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.
Friday, February 18, 2011
Monday, December 20, 2010
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.
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.
Friday, November 5, 2010
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.
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.
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
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
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
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
One Year
One year ago today we had our homestudy and went "on the shelf".
This is not a happy anniversary.
This is not a happy anniversary.
Thursday, September 2, 2010
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.
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.
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