We heard from DSS today and a social worker has been assigned to our case. He's the same worker who came to our home to do our preMAPP interview. He was also one of our MAPP trainers, so we know him quite well. We scheduled our first homestudy visit and interview for Wednesday, December 3. For this interview it will be just me. He needs to do individual interviews with each of us and then he'll schedule a visit with both of us together. The visit on December 3 will last about 90 minutes to 2 hours. That tidbit of information threw me a little bit because I can't imagine talking to this man for that length of time, but shoot, I'll talk to anyone for 2 hours if it gets me closer to being a mom.
I am very excited and a little nervous. I'm especially nervous about our dogs. I love them, but they are overly exuberant and very slobbery. They settle down quickly, but I'm afraid the initial reaction might be a little overwhelming. Last time, they "greeted" our social worker and then we put them out on the deck, where they happily sunbathed for the entire time. I don't think putting our dogs on the deck in December is the best way to sell ourselves as responsible potential parents. I'm hoping a long walk before the worker arrives and some kongs filled with peanut butter will do the trick. Any tips?
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Monday, November 17, 2008
Happy Birthday to Me (and I Actually Mean It)
Today I turned 39 and, you know, it wasn't so bad. Last year was a tough birthday for me. Turning 38 put me into the advanced, advanced maternal age category. For my clinic, that meant a major nosedive in success rates for IVF. I had just had IVF#2 converted to yet another useless IUI after developing a dominant follicle. I knew IVF#3 was coming, and I had really hoped to start it before my 38th birthday, as though my chances would immediately drop upon reaching November 17. But my E2 level was too high to cycle so I had to go on BCPs instead and my cycle was pushed back to December. I could feel time slipping away from me and my chances of a pregnancy along with it.
At 39, having stopped fertility treatments, I have virtually no chance of getting pregnant, but amazingly it's OK. I guess that's one of the benefits of choosing adoption. It's changed the nature of time for me. Instead of feeling like time is taking me farther away from a child, now I feel like it's bringing me closer to one. Each day that passes is one day closer to meeting our child, so I'll make a wish (non-TTC related), blow out my candles, and eat my cake with a smile. Bring on a new year!
P.S. I just got back from a family trip to Disney World and I'm a bit behind on my blog reading and commenting. I will work hard to catch up this week.
At 39, having stopped fertility treatments, I have virtually no chance of getting pregnant, but amazingly it's OK. I guess that's one of the benefits of choosing adoption. It's changed the nature of time for me. Instead of feeling like time is taking me farther away from a child, now I feel like it's bringing me closer to one. Each day that passes is one day closer to meeting our child, so I'll make a wish (non-TTC related), blow out my candles, and eat my cake with a smile. Bring on a new year!
P.S. I just got back from a family trip to Disney World and I'm a bit behind on my blog reading and commenting. I will work hard to catch up this week.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Great Expectations. . .or not
One bit of advice that was repeated several times in the course of our MAPP training is that the best approach is to have no expectations of our child and of what parenting will be like. I understand the reason behind this advice: expectations can lead to disappointment and it's best to just deal with a situation as it is without comparing it to the image of what you expected it to be. To be honest I was annoyed by this advice. I thought, infertility has taken so much from me and now I have to give up hope too. Unlike all my friends who are parents, I can't have hope and dreams for my child? Screw that!
I stewed about all of it for a while, until it occurred to me that hope and expectation are not the same thing. I hoped that my closure IVF cycle would work, but I didn't expect it to. I hoped there were lots more eggs in follicles hiding in my ovary that, lo and behold, the RE would find during retrieval, but I didn't expect that to happen. I hoped my one little embryo would be the one, but I wasn't expecting it. It hurt when my last IVF cycle failed, but in a way I hadn't expected it to succeed in the first place (after all, there's a reason it's called closure). The pain was not the same as when IVF#2 got converted. Then I had expected to have the same number or more eggs as I'd had during IVF#1. I'd expected to transfer 3 embryos this time to up our odds. Instead, I ended up with one dominant follicle and an IUI. Now,that was disappointment.
So I've been thinking a lot about expectation vs. hope, and this is how I've come to see it:
Expectation is clearly defined. There's one outcome, an image of what the outcome will look like, and a way to get to that outcome. There is little room for deviation. In fact, deviation leads to disappointment. Expectation is, "I don't think that's too much to ask." Expectation is about control.
Hope is open-ended. It accepts the possibility that the journey may end up in a completely different place that the original destination. It is looking forward to happiness, to good things, without the specific plan of how those good things will come to pass. Hope is, "Wouldn't it be nice, but hey. . . it's all good." Hope is about letting go of control.
And so, I think what our MAPP trainers were warning us against was creating images in our minds of the happy family with the child who loves to read, play ball with Dad, who is smart, well-behaved, funny, and just makes us into the family we've always dreamed about. I think also they wanted to be sure that we don't expect a child to make life better for us, to erase the wounds of infertility. I can see how these expectations could become heavy burdens when loving a child who has experienced trauma. They're too narrow to allow healing to happen.
So DH and I are learning to let go of our expectations, but we still hold on to hope: hope that we can help our child heal from whatever hurts life has inflicted on him, that we'll help him meet his potential whatever it is, that we have enough love in our hearts to take whatever life hands us and make it better. We hope that hope is enough.
I stewed about all of it for a while, until it occurred to me that hope and expectation are not the same thing. I hoped that my closure IVF cycle would work, but I didn't expect it to. I hoped there were lots more eggs in follicles hiding in my ovary that, lo and behold, the RE would find during retrieval, but I didn't expect that to happen. I hoped my one little embryo would be the one, but I wasn't expecting it. It hurt when my last IVF cycle failed, but in a way I hadn't expected it to succeed in the first place (after all, there's a reason it's called closure). The pain was not the same as when IVF#2 got converted. Then I had expected to have the same number or more eggs as I'd had during IVF#1. I'd expected to transfer 3 embryos this time to up our odds. Instead, I ended up with one dominant follicle and an IUI. Now,that was disappointment.
So I've been thinking a lot about expectation vs. hope, and this is how I've come to see it:
Expectation is clearly defined. There's one outcome, an image of what the outcome will look like, and a way to get to that outcome. There is little room for deviation. In fact, deviation leads to disappointment. Expectation is, "I don't think that's too much to ask." Expectation is about control.
Hope is open-ended. It accepts the possibility that the journey may end up in a completely different place that the original destination. It is looking forward to happiness, to good things, without the specific plan of how those good things will come to pass. Hope is, "Wouldn't it be nice, but hey. . . it's all good." Hope is about letting go of control.
And so, I think what our MAPP trainers were warning us against was creating images in our minds of the happy family with the child who loves to read, play ball with Dad, who is smart, well-behaved, funny, and just makes us into the family we've always dreamed about. I think also they wanted to be sure that we don't expect a child to make life better for us, to erase the wounds of infertility. I can see how these expectations could become heavy burdens when loving a child who has experienced trauma. They're too narrow to allow healing to happen.
So DH and I are learning to let go of our expectations, but we still hold on to hope: hope that we can help our child heal from whatever hurts life has inflicted on him, that we'll help him meet his potential whatever it is, that we have enough love in our hearts to take whatever life hands us and make it better. We hope that hope is enough.
Monday, November 3, 2008
Woohoo! Yeah Baby!
We just got back from our final adoption class. We got a certificate and everything. Of course, it's not really the end of anything, but still it's a milestone. We also passed in our profile questionnaire which is now in the hands of the adoption unit supervisor. Now we wait for an adoption worker to be assigned to us and start scheduling our home visits. Why am I so excited about more waiting?
Saturday, November 1, 2008
I Heart Your Blog
Wendy, from Our Story, gave me the I Heart Your Blog Award. Wendy's blog chronicles her journey from IVF to adoption. Her story reminds me of mine in many ways, and I'm so happy for her as she moves forward with domestic newborn adoption.
The way it works is I need to answer the following questions with single word responses. Then I'm supposed to pass on the award to 7 other bloggers:
1. Where is your cell phone? Purse
2. Where is your significant other? Cooking
3. Your hair color? Chestnut
4. Your mother? Loving
5. Your father? Funny
6. Your favorite thing? Family
7. Your dream last night? Random
8. Your dream/goal? Happiness
9. The room you're in? Cozy
10. Your hobby? Reading
11. Your fear? Loss
12. Where do you want to be in six years? Motherhood
13. Where were you last night? Restaurant
14. What you're not? Energized
15. One of your wish list items? Child
16. Where you grew up? Massachusetts
17. The last thing you did? Wine
18. What are you wearing? Jeans
19. Your T.V.? Off
20. Your pet? Snoring
21. Your computer? Mac
22. Your mood? Melancholy
23. Missing someone? Always
24. Your car? Subaru
25. Something you're not wearing? Contacts
26. Favorite store? Borders
27. Your Summer? Relaxing
28. Love someone? Lots
29. Your favorite color? Green
30. When is the last time you laughed? Today
31. Last time you cried? Today
I'm always bad about passing on tags and awards. I'm the same way about chain emails. Here are a few blogs I love to read. I know it's not seven, but most of my other faves have already been tagged/awarded:
We Are What We Repeatedly Do
Are You There God? It's Me, Cindy, and I Want a Baby!
A Long and Winding Road
The Great Big If. . .
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Finding My Place
One of the hardest parts of being at this stage in my life is feeling like I don't have a place where I really belong. I'm in between worlds right now. I'm not TTC. I'm not choosing to live childfree. I'm not an adoptive parent-yet. And even though I am expecting in a way, I don't fit in with those who are pregnant after infertility. We've come through infertility with different scars, different wounds. For the past two years, as I've been dealing with my journey through infertility to adoption, I've benefited from the generous support of amazing women on online infertility message boards. But as our paths diverge, I feel more and more out of place there. Unfortunately, so far I haven't found that type of connection with those in my situation of adopting from foster care. Many of the adoption boards I have seen focus on those who are already parenting. Or they're specific to international adoption or domestic newborn adoption, which can be quite different than adopting from foster care, at least at the beginning. I know once we're placed with a child, there will be more support options, more connections. But right now I'm feeling a bit lost. I have started forming real life connections with others in my MA.PP classes. My hope is that those connections will grow over the next few months as our homestudy is completed and we begin to wait. I'll admit that this real life thing is new for me. It's taking some getting used to talking about my worries and anticipation face to face.
My underlying worry is that this sense of not quite fitting in will never go away, even after I become a parent. Am I always going to feel uncomfortable or disconnected unless I'm with other adoptive parents? Will I be accepted and will I accept myself as a real parent? Am I always going to have the word adoptive attached to my description when others talk about me? What do I say when other mothers start talking about childbirth? What about when they reminisce about their child's first steps or first words, which I likely won't have witnessed in my child? How do I answer when they ask how I chose my child's name when I probably didn't have a choice? Of course the even bigger more important question is, if I feel like this, how can my child begin to feel comfortable with himself and his place in the world?
I don't doubt myself and our choice of adoption because I'm struggling to find my place or because I'm questioning what the future will look like. I know my questions aren't unique. Adoption can be a minefield of questions about identity and fitting in, about relationships and the definition of family, about rejection and conection. I just hope that I have the ability to find answers that work for me, DH, and our child.
My underlying worry is that this sense of not quite fitting in will never go away, even after I become a parent. Am I always going to feel uncomfortable or disconnected unless I'm with other adoptive parents? Will I be accepted and will I accept myself as a real parent? Am I always going to have the word adoptive attached to my description when others talk about me? What do I say when other mothers start talking about childbirth? What about when they reminisce about their child's first steps or first words, which I likely won't have witnessed in my child? How do I answer when they ask how I chose my child's name when I probably didn't have a choice? Of course the even bigger more important question is, if I feel like this, how can my child begin to feel comfortable with himself and his place in the world?
I don't doubt myself and our choice of adoption because I'm struggling to find my place or because I'm questioning what the future will look like. I know my questions aren't unique. Adoption can be a minefield of questions about identity and fitting in, about relationships and the definition of family, about rejection and conection. I just hope that I have the ability to find answers that work for me, DH, and our child.
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Just Adopt
I'm back. I'm sorry I've been gone so long. I don't really have a good excuse. I could say that I've been busy with school starting, busy with our adoption classes, busy with filling out the couple's profile, busy, busy, busy. But really, it's just been hard to write lately.
I guess I should start by saying that our adoption classes are going well. I don't exactly look forward to spending 3 hours every Monday night in a windowless, stuffy room at Social Services hearing about sexual abuse, causes of fire starting behavior, and how to deal with bedwetting, but I know it will help us in the long run. Luckily, the other people in the class are a cool bunch. Out of eight couples in the class, more than half have dealt with infertility. Two are same-sex couples. There is one single woman. I actually get to laugh a fair amount. With some of the material that's being covered, if I couldn't laugh, I'd have to cry.
Our seventh class is this week, so one more to go. DH and I are trying to get our 35-page profile questionnaire completed before then. I'm embarrassed to say that I think we're the last ones in class to get it done. It's not an easy task, as it's full of gems like, "What do you like most and least about each other? How do you show respect for each other's differences? Give examples." and "Describe the defining moments in your childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. Give examples. How have these moments impacted your views of parenting?" There are many, many more questions, all with multiple parts. And with my tendency to reflect and elaborate, I'm writing far too much for each one. The 35-page profile is quickly gaining pages.
Once the profile is handed in, we'll be assigned a social worker. That person will schedule 2-4 home visits/interviews with us. We'll also need to complete a Physical/Emotional/Behavioral Needs sheet. We basically need to say what kind of tough stuff can we think we can deal with in a child we adopt. When that's done, our worker will use the information from the home visit and the profile to write our homestudy. Oh, we'll also need to get our fingerprints done. That's a brand new requirement in our state. The timeline we're being given right now is that our homestudy might be done by the end of January/beginning of February. Then we wait for a placement.
Since we sent in our initial application to adopt in February of this year, that means we'll be just about a year into the process before our waiting even begins. If anyone ever again in my presence says, "Just adopt," I will hit him over the head with my 35-page. . .45-page. . .OK, 80-page profile. That should knock some sense into him.
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