the story of how a family is created

we got another packet in the mail today from our placement agency.  They confirmed our registration for the orientation weekend (good thing!  we’ve already bought plane tickets and booked the hotel!) and sent along a few letters from past orientation weekend participants with glowing stories about the relationships they formed at the orientation and a few “adoption resumes” — also known as “dear birthmother letters” –except these are more of the scrapbooked packet of pages variety than “letter” per se.

way back when we were exploring all of our options, the idea of writing a dear birthmother letter really turned me off of domestic adoption.  “you mean I basically have to advertise myself?  that feels so…. weird!”  Now that I’m further along in the process, I’m beginning to recognize that all of the details that we put into this “letter” are ways for us to try to express who we REALLY are–not just the words and photos, but also the design, the colors, the layout…. and if we succeed at creating a letter that really reflects US, then we’ll have a greater chance of getting a match with someone who has similar likes/dislikes/etc.  And if THEY have similar taste, then maybe the genes they’re passing along to their child will make for a good match with our personalities.  Or at least, that’s the theory.

I use the term “dear birthmother” lightly because I’ve heard that many prospective birthmothers don’t really like the term.  I mean, until they actually give birth to a baby and then sign papers to say they’ve chosen adoption for their child, they are MOTHERS, not BIRTHmothers.  So then, what salutation to use?  “Howdy”? “To Whom it may concern”? “Yo!”?  Yep.  I”m stuck on the first word.  This might take awhile.

maybe I’ll go dig through my photo archives to try to locate “action photos” that include both of us.  I’m sure that will go more quickly……

*edited a few hours later to add:  i’m discovering the curse of being an active photographer–TONS of pictures of other people, their kids, food, flowers, artsy shots of random weird things BUT….. hardly ANY of the two of us.  Especially ones where we’re both smiling at the camera and neither one of us is wearing sunglasses.  So here’s your chance to help us out.  Does anyone out there have attractive photos of the two of us sitting on your hard drive?  Maybe camping?  Or biking?  Or playing pond hockey?  If so, I would be ever so grateful if you would e-mail them to me before Thursday, June 25.  Thanks!

awhile back, I read the book The Adoption Decision by Laura Christianson and this quote has kept coming back to me:

“Infertility is a chronic medical condition, one that requires management over the course of a lifetime.  I needed to focus less on resolving my infertility and more on managing it.  Managing infertility means admitting it wounds me–physically, emotionally and spiritually.  Managing infertility means I can expect old wounds to rip open when I attend baby showers or watch a mother nurse her child.   Managing infertility means allowing myself to wonder what it would be like to have a child with Robert’s blue eyes and my thick hair; a child who mimics Robert’s habit of misplacing keys or my obsession with cleaning house when I’m stressed.  Managing infertility means accepting the fact that, while my desire for a birth child has diminished, it will never entirely disappear.”

I find this quote immensely comforting.  While I don’t necessarily agree with it word-for-word (stressy housecleaning seems like a learned trait to me and one that could easily be passed to an adopted child if that’s what you’re looking for) I find it reassuring to realize that when I still have “rough days” it’s not because I’ve changed my mind about adoption or that I’m depressed or anything–it’s just part of the mourning process.  It’s also nice to be forewarned that even after I bring a child home I may still harbor these bouts of grief …. and that’s okay.  It seems much easier (and really more natural) to me to think of “managing” my grief than trying to eradicate it.

I also know that I attended a baby shower last weekend with no “ripped open wounds” and I’m still considering the possibility of nursing my adopted child, so if I, in the end, choose NOT to breastfeed, well maybe that will be my decision and not just something else I’ve had to give up (granted, I could try and not be successful… but let’s not go there just yet, okay?).

In other news, we’ve got our plane tickets, our rental car and our hotel reservations all set for Texas.  Now, we just need to compose a first draft of a “Dear Birthmother” letter, gather together “dozens  of fun, clear, attractive photos” of ourselves and our home, figure out what an adoption resume is and whether we have one, and pack them all up with some “casual, comfortable clothes” and we’ll be all set.

ha!  that’s a surprising title, isn’t it?  well, it’s also a wee bit misleading.  see, the baby’s room will be what is now sort of the office.  i say “sort of” because ever since we both got laptops we hardly ever spend any time in that room, so it’s the perfect room to change into a baby’s room.  it’s painted a deep, orangey red color and i’m thinking of leaving it that way.  partially because i have no interest in a pastel-colored room, and partly because i have no interest in painting over that deep orangey-red color pretty much ever.  i’m thinking that with the addition of some cute black and white accents, maybe a pop of turquoise here and there… it will be perfect!  BUT… up until this weekend, the door trim and the closet doors were still their original dark brown stained wood color.  All of the rest of the room trim and the ceiling were white, but those other pieces had never been painted and I thought that painting them white would make the room more baby-ish.  not so baby-ish that if we don’t have someone to sleep in that room for a year or more it will depress me to walk by it every day, but baby-ish enough that I’ll be able to transform it quickly with some furniture rearranging and maybe a few wall decals when the time comes.  i don’t think i’ll want to be painting when i’ve got a newborn in the house (yuck, fumes!), SO…. since we were finishing painting the fireplace surround in the living room anyway, I figured I’d just tack on those little bits of the office.  It’s done (well, okay, except for the door to the room but that’s an unneccessarily long story) and looks great!  Hooray!

So I was looking through a new craft book called Handmade Hellos* the other morning and came across an idea for a really super cute (and appropriate) baby announcement card.  It was designed to look like a book and on the inside is a library due date card in a book pocket.  The baby’s stats were listed on the due date card as “Title: [baby’s name], Authors [parents’ names]” and that’s what got me.  Can I call myself the “author” of my future child?  Or would we be more like the editors?  Or the publishers?  It feels like it would be plagiarism to call ourselves the authors of our adoptive baby.  I’m not sure how I feel about that, but I think I’ll be skipping this announcement design in any case.  There are lots of other super cute options out there.  Just one more tiny example of the differences between adoptive and biological families.  Or maybe not.  Maybe biological families would feel weird calling themselves the “author” of their child too?  How about calling yourselves the bindery?  The illustrators?

*If you click on the link above and then look at image 6 of 6, you can actually see the page I’m talking about.

yesterday, i was enjoying a visit with a friend and talking about how I needed to call the placement agency to see if they’d gotten our packet and to see if they’d verified the date for the Orientation Weekend yet and just then my cell phone rang.  It was the agency!  This is exciting for me because they’ve never called me before (I’ve always called them).  It was also exciting because she told me that they had received our packet and were mailing out the registration form for the Orientation Weekend which will be the last weekend of June!  Woo Hoo!  The date is set!  Now all we have to do is find plane tickets to San Antonio for under $1000 apiece…..

Many of our friends and family have expressed frustration for us that we have to endure all of these “hoops.”  i went through a phase of being very indignant that we have to do SO much more than people who give birth to their children, but at this point, I’m actually glad to have some classes to prepare me and I know that all of the hoops we’re jumping are there just to ensure the safety of the children involved in this process (to make sure they don’t get placed in unhealthy situations).  My big concerns about adoption now are the ones that will likely never go away–the emotional pain that a birthmother will go through while making her decision to choose adoption (and whether I’ll always feel a little  guilty that my joy comes from someone else’s pain); any potential “primal loss” my child will feel at not being raised by their biological family; etc.  If I could make those go away by filling out forms or going to classes, I’d fill out a million forms and go to class every week for the rest of my life.  But instead, we’ll just have to learn how to deal honestly with those concerns and do our best to raise an emotionally healthy child.  Hopefully, they’ll cover that in one of these classes.

whenever j and i finish any big task in life, i like to write a big imaginary check mark in the air and say, “ch-check!” and today’s accomplishment is… that we DID get the placement agency paperwork to the post office today!  yay!  the only minor hiccup was that for some reason, when i opened the packages of photos of the inside of our house, only three of the nine were there, so i had to call walgreen’s and ask them to please reprint the photos and then go back again to get them.  but hiccups, schmiccups, that hoop has been jumped and now i can relax a little because our other hoops are less time sensitive.

tonight we attended our very first parenting/adoption class.  according to the state of wisconsin, we are required to complete 18 hours of education before we can be approved as adoptive parents.  This evening’s class was our first three hours and dealt with the topic of Positive Parenting.  I found it to be a great class.  First of all, it was the first time we were thrown in with a group of other adopting couples which was interesting, occasionally slightly awkward, but considering that we were complete strangers, I felt like we actually opened up pretty quickly as a group, willing to joke around with each other and give quickie summaries of our respective adoption journeys.  It helped that there were one or two very outgoing and friendly members of the group (note to self:  don’t be afraid to BE that outgoing person if necessary).  Second of all, the class topic was one I found very useful.  Basically, she talked about the difference between punishment and discipline (in short, punishment is punitive, discipline can be more instructive and healthy) and then gave us general philosophies to keep in mind and some practical applications and ways to follow her guidelines with our future children.  I felt very encouraged when I realized that most of the techniques she mentioned I had already been seeing in action in my friends’ families and in families that I see at the library and admire.  These aren’t brand new ideas for me.  I’m sure they’re also not all second-nature to me yet, but …. well, it’s sort of like when I started working as a children’s librarian and couldn’t remember ANY kids songs or fingerplays other than the Itsy Bitsy Spider and the Wheels on the Bus.  The longer I worked in the field, I kept discovering more rhymes–some new to me, others that ring bells of memory for me.  I gained new knowledge and was reminded of old, buried knowledge.  In the same way, when adoption forms ask me to talk about my views on parenting and discipline, I”m really at a loss to put it all into words, but I DO “know” the skills–redirecting, offering choices, understanding that kids behave the way they do because of different developmental stages or because they’re tired or hungry or getting sick–I just had to be reminded that I knew them.  Now if I could only figure out how to fit everything into three lines….

i think we’re finally ready to send off the big fat application tomorrow.  we might have been ready sooner, but since they wanted recent photos of the interior of our house that took a little longer.  we just finished up a construction project in our living room on Friday (thanks, Myron!) and it all needed a coat of paint, so our house has been a complete wreck all weekend.  this evening, we were close enough to finished that we were able to clear rooms long enough at least to take pictures (good thing they’re not 360 degree photos!).  now, after fighting with our computers, a printer running out of ink, sending photos to walgreens for printing (gotta pick them up tomorrow), hunting through our medical insurance file, and eventually hand-drawing a floor plan of our house when the fancy computer program that J found online won’t talk to our printer….. I think it’s finally (well, ALMOST) ready to mail.

Now, back to focusing on our 5-8 page autobiographies….

we met with our local homestudy agent last night for our third of four meetings with her.  She read us a checklist of questions and then certified us to be foster parents.  Between the time that we bring a baby home and the finalization of the adoption in court, we serve as foster parents and have to be certified as such.  We’re not certified to the extent that we could sign up to take in a 14-year-old who needs a temporary place to live or anything, but we’re now approved to be foster parents for our anticipated future circumstances.

waiting on a few more pieces of paperwork to come in before we can mail in our completed application to the placement agency….

I called the placement agency today and explained the whole opened envelope, missing application thing and they were happy to fax me the 19 page application.  We’ve been working on it tonight and there are some really difficult questions to answer.  First, there’s the vague and unclear “questions” like for our parents and siblings we have to list name, age, birthplace, and occupation (all fairly easy to answer) and then they each get a small line with the one-word prompt, “Health.”  Um…. good?  she’s got a cold?  fair to middlin’?

Then, we move up the ladder of difficulty to questions about all of our assets and liabilities which are requiring us to dig up account numbers and loan balances from deep in our financial files.  And make really tricky guesstimates (how much would you say that all of your “personal property” is worth?  NOT including house, car, boat or RV (yeah, right)).

Next rung is the questions that are difficult to make a decision about–like a checklist of circumstances that we would or would not be willing to consider (from “obesity in [child’s] biological family” to “Child with [known] terminal illness” and everything in between).

Next rung combines a few of the above categories.  Let’s take difficult decision plus vaguely worded question for “What permanent handicaps or medical problems would you be willing to consider?” followed by about a line and a third of space to write an answer.  seriously?  I mean, how many possible handicaps and medical problems are there in the world?

Or how about  these gems that each come with three lines for your answer to be written on:

“What actual steps have you already undertaken in order to get ready to be good parents?”

“Please describe your marriage and the most difficult challenges or experiences you have had to bear in your lives together and how your relationship has been impacted by such.”

“What are your hopes for the child you adopt and expectations for his/her future?”

Think about it.  How would YOU answer those questions about YOUR life in three lines or less?

Amazingly, after much grumbling, and a surprising amount of laughter, we actually finished all of the paperwork tonight.  Now, we just have to collect photos of our house (inside and out), a floor plan of the house, last year’s tax return, medical insurance policy, a doctor’s letter confirming infertility, and three letters of reference (many thanks to those of your who are writing these for us!) and we’ll be all set.  *whew!*