at life. There are millions of reasons a birth parents might make an adoption plan for a child, and there's no way I could begin to cover all of them, but in general this sort of thing is not entered into lightly.

And I wonder if our child will ever truly be able to appreciate how wanted, needed, and loved he/she ALREADY IS, even though we don't know him/her yet.

There's no way to describe this wait if you haven't experienced it yourself. Waiting to be chosen may be the most difficult thing I have ever done. Our agency told us that the "average" wait it between 15 and 18 months from a particular starting point; we're in month 8. Of course, it could be tomorrow, it could be in 2012 -- we don't know. And those 8 months don't count the prior 9 months of planning and waiting... or the prior however-many years of wondering.

Officially, I've been waiting for 8 months. Unofficially, I've been waiting for over a decade. I do truly believe that it will happen in God's timing, but I'm only human and I can't help but wonder sometimes why He's taking so long.

--David

Please Hold

I think we've reached that part of the conversation in which there is an awkward pause while we try to figure out what to say next.

There are no updates. There is only waiting.

Running Late

It's been forever since we've updated. Once again, we're delinquent.

There's not a whole lot to report. We're just in a holding pattern of waiting to be chosen. I keep hoping that each day will be "THE DAY" that we get a call, knowing full well that we have only just started this journey. We are not quite 5 months into what is supposed to be a 15-18 month wait on average.

I've not been feeling very motivated to work on the baby's room lately, but I'm starting to get the itch. I think it has something to do with the warmer weather and spring cleaning bug. I did talk to a family friend (who is a phenomenal seamstress) about making some custom curtains and bedding. We'll start making progress on this front again soon. We'll try to get some pictures posted soon too.

Thanks for all of you who have asked how things are going. Knowing that someone else cares about our journey means a lot.

- Ann

What doesn't help.

I'd like to start by saying that this is not an angry post. I feel I should say that first because I'm fairly certain it may sound like one, no matter how hard I try to sound objective. I'm really not angry at all, because I'm sure if our positions were reversed, I might have said some of the same things to expecting adoptive parents out of sheer ignorance or carelessness.

This is a partial list of things you may bring up in conversation that really don't help adoptive couples who are in the "waiting" stage.

1. "You're adopting! That's great! Or... or was it a medical problem?"

Not that it's any of your business, but as far as we know we are biologically capable of having children. We have chosen adoption. Far worse than the intrusive nature of the question, though, is the assumption that adoption is only "great" if there were no fertility issues. While certainly there are couples who decide to adopt only after exhausting every medical option known to man, if they don't think it's "great" that they're going to become parents (no matter how), then they probably shouldn't be adopting. No parents should ever look at an adopted child as a "last resort" -- this could lead to resentment.

2. "You need to be really careful about that. I know a couple who adopted a beautiful little girl and then the mother came back and took her away."

I think every adoptive parent's greatest back-of-the-mind fear is that the birth mother will want to "take back" the child. However, we are going through a wonderful agency that counsels the birth mother throughout the process, and she even has her own advocate who makes sure that before she signs the papers she is absolutely sure about what she's doing. In Indiana, the current law makes that form final. The only way the mother could "come back" to try to cancel the paperwork is to claim that she was under duress, mentally unstable, or otherwise incapable of legally signing the contract -- and that's another reason the agency provides her with an advocate. That advocate doesn't care whether or not we adopt the baby, so he/she won't sign off as a witness unless he/she is positive that the birth mother is capable of legally signing. Yes, there are always other factors that could make things go wrong. But you probably don't know our specific situation, so telling us a horror story about someone else is completely unhelpful. What purpose does it serve?

The only thing that makes this worse is that some people who have said things like this to me wouldn't listen to my responses. If I told them that Indiana law makes the form final, they've responded, "Oh, no, the mother can come back until they're, like, two." If I told them that our agency, experts in this field, have assured us that this is not the case, they've responded, "You might not have the right agency, then, because the birth mom got the baby back when she was eighteen months old." If I questioned whether the baby was possibly a foreign adoption, or if this happened outside of Indiana, or if maybe there was some other unusual aspect to the story (to go way out on a limb here, something bizarre like "the baby was kidnapped at two days old and then sold on the black market and then dumped off anonymously at another hospital and then adopted and then a pediatrician happened to recognize the baby"), the answers always come back so that they perfectly match our adoption plan. I swear, if I said we were safe because we were planning to adopt a three-armed purple baby with built-in microwave oven, these people would swear that's exactly the situation their friends were in. But oh, yeah, they don't remember their friends' names, because it's really their brother's friend, well actually their brother's wife's friend, and he moved a couple years ago, so...

3. "Make sure you get a full medical history. My sister adopted a baby and they found out two years later that he was autistic."

Okay. Number one, we're already planning to get as much medical history as possible so that we can make the best decision for the baby and for ourselves. Number two, how exactly would this be different from us conceiving and giving birth to a baby and finding out later that he was autistic?

4a. "My brother adopted a baby. It took six years for the paperwork to go through..."

You know what? We know it takes a while. Our shouldn't be that long, but pointing out how long it can take doesn't really help us deal with the wait we're having. It's not exactly hurtful, and I know you're just trying to connect in some way with a process that you don't know a lot about, but it definitely doesn't help.

4b. "...and when it finally did go through, the baby turned out to look like a mutated German shepherd with crooked teeth and oppositional defiance disorder."

This goes back to an earlier point. Telling us horror stories doesn't serve a good purpose. It lets us know why you would be scared to adopt. Do you really think we've just blindly stumbled into this? This has already occupied over a year of our lives, full of prayer and discussion and meetings and training. We know the risks. We also know the rewards.

5. "Do you worry about attachment?"

The real irony of this one is that the three people who have asked me this all have children of their own, and in each case I happen to know that their first child was not anticipated. So they're asking me if I'm going to have trouble loving a baby that I have prayed for, longed for, and dreamed about for month after month after month, when as far as I can tell they've never had trouble loving a baby that "just kinda happened" to them.

6. "Do you plan to have any children of your own?"

Not your concern. Also, this baby will be our own. I dare you to tell me otherwise. Make sure you're not within swinging distance when you do. (Okay, this one is probably a bit angry.)

7. "Just watch, you two will be pregnant within a year after adopting."

It happens, but not in a statistically significant way. Also: so what's your point? Are you suggesting that we shouldn't go through with the adoption? Are you assuming that we're adopting because of infertility? Are you just lost for something to say?

8. "What will this cost you?"

Mostly? Headaches. Still, at least this question uses the indefinite word "this," which I will optimistically choose to believe refers to the adoption process. (The answer to this, financially, is: You have no business inquiring about my personal finances; if you want to know for your own purposes, it will be very easy for you to find out. But unless you're prepared to discuss all of your financial decisions with me, I'm not interested in answering this for you.) It's far worse to ask, "What will he/she cost?" The process costs money. The baby costs me nothing but love, and I've got plenty of that.


My point in writing this is not to chide anyone or to suggest that our friends and family are making our lives difficult. Most of the comments and questions we get are wonderful, thoughtful, and very open, like, "So how are things going on the adoption?" That lets us choose how much to answer. I'll warn you that most of the time, our answer will be a variation on "We're just waiting." I write this because I know it can be hard trying to determine how to have a conversation about adoption if you don't have personal experience with it. Obviously, I'm not an expert on all of this, as we have not yet completed our adoption, and there are some adoptive parents who might not mind these questions at all. But mainly, I just want to stress that you don't have to try to sympathize with how hard the waiting is by giving us other hard-luck stories about adoption, and you need to remember that this baby will be our child -- not our property.

--David

All this waiting...

Hey, folks. Sorry we're not updating every two weeks like we planned. Life has been incredibly busy this past month.

There's not a whole lot to update. We're just about at one year since the first meeting we attended for the adoption process, back in the days when I thought the "fifteen to eighteen months" average timeline started at that meeting, as opposed to a few months ago when we finished going through all of the preparation. At that point I thought I'd have a baby in my arms by the spring of 2010. Now, I'm thinking it will be much longer.

We're still making progress in preparations; we've purchased or received a few various items that we know we'll want/need. We're still plotting out the best use of the tiny closet in the nursery, and we're still looking at all sorts of baby clothes every time we go shopping for our infant niece. Other than that, it's just a lot of waiting and working on the busy things we have going on in the rest of our lives.

--David

Waiting: the Early Weeks

Well, it's been almost a month since we posted. The two of us have been insanely busy with work projects and travel and so on... and yet it still seems like some weeks drag on while we try to remain patient.

A little over a week ago, I called our adoption agency and explained (while trying to sound normal) that we had been told at our home study that the social worker saw no reason that we would not be put "on the shelf" to be a potential selection for a birth mother, and a while afterwards we attended our last training session which meant we should be available to an even wider percentage of birth mothers... but that no one had actually specifically said, "You are on the shelf."

And of course, we assumed that we were, but we would have hated for an assumption to have led to an unnecessary delay.

The lady assured me that we were indeed on the shelf. She even mentioned that she had seen our scrapbook, and that it was very good.

We know that the average wait can be 15-18 months once you're on the shelf, and frankly I'm not sure what we would DO if the call came in tomorrow that a birth mother wanted to meet us. But we're basically at the point now where there's really nothing left for us to DO to try to push things forward.

We're waiting. And we're continuing to stay busy and focused on life and family and friends. We're not wasting away with impatience. But every now and then, when someone asks how things are going, or when we see someone else's very young child, or when I forget to try to forget... it's hard.

It will be worth it in the end, I know. But for now, it's hard.

--David

The past month

Since the homestudy, I think we've been decompressing a little bit. The house was never cleaner than it was for the homestudy, and it's been kind of a disaster ever since. Well, not that bad, but we've been a little lax about things!

On Saturday 10/3, we attended the transracial transcultural training seminar that our agency requires for all prospective parents looking to adopt a child from a race that is not their own. Grandparents are also encouraged to attend, so my mom & dad came along for the day. Some of what they talked about we had already heard in other meetings, but there was plenty of new info and things to think about. The best part of the day in my opinion was the panel of adult adoptees who had grown up in multi-racial families. I could have listened to them talk all day long.

We have not made much more progress on finishing the nursery. There are wallpaper cut outs to be installed, an outlet to replace, shelves to build, paint, and install in the closet, curtains and a light fixture to be bought & hung, a wall hanging to make, and I have to get started on a quilt. I have made a quilt for a lot of my friend's little ones, and I have got to make one for my own baby. I have one to finish still for a little guy that made his arrival in July (yikes!), and I need to make one (or three?) more for a friend (friends?) depending on how ambitious I am feeling.

Last Saturday, we went and registered at two stores. It was so fun! We were at the first place for nearly 3 hours. It was a little overwhelming at times, but we still had a great time. The staff was really helpful and offered us bottled water! We even got a goody bag which included a bottle and pacifier - yay! The next store was much quicker as they have a much smaller selection. We still got a goody bag though! It was hard to resist buying all of the cute things though! I refrained from buying the tub toys that I really wanted, but I could not resist one of the books that we found. Hippos Go Berserk by Sandra Boynton just had to be mine - it was the last one on the shelf! =)

Here's hoping our next update will include pictures of a nearly finished nursery. Fingers Crossed!

The homestudy

Four and a half hours is a long time, and yet it felt much shorter.

I was a little surprised at the extent of questions pertaining to extended family. "How often do you communicate with your sister?" "How would you describe your relationship with your brother?" "How were you disciplined by your parents?"

My brain immediately supplied funny (to me) answers, which I rejected in favor of honest and straightforward answers. The rejected answers to the above questions: "Actually, we're permanently telepathically linked, and she doesn't care for your tone." "Strictly platonic, no matter what he tells you." "They turned me into a newt.... I got better."

I even made the interviewer get just a little sniffly at one point. She asked me to describe a highlight of my relationship with Ann... and I choked up trying to describe what I felt when I saw her in her bridal gown for the first time. I was so close to crying at the memory that all I could say about seeing her was, "The world stopped."

It did, incidentally. You may not have noticed, but only the grace of God kept us all on the planet.

Although there are still a few technicalities to work out (who knew that we would need to report the acreage of our property?), we have been told to consider ourselves "approved."

We could theoretically be "on the shelf" within days... and then it's just a matter of waiting until the next time the world stops.

--David

Two posts in one day?

Don't faint y'all!

But I have an update!

Our homestudy will be on September 15th starting at 3:30 PM. It is supposed to take 3-4 hours.

I'm already nervous.

Late...again.

I think we're just going to have to admit that we're terrible at meeting deadlines.

I would claim that I don't know where the time has gone since our last update, but I know where it went - we've been busy!

We took a 10-day vacation to Minneapolis-St.Paul and Northern Wisconsin at the start of August. We had so much fun babysitting Sweet Pea for a week. It was sort of a trial by fire as far as "test parenting" goes - a week with a two-year-old could have been a disaster BUT it was a blast! She is so much fun to be with, and we loved visiting with Ann's sister and her husband and his family.

As soon as we returned from that sojourn, we had a few days to prepare for the arrival of David's family. The "New York Invasion 2009" started with a 6-day visit from David's brother, his wife, and daughter - Eldest Niece. It was fun to have them around and spend time visiting with no real agenda. Whenever we go out east for a holiday there is always so much hubbub that we never get a chance to just sit & visit. Eldest Niece got to take part in the Indy Zoo Dolphin Encounter as an early birthday gift - it was really cool!

Two days after this New York contingent left, David's parents arrived for a 5-day stay. Yay! We love getting to see them every summer. We never plan to do very much, and that's just the way we all like it! We spent Sunday crawling around the local flea market looking for "treasures". Ann found a small antique platter for $1 - it was a great bargain! David got an early birthday gift from his parents when he found NFL baseball-style caps. He already owned 4, but I think he picked up 19 or 20 more for a great price. He was very excited to add to his collection!

Also, in exciting baby room news, we were able to order our crib from "The Red Dot Boutique" - aka Target - with free shipping (Yay for $107 saved!), and it arrived while David's parents were with us, so it was assembled while they were out. Now both sets of grandparents have helped create the baby's room in some way. =)

After all of that, the month of August was pretty well gone. However, last weekend, Ann sat down, put her nose to the grindstone and finished the scrapbook! Yay! It looks incredible - we are both very proud of what was created. On Monday, we were able to call the sgency and leave a message that we are ready to schedule our homestudy. We are still waiting for a return call. We'll update as soon as we know something.