it's been a while

One of my favorite songs of all time is titled "it's been while"...really a song about dysfunction, whatever that means, but still one of those songs that I can listen to over and over again....really loud.  AM will be three months this coming week and she grows more beautiful and animated each day.  She smiles now and is just a scootch away from a full on giggle.   She loves her Daddy and will stop mid-feed at 3 AM to smile and coo at him, which makes the 3 AM wake up worth every minute.   

I practice tellling her the story of her birth everyday.  I tell her how we  spoke to her birthmother on the phone everyday for 6 weeks before she was born and went to her homestate to spend a weekend getting to know her.  I tell her how we picked out her name together and made the pact that would carry us three women through our lives.   In every story I tell her and there are varying versions I am sure to let her know, we were chosen for her, humanly chosen and in some way, depending on your belief systems, divinely chosen for one another.  I tell her T is a good woman, who is smart and lovely.  I tell her how  it was my greatest privilege to be there as she came into this world and how her first breath, followed by her first cry was  one of the greatest moments of my life.    I tell her I am honored that T chose her father and I and will always honor the trust she has placed in us.   I tell her I hope she has T's hands and how she definitely has her hair.    I tell her how much I love her and that no matter where she goes, what she does, and what choices she makes in this life I will love her with every pore and fiber in my body and I will always be her Mom.  

I would imagine every new mother goes through these emotions, but getting her birth story right for her is of utmost importance right now for me.  I know she won't be able to understand it for quite some time yet, but I want it to be right for when she does.

10 weeks

AM is 10 weeks today and sometimes I still can't believe she is our daughter.   She changes everyday and we become slightly more adept at being her parents each day.  The crying I talked about in my last post has abated a bit however, at least once a week I do find myself in tears.  It is the strangest thing, the twelve months before her birth were filled with so many changes and ups and downs in our lives, she is the culmination of that year and I guess sometimes I cry  tears of joy that she is hear and sometimes I cry tears for all the changes we had.  Now I know that sounds like a lot to place on one little soul, but I don't mean it in that way.  I mean that our family as it is right now is exactly how it was always supposed to be.   Easy to say now, eh?  Not so easy to believe those three previous years, that is for sure.

what I wasn't prepared for

I knew women who gave birth could potentially have degrees of postpartum depression and having gone through 5 IVF/Donor egg cycles I know a little bit about hormone highs and lows and the emotions that come along with.  I wasn't prepared for and nothing I read had even hinted out the emotions, not just joy, that I would have once AM was in our care.   

While still awaiting our interstate compact to travel back home with her, I cried, no sobbed pretty much daily.  It would start out as tears of joy watching her eat or sleep and then slowly become this trying to catch your breath between sobs cry about everything that had happened during the past 4 years and everything that was going to happen in the next  30.   I cried for all the babies we didn't have, and how AM, this one little amazing girl found her way to us and how she was always supposed to be the one, how she was who we had been waiting for all along.  I cried for the overwhelming responsibility that I now felt to make sure she was happy and loved and how scared I was that somewhere I would inevitably fall short and not be good enough.  

I cried for her birth mom and how much gratitude and affection I have for her and the choice she made not only in choosing adoption, but in choosing us to be the parents of this beautiful life she had created.  

Uh oh someone else crying...more later.

She is here

She is here and she is amazing.  Since my last post on October 3, so much has happened, I guess you can figure that out by the title of the post.   At last post our mom was in the hospital on bedrest, she was released after about a week and a half and was sent home still on bedrest.   I had a meeting to go to for work, but knew that we had to get to her to meet her and have each of us decide if this was the right family for us to form for the rest of our lives.   So on the 17th we flew 3 hours and drove another 3 hours all the way hoping we would pass muster.  I guess what I didn't expect was the nervousness on her and her boyfriends parts in meeting us as well.  It's funny in www.uterinewars.typepad.com   she asks what are the appropriate but non-influencing gifts to bring the biological parents on first meeting.  We chose Chili's take out, an outfit from Wal-Mart for their 4 yr old and a Wal-Mart gift card for groceries and clothing, since I knew the support from the agency hadn't arrived yet.    It didn't seem over the top and the next day there were groceries and a new outfit for T, our birthmother.  For the record, she said she does not mind Birthmother as a name,  I did ask.    We currently have several that we both like while our little girls is small.

Meeting T was one of the most emotional and rewarding moments of my life.  I truly like this women and am honored that she chose us to parent her little girl.  She is smart, intuitive and honest.   During our first meeting after we all ate, she and I started talking about names for our little girl.  It was important to both of us that we agree upon a first name and have that be part of AM's, our daughters, story.  Agree we did and we chose T's  middle name as AM's middle name.  We stayed at their home about an hour and a half and went to our hotel room with plans for Saturday to meet the parents of T's boyfriend.  

There are so many details of the weekend that are important and poignant and are all part of our daughters story.  If you have read The Red Tent I can best describe it as the bonds between women that can make this happen.   I truly believe we chose one another and truly like one another and will look forward to having one another on each side of this relationship for the rest of our lives.

baby shopping

 Like I said a few days ago, I have really resisted the urge to do a ton of or really any shopping for our upcoming delivery.   The only prep we did was paint the baby's room the prettiest shade of what I thought was a neutral pale, pale, silvery blue.  More on blue as a unisex room later.  

Once we found out our Mom was in the hospital a few weeks ago on bedrest, we took the liberty of setting up an emergency baby bag to take with us...just in case.  At the same time, my Mother and Sister talked me into "registering" for a few things in case friends who have known of our 4 year path to parenthood wanted to send any gifts, once we were home.   At the time it seemed like a great idea, but what I wasn't prepared for were the feelings of shopping/registering for baby things while not pregnant.  Be warned what comes next may have been in my own mind but, I am pretty sure I was discriminated against in the store.  First I was of course not pregnant, whereas all the other registerees were visibly due within the next 90 days. My only visible issue was that I was on crutches trying to register...no one moved out of the way for me.  Pregnancy trumped the not pregnant girl on crutches.  No one asked if we needed help and I felt compelled to explain to the girl handing out the scanners and setting up the registries that we were adopting and not just a crazy girl in her first trimester registering already.   

Perhaps the discrimination was in my own mind and I somehow felt like I didn't belong there baby shopping let alone registering for anything for a baby.   After so many IVF cycles and a couple of miscarriages I am afraid to jinx anything.   I have taken great pride in being the woman who got up dusted herself off and went for a run after each attempt. I didn't want to talk about it right away and always said "it's not the worst thing that could happen to a woman". I don't know that I could that now.  All that self protection keeps rearing it's protective head now when people ask "Are you excited?"  I say,  "a little" and change the subject.    

On another more positive note.  I did have at tremendously positive baby shopping experience yesterday.   I went to Pottery Barn Kids on the UES of NY and finally found a crib set that could work for what I pictured our nursery to look like.   It was discontinued though so they didn't have it all in stock.  I had the NICEST sales associate who hunted down every piece of it from other stores.   It literally took an hour, but all pieces are on the way to our home.  She didn't look at me funny when I said, our nursery is blue, but our baby is a girl and I wanted some blue with a lot of yellow.  She just helped me and made sure I was a satisifed soon to me new Mom. That was really fun and for some reason now I am excited.  Somewhere my heart needed the validation of that nice, nice woman.

countdown

It is decided; unless nature intervenes between now and (insert date), on (insert date) we will be parents or sometime 24 hours after.   We have a scheduled "inducing".  So excited I can barely breathe.

cold feet?

Sometimes it really is funny, strange funny, not haha how things go.   I know a few weeks ago I worried about how you decide and as I suspected sometimes it is just decided for you.  We have grown so incredibly fond of the woman that has chosen us.   Truly fond, I am not confusing gratitude with fondness.  I like speaking to her, she is giving me advice on formula and how long we will have to stay instate for (this is her second adoption) and I am really enjoying that connection.   A few of the women we have been in contact with have already made other plans.  J has decided she is going to parent, although I do have my doubts about that, something is and was hinky about the story in the first place.  Another woman, B,  was in very dire financial straits and couldn't wait for our attorney to get her paperwork so she had to call an agency who was able to send a social worker over the next day.  I am really happy for her, from our conversations it sounded like she needed some assistance desperately. 

I will say I am getting really, really nervous about this.  I keep telling myself that is going to be fine, I am just having cold feet, like I did the month before hubby and I got married.   Ask him, I totally freaked out....wanted to cancel the whole thing and just live together.   As I recall I tried to negotiate for "making out" (with other folks) as part of the marital agreement, because I was worried that I wouldn't be able to do that anymore.   Funny how that was where my brain went in the weeks before my wedding.  Nevermind that I hadn't made out with anyone else since we met, but now it was going to be final...no more making out.    

SO, this is a little like that, insofar as that, no turning back.  We will be in it and all the work of "trying to start a family"  will be over and we will be a family and then the real work begins....I hope we will be good at it.  I hope I can do all the things I have promised I am going to do with her and for her.... 

she is almost here

Although when we moved to our new home, we painted a bedroom an appropriately neutral baby color...kind of the old "if you build it they will come" idea, I never could bring myself to set it up fully as a nursery.   The last two weeks though we have amassed quite a collection of infant/baby paraphernalia, we have packed a hit the road in a hurry kit and tomorrow I will pack a suitcase for husband and I to spend some time out of state.  The good news is we will be going to a different climate so the clothes I will pack are not the ones we need to wear here.    

The hard part is trying to not get excited, hence not setting up the nursery, although that could also be denial that life is about to change dramatically.   

There are some very hard parts of this, especially around a couple of the Mom's that were not right for us not us for them very likely.     Tomorrow I will have to find a way to tell one seemingly lovely  women that we are not the right parents for her child.  I suspect there are a lot of drugs and high risk behavior involved.    

what i can say

I don't want to say much, but I can say the process of running an ad and speaking to about 14 or so women about their pregnancies and lives as well as creating our family with their help has been nothing that I thought it would be.   The woman I had worked with to "train" me on how to answer the phones and have the conversations for the most part was dead on.   Despite being forewarned about the content of these conversations the actual experience was...well I don't know that I can find the words.  The emotions were overwhelming and some of the stories were so sad....I know we all know there are many people in need  in this country; in need of money, love and women in need of self esteem, but to speak to some of them and build relationships and connections has been my honor and my heartbreak.    I don't think it is right to go into details of any of their lives or tell specific stories, but I will say that I am glad we chose to create our family in this process. None of it was scrubbed or screened by an agency, although it is all legal, I or my husband were the first person these women got to speak to and we each, on both sides of the phone,  were able to decide whether or not we wanted to proceed with this person.  

I will end by saying....wearethisclose with someone. She is a lovely, sweet, intelligent woman who given the right opportunities and support would have a different life.  She will always be spoken of with respect in our home. We are committed to open adoption and we will hold up our end of the bargain as long as it is safe for child.  

One of the things I have wondered is why there are no "chronicles" of this sort anywhere.  I know that I was looking for "what to expect" in the process of open adoption using an attorney rather than an agency. I have seen other couples and single parents ads when I have looked for ours.  Why didn't I find a "how to" for this process.  Maybe I didn't look hard enough or perhaps I was the only person looking for some guidance.

She is right around the corner...

you don't decide...

Last time I posted I was trying to decide how we would "decide" on which mom was the right mother for us.  Well here we are and it is decided.  We met our birthmother this weekend and I couldn't have asked for a better woman to create our family with.

when do you get excited and how to decide

Assuming that we have a decision to make in this process  goes a bit  against the grain of the belief we have tried to maintain all along that the little soul that is supposed to incarnate into our lives will do so when and how he or she is good and ready.   Tell that to the part of our brains that thinks we actually have control or a say in this process.   I guess that is the same part of me that thought fertility treatments were a bit of a personal competition, where I would endure and ultimately prevail.  My  motto of "never let'em see you sweat" made sure that after each failed cycle,  I got up, dusted myself and went  straight into the next one, chin up, smile on my face and lips at the ready to say "it is not the worst thing that could happen to a woman".  I said that for every IVF cycle and the 2 donors.   Turning our hearts towards another way of creating our family wasn't easy when you operate from the belief that you can will something to happen by sheer perserverance. It was how I was raised.  I didn't want and some days still don't want to have gone quietly into that good night.  

Back to today, our ads have stopped running and some calls our still coming in.   We have sent our profile to 9 young women; I have had follow up conversations with 7 of them and I have imagined each of  these seemingly lovely women with a sad story  as the woman who would be on the other side of my becoming a momma.  I have promised each of them, their children would be raised in a home where they (their first moms) would always be talked of with respect and affection.  After every phone call no matter what they confess or tell me, I have nothing but compassion for them and excitement that they called us.  The reality of fate is anyone of us could be in her shoes.    Their pregnancies are anywhere between 8 weeks and 8 months pregnant.    Which leads me to how do you decide, do you just take the first one that comes along?  My brain says "yes" immediately,  But then my conscious, rational, problem solving mind thinks: what about K?  She seems so sweet and nice on the phone, I really like her and she's only 20, but she isn't due until next year....anything could happen between now and then....How do we know which one is carrying our child, the life for which we will ultimately take responsibility.

Today we told our attorney to put a lovely young woman who called in touch with another family.   She called here, she liked our ad, she called me this morning when she was having contractions, she had this number programmed into her phone and now I will not speak to her again.    I am sad about that.   

I guess that right there is the answer to when do you get excited?  I am excited now but trying hard not to get attached.   

   

the best laid plans

What is that saying about the best laid plans going awry...I always think it is "the best laid plans of mice and men..."  nice way to mix-up literary references.   Well whatever it is, the plans have foundered, throwing in a boating reference while I am at it.    Phase I of my plan included my elective surgery overlapping with our ads running, cast off after one week, able to return to my   almost normal self, with small handicap while wound continued to heal over ensuing weeks. Phase II:  Baby Mama  paperwork into atty, arrangements set (even if someone was 8 mos or so), since most likely no one will deliver before Sept 19 or so.   I didn't plan for a born baby or an imminent delivery, it wasn't in my vision.  In retrospect not the most well thought out of plans.

Plan is being re-written as we speak and needless to say, not by us.

it's happening...

It is going on Day 11 of our ads running and the phone has been ringing...so I guess this really does work.  We have sent our profile to a several folks with only a little follow up.   I don't want to say more for fear of jinxing it but it could happen anywhere between the end of this month and January.  I think we have enough Mom's that if someone falls out, we will still be parents.

I will say there have been some very disturbing and sad phone calls.   There have a been a couple of women who were completely apathetic, and one woman who has a 3yr old and a 6mos old and she wanted to place them both, because she just "couldn't do it anymore".  That call haunted me all day.  Another call came from a hospital in SC where my fear was that it was a born baby and a mom with few options.   That call haunted me for a couple of days.  I looked up the hospital on the internet to try and see if it looked nice and if hopefully they had some social services that could help that woman who hung up on me pretty quickly. 

I am keeping separate notes on the day to day and the emotions of this process for later posting.  I just don't want all of this on the internet  while it is happening.  It doesn't seem fair or honest to the people who are placing their trust in us to care for and love their child.  I am so excited.  After 3 1/2 year of fertility, two donors and a couple of miscarriages I am ready to be a Momma. 

edited to add: Shimmer is the pattern I am working on and my brain is so fried it won't let me get past joining the sleeves to the body of the shrug.  I just need to get into the swing of it.

going zen

Today I had to leave the house for the first time since last Saturday, seriously I have been in our home for 120 hours.  No field trips for my daily 4PM  ice coffee, like any other home office day. No going down to get the mail just for a break.   Although I have spoken to a couple of the doormen asking them to send the Fedex man up for outgoing profile pickups,  our two morning guys have asked my husband if I am locked in a closet or tied up.  Other than that strangely enough I don't think anyone has really noticed my lack of comings and goings.  In case anyone who may stumble across this blog is wondering; just for the record, I do shower every day, but no makeup, and my uniform is Splendid or Prana sweat pants and a Gap tank top.   

Back to why I left the house.   I needed some elective surgery, (Is it elective if you ultimately have to have it done but you just choose now?) and the timing was right with needing to be home for the next few weeks.   The surgery was not cosmetic in any way, shape or form.  I may be an "older mom-to-be" but not ready for that yet, though I never say never.  So I gave my sister notes and an abbreviated training on how to answer the "hotline" if anyone calls, left her here at 7 AM with a full pot of coffee and took my Mom with me to the hospital.  In my brain I had the entire day worked out: my surgery was scheduled for 9 AM, 1 hour in the O.R., 1 hour in recovery and then 1 hour sitting up and learning to walk on crutches...home by Noon, back on the hotline hopefully not zonked on oxycodone.   "The best laid plans...yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. Surgery was an hour delayed, recovery was busy so home by two and one missed phone call. Arghhhh.  Sis said a man phoned, asked for me and the conversation went like this:

  Sis: "I am Sis,  her sister, she had to step out for a bit, but she is going to be so excited     you called, but I would love to speak with you about Lisa and Hubby, they are so excited 

to have a child. 

Male caller: "I will call her later."

Sis:  "She will be back soon, I would love to speak with you about my sister and her husband for a bit."

Male caller: I am busy now, I will call her later."

It is 11 PM now and he didn't phone back.  I did hit redial and call him back as I was advised is OK.  I said, "Hi, this is Lisa, someone called about our ad today"....click.   I am going Zen.  You know the whole control what you can control belief.  My brain keeps asking, "what if that were the one? What if the other girl changes her mind or picks someone else?   Why was my surgery late?  Why? What if? What can I do?  It just keeps going in an endless loop in my head.   I am trying to go Zen. 

Knitting content: Working on glimmer shrug from Knitty.com in Blue Sky Alpaca skinny organic, but my brain is fuzzy from the good stuff so it is two rows forward one row back.

Where we are now

So one of the things that can be different in using an attorney vs. an agency is in some cases you have to answer your 800 number calls yourself.  As our attorney put it, "it is a luxury to be able to pay someone else with experience in this to stay home and answer the phones for you."  Having said that, here I am on Day 5 of what will likely be pretty much 3 weeks of staying close to home, or not leaving the house, waiting for the phone to ring and have the caller be someone who is pregnant and does want to put his/her child up for adoption.  

Thus far our calls have been a couple of hang ups and wrong numbers, which I am hoping are women working up the nerve to speak, a couple of real weirdo's, and many,  about 5 women or so asking us if would like a surrogate or someone to donate eggs.   Three women who are actually pregnant right now have called and we have sent our profile to them.  

So here I sit on Day 5...I have plenty of "To Do's" in the house but not really able to focus yet on getting them done....funny how that works...all this time stretched out before me, with plenty of projects to do...well,  you know how it goes sometimes.  

edited later today: finally a connection;  a young woman who seems to know that adoption is the best choice for her and I really like her.   Amazing the places you end up....it never is where you thought  you would.  funny.

how we got here

After 3 years of fertility treatments, I refuse to call them infertility treatments: seems like we are already predicting the outcome, my husband and I decided upon adoption to create our family. Just for the record it was 3 years, 2 miscarriages, a few therapy sessions and a how do you do weekend with an adoption agency  that helped us finally arrive at this choice. 

Since we weren't able to get pregnant immediately I always knew adoption was a very real option for me.  I knew I wanted to be a parent and it didn't matter whether there was a genetic link or not.   Although we knew by the end of last summer we were going to adopt there were a few detours along the way.  They say, "Oh, once you decide to adopt, you'll see, you will get pregnant."  Well they were right; last summer when we had pulled the plug on most fertility treatments, we were still on the donor egg list, just in case, I found myself  pregnant. Unfortunately after 10 weeks she couldn't stay any longer.   

The funny thing about fertility treatments is it does become a bit of a contest: with yourself, your body and the odds, once you start it is hard to stop and start actually pursuing other options...add what appears to have been a potentially successful pregnancy to the mix and it really leaves you reeling.   It took us a little while to move past that and start the adoption process.  

Scheduling the home study for some reason was the easiest first step for me to take vs. sending our 12k to an agency or sitting with an attorney to map out the process.  I think I kind of fooled myself into the home study because we were not prepared when Diane, our social worker, showed up.   Now, I admit to being a "fly by the seat of my pants" kind of gal, I wrote term papers at the last minute and to this day will work on slides for a presentation the night and morning before the presentation, but I hadn't even reviewed the paperwork my husband and I needed to fill out before the home study.   Truth be told when she asked for our "questionnaires" my husband looked questioningly at me across the table and I had no answer.  We were off to a great start!  We each had to fill in a three or four page questionnaire while Diane sat there drinking coffee and eating Trader Joes animal crackers.   We hadn't even thought to get some breakfast pastries or a bagel for the occasion.    

Anyway, the home study hasn't little to do with the actual home...she glanced around to make sure there weren't any open gun cabinets or power saws lying around and that there would be room for a crib and little person, but she mainly focused on the content of the questionnaires: our family backgrounds, our previous relationships, how we communicated etc. etc.  I learned something new about my husband that day, we were disciplined in different ways as children, my sister and I got a smack on the bottom with a wooden spoon or something like that and sent to our rooms, he was sent to his room, followed by a discussion later.  His family was light years ahead of mine in child-rearing!   One of the more interesting questions Diane asked was "What do you plan to tell your child about their adoption?".   In other words why their biological parents gave them up.   I will tell you I didn't have the perfect answer at that time, but have since worked on it.  

Like almost everyone else pursuing domestic adoption,  the first few choices are open or closed and attorney vs. agency.   We chose open because we want to be able to give our child all the answers they may or may not eventually need.  We chose an attorney because it seemed to me like the shortest distance between two points, meaning it may be slightly quicker than using an agency.   I am completely aware that may or may not be true as, but to me it seemed like a little more control or contact than waiting on an agency list with many other waiting couples and families.  Maybe I was afraid we wouldn't stack up well when placed in a larger pool...one of the many fears we have had along the way.  

Three months after choosing our attorney, our paperwork including fingerprinting, tax returns, reference letters from friends, employment verification etc were filed with our state.  Most of this could have been accomplished in a little less time, but life does still go on around us and there were competing priorities for us this past spring, which took precedent.   It is OK though we are where we are supposed to be.  

During this same period we composed a 20 plus page profile of our lives, families and friends and I must say:  I would totally choose us if I could!   Creating your profile made us  seem slightly more perfect than we are, but it is an interesting exercise...I realized just how full and rich our life already is and that we do have a lot to give and more to gain in having a child.