Up and Down, Back and Forth

It’s all just like one big game of tug of war…only not has fun. Let’s see if I can sum up our adoption journey in the last two weeks in a few phrases…maybe off, on, off, maybe off, maybe on, off, maybe on, maybe off. I think I succeeded. That truly can tell you where we are with everything. The baby, whom we used to think of as Redfisch, is due in one week from today. Right now we were supposed to be anticipating a phone call that would change our lives. But instead we are trying to keep our heads up and continue to believe that all will happen as it should. 

Adoption: FAIL....Or maybe not???

This week we have experienced the “not-so-easy” part of the adoption process. I can make a long story short…or a short story long. This blog entry could go either way. For those of you reading, I can answer your curiosity before I even get into the story by saying: We just don’t know what is going to happen.

Exactly 24 hours after our first baby shower (ironic, I know.) I got a call from Brenda, our adoption agent. She told me that the birth mother has been struggling with her decision. She described her as “wobbly”. The conversation lasted about ten minutes but I got two very important, contradicting facts from it. The first was that the birth mother was indecisive enough that the agency had put “a hold” on the adoption plan and cut off the birth mother’s financial support. No money was going out to her, the agency facilitating the adoption in Nevada, attorneys or to our adoption agency. Brenda explained to me and, she told me she’d said the same thing to the birth mother, that if she is unsure if she can give the baby up for adoption she will not spend any more of our money. This sounds pretty serious, huh? But then, Brenda said to me (and I can’t get this statement out of my head!) “I do not believe this is over.” She explained that the birth mother’s own mother was making promises about helping with babysitting and financial support, although she’s an alcoholic and has not been around in years. Brenda said that she believed her mother was filling her head with all sorts of promises she, more than likely considering past patterns, could not keep. She told me that the birth mother was expressing feelings of guilt and remorse for possibly giving up her baby. I asked Brenda if this was common with birth mothers and she answered with an emphatic “Yes.” But….told me that what was NOT common was that our birth mother was voicing her concerns now. Most birthmothers wait until the baby has been adopted and they are leaving the hospital to begin expressing these types of feelings. “Wobbly” seems to be the best word to describe the adoption at this point.

Carlie and I spent two very stressful, angry, hopeful, anxious, tiring days waiting to hear something from Brenda. I found myself Googling “Xanax” one night….the anxiety in my stomach was palpable.

Two days after this first phone call, we heard back from Brenda. She spoke with the birthmom and told us that if she went into labor today she didn’t think she would be able to give up the baby. Her “wobbly” status had not “wobbled” in our favor. Even after this statement, Brenda was straddling the fence. She told us that we had a decision to make. Wait out the next four weeks and see what happens…she genuinely felt like this still wasn’t over. That the birthmom was going to be faced with a lot of bills that she could not pay and life would again not seem as cushy as it does right now. She also has been trying to get a hold of her sister. The birthmom’s sister has given up two children for adoption and Brenda felt that if she could get a hold of her sister that could help the situation as well.  Our second option was to terminate the match. We could initiate the refund process and when our refund was complete we could be put back on “the list” for another match. Fortunately, Carlie and I saw eye to eye on this. We felt like we had made a commitment to this baby and we were going to see through that commitment until it was entirely out of our hands. We also felt like it was wrong to bail on the adoption at the first sign of trouble. These adoptions can never be easy and this back and forth stuff has to be typical of an adoptive situation.

But then Brenda answered a question of mine that changed things for us. She kept saying “the adoption is on hold.” I asked, “Is it on hold, or is it really just off at this point?” She responded by saying, “It’s really the same thing.”  So, the adoption…at this point…was off.

I was a little shaken. I had to leave school early. I wasn’t distraught but was unsure how it was going to hit me and being at school was not the place I needed to be. I found, for the most part, that I was just very disappointed. I didn’t feel too sad because this didn’t mean the end to Carlie and I having a family. It just meant the end to this match.  So we emailed Brenda with some questions about the refund process. Today she emailed us back and her response resulted in me calling her this afternoon. She answered and I told her that we were ready to begin the refund process so we could get back on “the list.” But instead of saying “ok” and beginning to explain that process, she told me she had some news.  (This is where I’m going to make a long story short.) The gist of her news was that our birth mother’s landlord had contacted our agency’s on-call agent last night furious with our birth mother. She has apparently violated many ordinances in her complex multiple times resulting in a fine that must be paid in three days. If the fine is not paid, they will begin a five-day eviction process. So, our pregnant birth mother and her two children are about to be evicted. Brenda feels that this might just be a game changer. She wants us to wait at least another week and see where everything stands. She doesn’t want us to start the refund process yet. So….the “wobbling” begins again.

We are not sure where this all stands. Right now, it’s all just up in the air. Carlie and I feel pretty certain that we are going to be “wobbling” for the next 3 ½ weeks until the baby is born. Who knows what will happen? I am certain God does and I’m trying to find comfort in that.

Showered with Nerves

On April 12^th my team at work threw my first baby shower. There were so many nice things about it…thoughtful, adorable gifts, coworkers genuinely excited for us, good punch, cute polka dotted cake, and no games…all the makings of a PERFECT shower. Carlie came to the shower and so did my mom, sister, and niece. I enjoyed myself and felt very blessed for the number of people who came and wished us all the happiness we deserve. But, I, of course, was very anxious about it. For so many reasons…

First, I do not like being the center of attention. I always feel awkward and not entirely sure where to stand or who to talk to or how to act. This kind of stuff comes easily for some (like my husband!) but for me it is just uncomfortable. And then you go and throw in opening gifts in front of all those people and well, it sets my anxiety level on overdrive.

Secondly, and probably the most prominent reason for the anxiety over the shower, we do not have the baby yet. There is no guarantee we will have the baby. Having a shower for a baby who is not even here yet and for a mother-to-be who may not be a mother yet seemed inappropriate…is that the right word???  Carlie and I have spent four months preparing logically for this baby’s possible arrival and have tried to do our best to remain “cautiously excited”.  Attending a baby shower seemed like the exact opposite of what we were trying to accomplish. The night before the shower, I really started to get anxious. I was terribly uneasy inside and honestly, dreading it all just a bit. Carlie looked over at me at one point in the evening and said, “What do you think the problem is?” and in response, after thinking about it for a minute, I said, “This shower goes against everything I have attempted to keep away from me.” I told him that I felt like once that excitement crept in, as I was sure it would do at the shower, I didn’t think I’d be able to squash it again. And if you don’t understand, just accept that keeping excitement about a new baby at bay is extremely difficult and requires a lot of self-discipline.

In the end, the shower was very nice….but I would be lying if I didn’t admit that I was glad when it was over. I am so blessed to work with such caring, thoughtful people. For so many months now it has often felt like the only thing people felt for us was pity. “We’re so sorry this happened to you.”  “I will be praying for you.”  “I hope you are doing alright.” The one thing that I LOVED about this shower was how excited people were for us. For smiles instead of sad eyes, for happy hugs instead of “how are you?” hugs. To me, THAT was the best part of the shower.

Words Are Difficult, Part 2

Part of this adoption plan is weekly communication between us and the birthmother. We were told from the beginning that this kind of communication would be primarily between me (Katie) and the birthmother. “Mother to Mother” was what the adoption agent told me.  And it may be the most difficult part about the last few months.  It’s not difficult as in “hard”…it’s more like difficult as in “something I’ve never done before and I don’t have any guidance or idea of how to handle it.”  We began with the plan to talk once a week. It was understood that I would make the first few calls. The calls were … again….”difficult”. It’s hard to know what to say. It’s hard to know what to ask. It’s hard to have a conversation when you don’t know what to say or what to ask! She always answered my calls. Sometimes had to call me right back, but always did. In the beginning, she answered my questions with little detail and never asked a question of her own. About a month into the phone calls, she FINALLY asked me a question. She said “So, how is your week going?” Now…that may not seem like much to you, but I was so excited that she might be getting to the point of comfort with me!

Unfortunately, that was the first and last question she asked me. By the beginning of March, communication was coming to a standstill. With the advice from our adoption agent, I began using text-only to talk with her. That went ok for a while, now she doesn’t even respond to those. And that’s ok. 

It’s hard for me to put into words this “relationship”.  It is not something that I feel I need or necessarily want for myself. In the beginning, there were two motivating factors for me to work at something this “difficult”. The first was our baby. One day, this baby will be a big girl and might just want to know about her birthmother. It will be invaluable to us to be able to tell our big girl about her birthmother and about how I got to talk to her and hear her voice.  The second motivating factor was our birthmother’s possible desire or need to get to know us and feel as comfortable as possible with us. Unfortunately, I do not feel I’ve accomplished either of those two things. I will be able to tell our child that I spoke with her biological mother and learned a little about her, but I didn’t form the relationship that I had envisioned we would. It’s hard for me to imagine that our conversations taught her anything about us. We rarely got past weekend plans or the weather. I know I should not assume what she needed or wanted and what seems logical to me may not be logical to her.  It’s hard for me to understand.

The birthmother has begun her meetings with the adoption agency that will facilitate the adoption after birth. She is now being faced with the realities of her decision, and I can’t begin to imagine how that feels. There is a part of me that thinks talking to me now only reminds her that she will soon give up her baby to me. It’s easy to see how communicating with me would be hard.

So…I’ve updated our adoption agent on the lack of response and will do what she thinks is best from here on out. She told us the other night, she does not think the birthmom will want to see us or spend time with us at the hospital. That’s hard for me to understand too.

Words Are Difficult

I haven’t posted in quite a while. No…I haven’t been busy. Things haven’t been uneventful. In fact, quite the opposite. We’ve been very busy with the ins and outs of “everyday life” and things have been steadily progressing with the adoption. I haven’t posted because finding the words to describe what the past few months have been like is difficult for me. It’s difficult to describe in conversation and felt next to impossible to describe in words. But, I find myself wanting to try.

Let’s start with how two people mentally and emotionally prepare for an adoption. In our hearts, we are so looking forward to being parents and to meeting this little one. We can’t wait to see what she looks like…what color hair she has…her tiny fingers and toes. We can’t wait to bring her home and introduce her to our families. We can’t wait to hold her and snuggle her when she cries. But…just on the edge of that excitement, just at the tip of that anxiousness, just as we begin to smile from ear to ear and buy paint for the nursery…we remember that this adoption is not a 100% sure thing. We remember that it MIGHT not happen. We remember that the birth mom MIGHT change her mind in the hospital at the last minute. I know that puts a damper on all of it and that is not why I bring it up. These things are a reality for us and we can’t walk blindly through this process pretending it’s not a possibility. We have spent the last two months preparing logically for this adoption…maybe a little emotional preparedness on my part…but mainly logically. Buying only what we will need….well, mostly just what we need! (I might have gone a little crazy at Pottery Barn Kids one day…but we’ll leave that story alone for now. )  People say to us all the time, “Aren’t you just so excited?!?!” or “I bet you are just counting down the days!” Honestly, it is our least favorite question. It’s hard for us to answer. Mostly we just nod our heads, smile really big, and say “Yes, yes we are.”  But, what we really want to say is this, “Right now, we are just taking it one day at a time. We have travel plans to make, four hotels to choose from, and rental car reservations to confirm. We are trying to get through our weekly communication with the birth mom. And now, the adoption attorney has contacted us and we are working to get through our meetings with him. We are cautiously excited and optimistic that the adoption plan will be carried out as planned. We know we will be very excited when we take her home from the hospital.”  But you see…this answer would take far too long and probably be hard for most people to understand. It never feels like this is what people want to hear.  

 The baby is due in nine weeks. Nine weeks. We can hardly believe it.  Due to the above mentioned realities of an adoption, we really don’t talk about what life will be like after we bring the baby home.  I have started thinking in recent weeks, that if we were having our own child biologically in nine weeks there would be me A LOT more conversation about how life is about to change. Although I fully understand why we’ve refrained from conversations up until now, I expressed to Carlie last night that maybe, just maybe it was time to start talking about life with a baby. We both agreed and we talked about how it is probably a good thing….to talk about it. And that was all we talked about. :) We sit here together and laugh about it now…but man, we won’t be laughing in nine weeks!

A Relantionship Begins

After a voicemail message and a few texts, I just had my first one-to-one conversation with our birthmother. I was a bit nervous at first, but as the call went on I calmed down. A LOT of what I said was "That must be hard." She has SO much going on in her life right now....newly divorced, impounded car, late traffic tickets with an impending court date, kicked our of her mother's house....just to name a few.

 My care-taker personality takes over and it was very hard for me not to jump in with "let us fix that for you!" or "let us help with that". Defining my own personal boundaries with this situation but also maintaining a familiar comfort with her is very important but also very difficult! Brenda, our adoption agent, has been so wonderful and helpful to me through all of this. Right now, she tells me, it is important for our birth mom to feel like we not only care for her baby but care for her. So that's what I'm trying to do.

I ended the call by tell her to keep me posted on her job interview on Friday and house hunt today. We talked about how often we might "chat" and she told me that she was available "whenever". :) I just pray for my words to be genuine and caring and that I can forge into this relationship with good personal boundaries. Let the journey begin!

"The Call"

For the last three months I would find myself daydreaming about when I would get “the call”. I would lay in bed at night and think about where I would be and what I would be doing. What would they say? What would I say? What would I do? Would I be in the car and have to pull over? Would Carlie and I be together or apart? It was a lot to think about and a lot to hope for.

My daydreaming came to an end on Tuesday, January 4^th around 2:00 p.m.  Let me tell you…for the last month I ALWAYS had my phone with me and it was ALWAYS turned on. You know…just in case. J  But as most people do, I become complacent with it and began to feel I was overreacting to the circumstances. So on this particular day my phone was out on my desk, but it was on silent. Around 2:00, I clicked my phone on to check to see if I’d missed any calls and sure enough! I had a missed call and a voicemail from Brenda in Iowa. Now…just about 24 hours earlier I had emailed Brenda about Carlie and I rescheduling our trip to meet her. I immediately assumed the voicemail was in response to my email and because of that decided to listen quickly to voicemail while my students were finishing up an activity. I stood at my desk, looking at my students, and listened to Brenda say something along the lines of this: Hi Katie, this is Brenda from Abby’s One True Gift. I did get your email and wanted you to know that I just responded but I am actually calling because I have a birth mother situation I think you might be interested in. I am eager to speak with you today so if you could call me back that would be great. Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh. There as an aide in my room who I knew I could leave my kids with, but recess was in ten minutes. I could wait ten minutes, right? Wrong. I walked to my classroom door, anticipating that I would wait the ten necessary minutes until my students went outside but by the time I got there, somehow I’d changed my mind. I don’t even remember walking to the door or opening it! I told the aide I would be back and to take the kids outside when it was time, and I was out the door looking for a room to make my return call in.

As you read, the next five or six hours were a blur.

Add this to the list of life-changing events that have happened in my classroom.