Random Thoughts

Now that I am home from work, I'm doing a lot of waiting. So much of the adoption process involves waiting. Everything is prepared...there is nothing we need for the first weeks of parenthood that we don't have, physically anyway. So here I am at home...everything is clean and organized and I have a lot of sitting around time that is being filled with knitting, reading and playing the harp. Preparing a nursery and your home for an adopted child is an exciting, though terrifying process. There is still plenty of time for the birthmother or even the birthfather in our case to change their minds. I read today in an adoptive parent magazine that 35% of parents adopting domestically experience at least one false start. I realize that I can't dwell on this but it is impossible to eradicate the thought from my mind completely. I don't really know what I would do were the adoption to fall through. I'm unemployed! Perhaps I should have stayed at my job until the baby is in our house...asked for a leave of absence and made it final after the period of legal risk was over. I feel as though everything has fallen into place with remarkable ease. The likelihood of any adoptive family getting an in-state, healthy caucasian newborn 6 months out of their homestudy is so slim...it almost seems too good to be true. I have been following other adoption blogs and feel for other would-be parents who have been waiting 2+ years. I can't even imagine.

Despite the fears that live in the back of my consiousness, I am confident that the adoption will progress successfully...all of the right signs are there. Most of my worry time is filled up with stupid questions like whether my in-laws allow me to use their washer to wash cloth diapers when we visit and what the easiest way to handle nighttime feedings is when you are bottle feeding breastmilk. Yes, I have decided to go with donated breastmilk. I have two wonderful people who offered to pump for me. I will likely have to supplement with some formula....which may be the answer to my nighttime feeding dilemma. I have mostly Dr. Brown's glass bottles and the 14 brushes necessary to clean them.

As some of you saw, I taught John how to put on a diaper last night:) Obviously, cloth can be a bit trickier so we took the time to practice prefolds using a snappi, fitteds and all-in-ones. He is happy that the changing pad has a buckle (see Lisa, told you!). I will have some standby Seventh Gen disposables for travel (the in-laws perhaps;) or emergencies but I want to get stated with cloth from the beginning so that I can't be seduced by the convenience of disposables! My stupid conscience is always on overdrive. I bought yards of flannel from JoAnn that I cut into reusable wipes.

John and I do not have a crib. When the baby grows out of the co-sleeper (can pull up, etc.) we plan to move him/her into the nursery which will be set up with an infant floor bed. It is a wooden frame that sits on the floor and fits a crib mattress. It has a cut-out like a toddler bed for the child to get out of bed. The room will be completely child-friendly and safe. Low shelves will be mounted to the wall with a few toys on them, there will be a pull-up bar with a safety mirror on the wall (like a ballet studio) and a gate at the door. The child will have complete access to this room at any time from the time he or she can crawl. Yes, it is a bold, brave move but it has been my dream for a long time and I have done my research. Imagine a child who can sit in her room and entertain herself instead of screaming from a crib when she wakes up...allowing you a little extra time in bed. I know it is idealistic and many of you are saying, "Yeah Tasha, just you wait! You'll wish you had that cage of a crib!" but, it's who I am and in line with my philosophy of child-rearing. My mom said that there were french doors on the room where my sister and I slept as toddlers and that she used to close the bottom half of the door and allow us to play independently when we woke up and occasionally throughout the day.

John and I have our names picked out and since it is not in my nature to keep things secret, I'll tell you all. Gabriel Lawrence has always been our boy name. We had more difficulty with our girl's name. We have nearly decided on Penelope Jane but we both also love the name Darcy. I constantly get negative feedback on that name (which is probably why I shouldn't share name ideas) but we just love it. If we have a girl we'll decide whether she looks more like a Penelope or a Darcy at the time. I keep assuming that we are having a girl...don't know why, just one of those things.

Well, + or - 2 more weeks of waiting. I wonder if the call will come in the middle of the night...I sleep with my cell phone next to me:) We should probably have a bag packed.

As a final note, I went to Babies R Us to pick up the 14 brushes that I need for the Dr. Brown's bottles and parked in the "expectant mother" parking spot right at the front. Yes I did, thank you:)

Breastmilk blues and due date update.

Our birthmom went for a doctor's appointment and they determined that the due date is not until April 25th! What am I going to do just sitting at home for 3 more weeks or so??? The baby weighs 5 lbs right now, appears very healthy, and should be a good healthy weight by the time of the birth despite the fact that the birthmom smoked during much of her pregnancy. They also know the sex of the baby but John and I have chosen not to know....actually, it's more John than me. I was fine not knowing when nobody else knew...now the suspense will begin to eat at me!!! I'm still going back and forth between the breastmilk and formula options. If I do choose breastmilk, I can try to produce my own by various methods or I can choose to go through a milk-sharing program. For those of you who don't know, many mothers produce an overabundance of milk and are willing to share with mom's who can't produce enough milk or have adopted babies. This is essentially a free program minus the cost of shipping etc. but there are inherent risks involved. Bah! What do I do? I would really like the baby to get the benefits of breastmilk but the whole deal seems like such a hassle. Advice?

Registry Info

Some of you have asked if we are registered. We are registered at Babies R Us under either of our names. There is not a whole lot on the list...we have a small house and people have been so generous with their hand-me-downs that we are well equipped. We love the Michael Olaf company for toys...though their website is not very user friendly. Thanks everyone for all of your interest and support in our process:)

http://www.michaelolaf.com/JCcontents.html

Updates

Hi All! So, by now you all know that John and I are expecting a baby. Everyone has a lot of questions so I thought I'd provide a little update. The birthparents are Caucasian and from CT....the very situation we never thought we'd be in! The birthmother is 35 and the birthfather is in his early 40's. The baby is due sometime in the next couple of weeks though the exact due date is unknown. The birthmom did not have much prenatal care. She has given two other healthy babies up for adoption. She had an ultrasound last week and the baby is healthy but they could not determine the gender because of the way the baby is positioned. The birthmom does not want to meet us. We met with the birthfather last week. He was a great guy and has a lot in common with John. He has three other children from a previous marriage and was dating the birthmom when she got pregnant. He is not in a position to provide adequate care for a child and believes adoption is the right course. We plan to have a semi-open adoption....providing pictures and letters a couple times a year and perhaps a visit every couple of years.

We are all prepared! We have all of our essentials in place and ready to go. Wednesday will be my last day at school (there is no school thursday and friday). I plan to stay home with our child for as long as it is financially possible.

The adoption cost $25,000. We will have two post-placement visits and the finalization will be in 6 months.

Finally, yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee:) We're going to be parents!

Approved!

We got approved for a personal loan:) The interest rate is not fantastic but it is a big step in the right direction!

DCF Adoption - Our reasons for waiting...

Hi All. I know that many of you out there are wondering why John and I have not chosen DCF foster/adoption. It is, after all, free and comes with many benefits. We spent a good amount of time discussing this option and decided that we want to go this route for our second adoption. DCF foster to adoption can be a very painful process. DCF always has the best interest of the child and the child's birth family as their primary goal - which is of course what they should be doing! They are actively working to reunite a baby with it's biological family. When you foster these babies, you need to go into it being emotionally prepared to relinquish that baby for up to 6 months. I have heard success stories but recognize that the pain of giving up a child that has been in my home for several months may be too much for me. Though you can never predict what is going to happen in the future, we would like our first baby to be a sure-thing. We experienced too much loss already with all of the miscarriages. John and I fully intend to adopt a second child (probably an older child) through DCF in the future as well as opening our home (when we have a slightly larger one) to foster children.

A Difficult Week

Yes, it has been a difficult week. John and I finally got our paperwork squared away with one of our adoption agencies in Utah a couple of weeks ago. Almost immediately, we got a phone call about an African American baby due to be born the next week. The fee was $16,000 + the cost of the birth (another $6000). The next day we got the call that the birthmom did not choose us. We were sad, but we were prepared for this call...we've gotten it a couple of times. The next day we got another call. The available baby was 3/4 Caucasian and 1/4 AA....bringing the price to $22,000 + $9000 for the birth (because it was a planned C-section). Yes, the price increased by $6000 because the baby was nearly white! I told the social worker that John and I couldn't afford $31,000 and she said, "Okay, so we'll only be looking for full African American babies born vaginally for you." All of a sudden I felt sick. Paying a price based on the race of the child? It felt like a market. John and I both feel that it is racist and morally reprehensible. We decided that we would look for an agency that does not charge based on the race of the child. The problem is, after hours and hours of searching, we realized that all of those agencies are too expensive for us. Not only are they more expensive, but we've found that most agencies want their money in one big lump sum. There are no adoption agency payment plans:( We just don't have $25k sitting in the bank...not even close. If we could pay in installments we could handle it. Most people handle this by getting a home equity loan....but we are not home owners. Saving is tough...we still have student loans and every time we get significantly ahead of the game someone's car dies or we have a flood. I've done a lot of crying this week.

I spent a lot of my time talking to our ct adoption agency about all of our fears this week. Do we max out our 2 credit cards with their high, variable interest rates? We are applying for grants, but our income is actually too high (as a middle class family) to qualify for much. Our social worker asked us to think about race-based fees as an incentive program to find homes for the many AA babies who might otherwise not be adopted. The pool of white families willing to adopt transracially decreases the darker the baby's skin color gets:( It makes me cry if I think about it too much. After much consideration, John and I came to the realization that we will not be able to afford adoption without taking advantage of one of these programs. We have always been open to adopting a baby of any race, we just never thought price would be part of the consideration. We have found a few agencies that are more affordable through their African American adoption program. We still have to pay fairly large lump sums of money plus travel expenses and birthmother expenses. The birthmom expenses can range from $1000 - $10,000 depending on what she asks for. These expenses are payed to the birthmom when she is matched with you and do not get refunded if she changes her mind after giving birth:/ We have to decide how much money we are prepared to lose. We can't afford to lose more than a couple thousand (well, really, we can't afford to lose ANY money). The agency will only match us with birthmoms that need less than $2000 for their living expenses.

John and I applied for a personal loan today at a fixed interest rate of 13%. We'll find out if we were approved in a couple of days. This is really our only option for having ready access to $20k or more with only a few days to a few weeks notice.

Adoption has become so expensive and complicated. The stress that this process causes can be nearly unbearable. I really wish that my reproductive system worked properly....it would be so much easier.

On a positive note....our nursery is nearly ready and waits only for a baby to make it complete:) I know that this process will pay off in the end and we will NEVER take our child for granted. I know that John and I will be great parents....just a little more patience.