Hurry Up & Wait

Now for the adoption update...

We started the actual adoption process almost two years ago. It took us about two months to decide which route we were going to go, infant vs. older child, domestic vs. international while thinking of all the other things that come along with it, such as private/closed vs. open. I've been asked multiple times: Why don't you just adopt? Well, honestly, there's no "just" about it.

We chose to go through the state's department of Child and Family Services for now, hoping and praying for an infant/toddler placement but open to older children up to age five or seven, depending on how many children are in the sibling set. We're open to receiving up to three children in one placement. There are many reasons we chose this particular path toward adoption rather than going through an infant-focused agency, the biggest factor, honestly, probably being money. I don't think people realize a typical domestic infant adoption costs approximately $15,000-$20,000. And the agencies in this state have sliding scale fees based on income. For some reason, I have a real problem that I would have to pay more than someone else for the same service. This may be something we'll pursue in the future, but for now, we feel comfortable that we're where we need to be on this. God has continually brought us back to DCFS. It took us about six months to get through the interrogations and investigations and educations before we were officially licensed.

We just went through our first annual renewal of our foster/adopt license with the state. So even though we started this process two years ago, we were only licensed just over a year ago. I think ALL parents should be fingerprinted and have house safety inspections and take classes to learn how to deal with certain child behaviors, but that's another story entirely. Our license went from being approved for two children ages 0-5 to now being three children ages 0-12! Wowzers! We're still most comfortable with ages no higher than seven, but this would allow us to act on a situation if there were multiple siblings of differing ages if we felt led to at that time.

We made the decision we did not want to do foster care. Emotionally, we cannot open ourselves up like that. It's really difficult when we desire children so badly so see how awful some "parents" treat their children, then to have to take those children in, love them, and work our arses off to "reunify" them with their "parents"? I believe in second chances, but not third, fourth and fifth chances when it comes to the life and well-being of children. We can't do it. Our hearts can't do it.

But every adoption essentially starts out as a "foster" placement. Laws in this state are that you are unable to officially adopt your child until s/he's been in your care for at least six months. We have opened ourselves up to the possibility of a "legal risk" placement, meaning it's a foster placement and TPR (termination of parental rights) hasn't happened yet but there's a high probability that reunification will not work out.

That's what we're open to... and we're still waiting.

Last year, at this time, we had two very likely possibilities of private adoptions that we put our hearts fully into. January 2009, there was a set of twins referred to us by a mutual friend... the mother was told all about us, shown pictures, and she really desired to have us parent her babies. However, the tribes had already gotten involved in the situation and although we were licensed to care for them, and I have tribal affiliation although am not enrolled, they chose not to allow it because we would've been almost 400 miles away and too far to "effectively" allow visitations and other things, even though my job would've allowed me to work remotely from wherever I needed to be. After working on that situation for a month, it fell through.

February 2009, the next month, Gil's mom referred a situation to us and we met with a birth-mother's liaison about a baby boy due to be born in March. Meetings were done, photos exchanged, the mother stated she wanted to place with us, wanted a private, closed adoption so there would be no contact, her family wasn't supportive and she didn't want them involved. At the last minute, she changed her mind and placed with a cousin.

It was difficult for us. We went through all that work to become licensed adoptive parents and to have two situations so suddenly come out of nowhere and then to fall through... it was hard. I was also coming off of four unsuccessful cycles of clomid and I think the combined effects of both situations threw me into a very deep depression for a few months. In that next few months, we found out Gil's uncle had stage IV (the worst stage) colon cancer only a year and a half after his grandpa passed away from unexpected gastric cancer, I had exploratory surgery, Gil was promoted and we had to sell our home, find a new home, and move... which all factored into my depression, as well.

When we moved, we had to be re-evaluated with the new county and go through the home inspection and all that stuff again. Then our regular license was up for renewal in November so we went through it all... again! We just got our license back in mid-December. There have been no potential placements and no more adoption leads since a year ago.

In the meantime, we've been looking at waiting children profiles listed throughout the U.S. We currently have our homestudy submitted on three different sibling sets with an out-of-state DCFS. Family selection processes are long and drawn out so it may be some time before we even hear if we've been considered or not. I'm hoping our out-of-state status won't affect us too much; most of these children they state they want some level of continued contact with bio-family to remain, even though parental rights have been terminated. Which is fine with us... to an extent. But it's not like we'll be able to make multiple visits a year to a different state hundreds and hundreds of miles away.

So... there we are. In the past month and a half, we've suffered an unsuccessful IUI, celebrated 5 years of infertility, and submitted our home study on 3 different sibling sets. The next post will be unrelated to our journey of trying to grow our family and explain some of the other things that have been going on in our lives lately.

I'm not looking for sympathy by coming out with all this, maybe just some understanding. Understanding as to why I may burst into tears at odd moments, understanding as to why I'm sequestering myself away from social activities, understanding as to why - as much as I love you and rejoice with you - I don't want my continual pain and sadness to affect my interactions with you. I want to be a positive presence in your life. I don't like being sad all the time. I'm struggling with the anger and sadness I have because I am sad. I know; it's messed up. So please, just bear with me.