Exhausted ramblings

Disclaimer:  I was at work until midnight on Tuesday and then for 12 hours on Wednesday, and 3 hours today on my day off.  I am very tired and need to unload bit.  So please excuse the exhausted ramblings.

Last night as we were crawling in bed B told me about his grocery trip with C yesterday.  They had one of those two seater carts and C was sitting in one of the seats.  C lost it and pitched a tantrum in the store because he wanted someone to sit with him in the cart, specifically a little boy to sit with him!  Sit with him “RIGHT THERE” pointing at the second seat.  B told him mommy and daddy were working on it- that we are working on our adoption so he can have someone to sit with.

My heart broke.  My heart broke because my two year old is lonely.  He is such a social kid and LOVES playing with our neighborhood children.  He loved daycare when he was enrolled.  I think he’ll still love it when B goes back to work and C is in day care again. I think he’ll love school next year.  C wants someone to sit with.  I want to give him a sibling as much as I want another child.  It is all wrapped up together in one aching hole of knowing our family is not complete at three people, one dog, one cat and one bird.

But then, then there is the worry.  Don’t think because we’ve decided to move forward that we don’t, I don’t worry about if it is exactly the right choice.  Are we ready for two (or more) children?  Are we capable of being good adoptive parents? Will we be able to complete this process and what will life look like on the other side?   But you know what? Every prospective parent asks those questions and they are never answered until you get there.  No one knows if they are read of if they will be able to do a good job of it until they get there.  Honestly, if we end up over our heads what we’ll do is seek help! Just like we would with any child we add to our family.

There is also the worry about timelines.  If I could MAKE it happen faster and have another child home in 2 months I would!  But I know the process will take 12-18 months AFTER we sign on with our coordinator and we have not be able to do that yet.  Why not? Well honestly it is a money issue.  We have to be smart about this and have a financial cushion before pulling the trigger- and we are working on it.

A few people have commented that it would be easier to just get pregnant again, and don’t we want “real children” or “our own?”  Well yes we could probably get pregnant multiple times in the next 18 months, and we may never have another problem in a pregnancy.  That is possible.  It is also possible I have an easily diagnosed and treatable issue that has caused our miscarriages (like a progesterone deficiency).   We are not ruling out more biological children.  

This is not our plan B.  Adoption was always in plan A, it was just not necessarily right now.  We’ve decided to work on it now- but it is NOT plan B.

Those questions are so HURTFUL.  Firstly, any adopted child will be OUR OWN, and REAL.  Just like B is my REAL husband.  Chosen family is just as valid as born family.  Otherwise we’d all marry our siblings and cousins.  I suggest people try and think of it like that.

 Second, there is a lot stuff influencing our timeline decisions you may not know.  I need a medical test in March that I cannot have while pregnant or breastfeeding.  So, we have to wait until then to even think about trying to get pregnant.  We really want to be working on building our family in some way now.  So choosing our providers, hopefully starting our home study by January 2013 etc are all ways we can work on building our family NOW.  And there is no guarantee that I would get pregnant in March and it’ll work out.  We are pursing all of our avenues.  If I should become pregnant and we do not miscarry we always have the options of putting our adoption on hold, or not.  My understanding is DRC does allow families that are pregnant to adopt.   

We’re not closing our minds to the possibilities- we are open to them.

That is all for now.  Thanks for listening.  This mama needs a nap.

~M

It's getting chilly here

We have heat! Doesn’t sound very adoption oriented, does it?  Well I guess there will be many non-adoption things I write about and it actually is adoption related, sort of.

Our home was built in 1959, and some of the parts are original.  When we had the home inspection we found out the furnace is older than either one of us! And will probably have to be replaced in the next 5 years.  We also found out we have an in furnace type of water heater.  Well after moving in we figured out there is no hot water in the Bates house L We have about 3 minutes of hot water and then it goes lukewarm.  Which was fine and dandy for summer but in October…. Not my favorite.

We’ve been told we can install a separate hot water tank and fix the issue.   We’ve been delaying because of the cost.  The other big question was, if the coil is corroded and we’re not getting hot water, will we have heat?  Since we have baseboard heating.  Well folks we turned on the heat tonight and IT WORKS!!!

That means we can get a separate hot water tank and get hot water back in the taps without replacing the entire furnace.  Hopefully in the next two weeks.  I’m making it my project for Monday.  It’s much less expensive to put in a hot water tank, so we don’t have the expense of a new furnace using up out funds we’re trying to earmark for the adoption. 

I am so looking forward to a hot bath.

Why Africa?

So why Africa?

Once we ruled out infant and foster care adoption in the states we evaluated the four main international regions: Asia, Eastern Europe, South America, and Africa (as well as some individual programs like Haiti and Kazakhstan).

We don’t qualify for most of the Asian countries programs.  To adopt from China there is a 5-7 years wait list, we both have to be 30 years old and we have to have a net worst of $80,000.  We basically don’t meet any of the requirements nor do we want to wait for that long.   Many of the other Asian countries either have similar time lines and requirements or only adopt older children internationally.

We are uncomfortable adopting from Eastern Europe because of the fetal alcohol syndrome risk.  FAS is common in many eastern European countries… and it may indeed be our bias showing but we just are not willing to risk it.  I’ve read a lot of FAS and honestly at this point I think I’d be more willing to adopt a child that had been exposed to hard drugs before I’d knowingly take on a child at risk for FAS.

The South American programs are riddled with corruption.  The Guatemala program was shut down due to some serious child trafficking.  Columbia still has a program going but when speaking to a few agencies it is mostly and older child program and the implication is that if someone tries to promise you a child under two either a) they are lying and trying to get you involved and hopefully you’ll adopt an older child or b) the adoption of a child under two will probably be unethical. 

That left us with a few single country programs to evaluate, none of which seemed to fit our needs and Africa.  We looked into different programs and settled on DRC.  While we qualify for Ethiopia and Uganda as well there are things that made us hesitate with both programs.  Ethiopia has slowed down significantly to the point that wait times have doubled or tripled and there are families that have had referrals for a long time who have not been able to bring their children home.  Ethiopia also now requires two trips to adopt.  Uganda’s program is very new and is mostly an older child program.

So we decided on DRC.   They have a program we qualify for and we can adopt a child under two pretty easily (from what we have been told so far).  We also have settled on an adoption facilitator that we believe will help us adopt as ethically as possible.   The ability to find providers we are very comfortable with was also a huge consideration in the process.