Z Baby Quest

I feel hungover today even though I didn't drink anything. I look like I slept in my car and my head hurts from taking in so much information last night. I thought I knew a lot about adoption and last night I learned I know about 50% of the process. I'll start from the beginning. Dan and I went to a place called Adoption Information Services (AIS), a place my fabulous doctor Lisa Hasty recommended who are consultants that provide education, guidance, referrals and advocacy throughout your adoption process. They're not brokers or an agency...they do not profit from the adoptions themselves. It's run by this HILARIOUS woman named Marcia, who adopted her own children internationally. She's sarcastic and real and compassionate and smart. In fact, the two other women present at the seminar that work for her adopted their children and shared their personal stories. Once we all sat down, there were four other couples there and we went around the room and introduced ourselves and shared our journeys and what led us to adoption. Dan and I definitely had the longest story and some jaws dropped (including Marcia's) when we told them everything. There was a comment from another couple about how much levity we brought to the room and that made me feel really good because that truly is what keeps me sane throughout this. I have to laugh. The alternative is not an option. Humor is everything.

Moving on to what stirs me, they talked about something I had never given life to....the "tolerance checklist". AIS gives this to you to allow you the opportunity to assess your tolerance level in situations or circumstances that may arise with birth parents or the child before you are emotionally involved in the possibility of a match. What does this mean?

Stop. Pretend you don't have kids. Think about these things;

What age would you consider?
What ethnic background(s) would you consider?
Would you consider a birth mom who was homeless, been abused, incarcerated, raped, uneducated, unemployed, on welfare?
How important is her medical history to you? What if she's diabetic? Overweight? Epileptic? Has past addictions? Had cancer? Is bipolar? Has ADHD? Has an STD? Tests for drugs and/or alcohol? Smokes?

Oh my gosh, it's A LOT to take in! Age and ethnicity are easy to approach and some of them you think (drugs, mental illness), "oh no, I could never!" But then you sit back and really think about it and you want a child so desperately and have to dig deep and evaluate your true feelings and what you can truly handle and accept. And I think we could. I have friends with children with special needs and they exhibit beautifully what it means to love unconditionally. That's very important information to take in. They move on to how open you want the adoption - open, semi-open or closed. I used to think I'd want it closed, but all experts recommend semi-open or open because it's the best option for the child as they deserve to know about their birth parents. One of the women shared a poignant story about her son. She had a closed adoption and one day she was helping her son with his homework and he looked at her and asked if he was good at math because of her or because of the woman who gave birth to him. He was always asking little questions like that. She decided that day she would track down the birth mom and days later her son got on the phone with her and got to ask all those questions. Then poof, all his curiosities went away and he seemed at peace. So if that's what is best, I feel like that's what we need to do.

After a lot more talk and many questions from all the couples. My head is starting hurt and Dan is cracking jokes about how I watch Lifetime TV for Women and Marcia says to terminate that channel from our lineup. The topic of financing an adoption comes up. Obviously this is the hurdle for most people. They explain how they work. We pay AIS a small fee and they help us create our "profile book" which is like one of those Kodak photo books with text telling the birth mom all about us and our family, friends, pets, our neighborhood, our house, how we met and what we like to do in our spare time. Then AIS gets to work reaching out to adoption agencies all over the country - notably those in states with favorable adoption policies to match us. Once they find adoptable babies, they send us their profiles (using criteria from our tolerance checklist) and we decide if we want to send our "photo book" to the birth mom to consider us. If she picks us, it's done.....we wire the money to the agency and they filter it to lawyers, the birth mom and other parties involved. Once she's in labor, we are called and we wait at the hospital and the birth mom decides how involved we get to be. We could be in the room, or we could not. Some hospitals allow us to have a private room to wait. Depending on the laws of the state where the baby is born, you have a waiting period for the birth mom to sign the termination papers. Some are 48 hours, 12 hours and some are 10 days! They shared a story of a woman who only had to wait 48 hours for the birth mom to terminate rights but she wasn't allowed in the room and the birth mom's sister and mom and dad were in the room and she was breast feeding the baby. The adoptive mom was freaking out and called AIS and they talked to her to keep her calm and eventually they handed the baby over to her.

All this got me thinking. And thinking. And thinking. And over thinking. And trying to sleep. And no sleep. And my stomach hurts. Is it worth it? Yes, it is. It really is. This is a sure thing. The only thing keeping us moving forward is money. Which really, really sucks. So when people ask why I share my story, most if it TRULY is to educate others about infertility and adoption and part of it is to ask for help because although it pains us to ask for donations, we tell ourselves that we aren't asking others to give us money to help us buy a house or fund plastic surgery.....we are asking friends....loved ones to help us make this the last Christmas we wake up without having hope of a baby to shower gifts on or the last birthday where I blow out the candles wishing for a baby. We tried doing everything we could on our own and we came up empty. Thanks for reading this long, melodramatic post. I could not get up every day and smile and have hope without each and every one of you.