The Egg Drop Post

Please read this post until the end to get a gold star.

Generally, I stay away from politics. I don’t think that I’ve ever written an overtly political blog post, except the one time I went off on the United States healthcare system in the midst of my personal health care crisis but that was more of a rant than a call to action.

This week’s teachable moment is a cry for help because it’s about the projected ‘sunset’ of the federal adoption tax credit.

I know it sounds like an incredibly boring topic because anything with the word ‘tax’ in it is generally an invitation to start a snooze fest—at least for me– but if I haven’t lost you yet, I beg you to read on just a little bit further. I promise to keep this short.

The Federal Adoption Tax credit is $12,150 but the tax credit is set to sunset in December 2010 unless Congress votes to continue it.

 The reason why this concerns me is because adopting an infant can cost up to $30,000 (Yikes! )I mean, hopefully it won’t but I never thought I was spend as much as I did on fertility treatments, but I digress… This tax credit would give Nadia and I some relief and, hopefully, we will adopt by the end of the year and will be set.

But what if we don’t?

Given the small fortune that we spent on fertility treatments over the past three years, the idea that we could get some relief during the next leg of our journey has really kept me going. And then on the other hand, even if we do adopt and we get the tax credit what about all the men and women out there who are still in TTC hell and decide next year that they want to adopt. What then? Or what about the people who don’t even bother with the TTC and just decide next year  that they really, really want to adopt?  What about those people? Huh?

I mean, I hope that the Federal Government will realize that helping kids find permanent homes is a good thing and that they will automatically extend the tax credit. I wish I could say that this is a no brainer and that I don’t have anything to worry about but given the fact that the folks in Washington (no matter how much I may love some of them) can’t seem to get anything right this days, I don’t have a lot of faith.

I know this may sound a little cliche but it only takes a few minutes to write, call, or email your representatives. Please consider it.

Email Representative: https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml

Email Senator: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

And please, don’t take more word for it. If you want more info, please click here.

Okay, here’s your gold start. You made it to the end. You deserve it. xo

Okay, so I have another teachable moment to share this week.

Last week, I met with a dear friend who is fully up to date our adoption plans. She is someone who has been with me throughout every stage of this journey. While we were having coffee, she mentioned to me that she recently heard about several adoption reversals and that those stories made her worry about me.

Now, I know that adoption reversals are a very real fact of the adoption process. Many people have shared stories with me about birth moms who changed their minds about giving up their newborns. In most of the cases I’ve heard first hand, these adoptions were reversed before the adoptive families met the babies because they were pre-birth situations.

My friend, however, insisted that she saw some show (she couldn’t remember which talk show it was because they all seem to be the same) that this is a very real phenomenon and that I should be really, really cautious about the whole thing. She was referring to situations where the pre-adoptive parents had had a chance to take the baby home and spend several weeks with the kid only to learn that the birth mom wanted the baby back. And I know that those things do happen. I’m sure that it is absolutely heart-breaking, but given my friend’s advice, I wanted to get a sense some more information before I launch into hysteria mode.

So this week, I visited a leading adoption website. adopting.org and I learned a few things. According to this site, the vast majority, between 80 and 90%, of all adoptions are successful. However, when an adoption ends before it has been legally finalized in a courtroom, it is called a “disruption.”  

I also learned that “less than 1% of infant adoption are disrupted” but the older a child is, the higher the disruption rate can be, according to National Adoption Information Clearinghouse disruption rates can range from 3 to 53 percent.” Yikes!

I think that those stats, particularly the 53%, are horrible. And I can’t imagine being in that situation and I hope I won’t ever have to. But I also think that there is a lot of misinformation about adoption, promoted by the media, which winds up creating this air of suspicion about adoption and that pisses me off.

I don’t know. I’m still pretty green in this process. I am just trying to maintain my balance. And I desperately  need a balanced view of the adoption journey. These weekly columns help me  figure out where that balance is.

I am participating in Heather’s Open Adoption Roundtable.

For this round Lori of Weebles Wobblog reached back through time to a post I wrote  these many months ago after spending an afternoon with my daughter’s first mom. In it, I wondered aloud if there was a common definition of a successful open adoption. Is it even possible to define, given the myriad factors involved? Here’s how Lori poses the question:

If there’s one thing we all might agree on, it’s that we’d like our open adoptions to be successful. But what does “success” mean to you, when speaking about open adoption? Do you think it may mean something else to the others in your triad?

For me, this is all in the fantasy stage because my partner and I are still waiting for our home to get certified as an adoptive home in our state. We are pre-adoptive parents in the very early stages of our process.

That said, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what type of relationship I would want with my child’s birthmother. And, I have to admit that my fantasies range from light to dark.

No matter what mood I am in, I always fantasize about my child feeling confident, very loved and happy. I want my child to know where he or she came from to understands that open adoption is path we all choose out of love for her.

The ideal arrangement for me is includes some contact with the birth mother, maybe three times a year. We would send pictures more regularly but then see  her in-person three times a year. I imagine that those visits would feel like spending time with a distant relative, where I feel affection but have  definite sense of boundaries. The mantra would be something like this: “you have your life and I have mine.”

On darker days, I imagine that I could feel threatened by the birth mom; especially, since I really wanted to give birth to my own child. I sometimes ask myself, ‘how will I feel knowing that this woman had the in utero connection that I desperately wanted but was not able to achieve?” And I don’t have an answer to that. I’m not proud of this but when I get into that space, I imagine myself feeling very protective and not being that forthcoming as I should be about my child’s interest and quirks.  

Nadia, my partner, on the other hand, is very, very committed and interested in having an open relationship with our child’s birth mom. She would be very open to monthly visits, and thinks it would be great if the birth mom would live close enough and be together enough to babysit. My reaction to that is “yikes”.

So Nadia and I have a lot to work out between us and then we are going to add another family into the mix. This will be “interesting.”

I guess success, then, would achieved once we adopt and are able to navigate all of the murky waters adeptly so that all of the parties involved feel satisfied. Success for me would mean that we could all feel good about our arrangement, that our child would feel loved, and that our child would have a clear sense of where she came from and where she is going.

 Nadia and I are busily preparing for our trip to the Caribbean to see my family. I’m pretty convinced that I will have much to share when I return in two weeks. This is my first return to the island in 10 years. In addition to introducing my wife, I plan to tell select relatives about the adoption.

I’m anxious but excited.   Wish me luck!

As the death toll reaches 200,000 in Haiti after the January 12th earthquake, and as we continue to see pictures of the survivors who muddle through this unthinkable heartbreak, one developing story that  haunts me is the story of Haiti’s 33 orphans.

As you have probably seen by now, 10 American Baptists were detained while trying to leave Haiti illegally with Haitian orphans, many of whom it turns out, were not orphaned.  They were not legally eligible for adoption.

And it’s just awful. Multiple layers of tragedy bleed through all of the unanswered questions:

1. Did their parents willingly give up their kids for adoption? According to yesterday’s New York Times article,  several Haitian parents sent their children with the missionaries because their children were offered educational opportunities in the Dominican Republic. “If someone offers to take my children to paradise”, one of the parents said, “am I supposed to say no?” These are called ‘economic’ orphans.

2. Did the missionaries really try to take the kids out of the country because they were motivated by the desire to give the kids a better life?  According to the AP, a spokeswoman for the group of detained Baptists acknowledged that they knew they didn’t have the right paperwork for the kids, and were just trying to do the Christian thing by getting them out of horrifying conditions. Or were they motivated by greed? We know that international adoptions can yield upwards of $30,000.

3. And no matter what the root cause of this ‘misunderstanding’, and general lack of compliance with international adoption law, the real question is: what will happen to the 33 Haitian ‘orphans’?

During the summer of 1999, I lived in Haiti for three months, volunteering for a human rights organization. It was one of the most humbling experiences of my life because every day I was greeted with incredible warmth, kindness, and love from people who didn’t know me and who, for the most part, survived on next to nothing.

These are people who have no running water, no consistent food supply, no real source of income, no roads, no convenient transportation. I mean, as an American, it’s really hard to even imagine how they live, unless you have experienced it firsthand.

The need there–even in 1999– was incredible.  While in Haiti, I was overwhelmed by what I saw and how I privileged I felt as  ’struggling graduate student’. I can’t even imagine what it must be like there now since the earthquake and I don’t know what has happened to the people that treated me with such incredible kindness.

But the images that tug at my heart the most, images that have kept me up at night, are the images of this week’s orphans returning home and being totally and completely stranded.

Ironically, from the moment the Haitian story broke, I found myself saying from time to time, wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could adopt a Haitian child who lost her parents? And, that spontaneous question answered for me a question that has plagued for some time–”yes,” I heard my heart whisper, “I could love another woman’s child as my own.”

The extra irony here is that I can’t adopt internationally because I’m in a same-sex marriage, but I’m not going to draft that rant right now.

The truth of the matter is that the infertility journey broke open my heart. I will forever carry this incredible sense of loss, and there is a part of me that will always struggle in “the land of what ifs,” but it also opened me up to understand deep trauma and incredible loss in ways I never imagined.

But my newfound empathy is really just a stark consolation. And so I give, I give money to SOS Children’s Villages because they are committed to working with Haiti’s orphans and I give time to Haitian groups, as a volunteer but, let’s face it, losses can never really be regained, merely transformed.

************

The photos are courtesy of cnn.com and nyt.com.

Okay, so we hit a milestone this week. 

Yesterday, I sent the bulk of our paper work to our attorney. She will put everything together and file a petition with the court, so that we can be certified as an adoptive home.

Let me tell you, that was not easy task!  Here’s a list of what they need:

•  a copy of our marriage certificate
•  child abuse clearance request form
• medical statements
• plus a special letter from Nadia’s doctor stating that she has been completely cured from cancer and that her diabetes is completely under control
•  adoption client information and net worth statements(zero+zero=zero)
•  photo copy of photo ID
• most recent tax returns
•  three original letters of reference

Whew!

Once that petition is filed, our attorney will send a letter to our social worker and she will submit the homestudy. Then, we will be asked to make an appointment with the NY State Court so that we can be fingerprinted on the spot with their new machines.

In the old days, we would have to be fingerprinted at a precinct and then submit the fingerprint cards to the court. In those days, it took six weeks for the fingerprints to be approved, the new system gives immediate results, which is great.

Anyhoo, we are well on our way and we hope to be approved by the end of this month, if not before.  There are many people who would say, we are almost ‘paper pregnant’ but I’m not going there, not yet anyway.

This week’s column is a little different than the others. I”m not sure if this a teacable moment or just an awkward moment but here goes…
 
I was having lunch with three clients I was meeting over lunch for the first time. They were all friends.  During lunch, they spent some time talking about  skiing, their husbands, and grandchildren before we got down to business.  While they talked about their personal lives, I  chimed in from time to time, but I certainly didn’t dominate the conversation, since I didn’t feel as if I had much to contribute. 

I work in a very family friendly environment where discussions about family are very common place between colleagues as well as between professional staff and their clients. So I see why  they felt justified initiating a conversation about my family

 At one point, towards the end of the lunch, after we had finished the business portion of the conversation, one of them turned to me and said, “I’m just amazed at how many single women are having babies, either through adoption or through artificial insemination.  Is that something, you would, um, consider?”
 
And I said, “well, I”m not single, I’ve been partnered for 10 years now.”
 
“Oh, wow!” they chimed, almost in unison.
 
“Soooooo, have you every thought of having a family?”
 
“We’ve been thinking about it,” I responded.
 
“Well, if you don’t mind me asking, how old are you?” one of them asked.
 
“Um, I’m going to be 40 in two months.”
 
“Well, um, you don’t have much time,” another said.
 
“Yes, I know.”
 
It was awkward, because I didn’t want to reveal my ‘true identity’ as a woman who had been trying to get pregnant for several years. I just sort of smiled, and diverted my eyes.
 
“Thanks,” I said, dying inside.
 
“Having a child is one of the best things that can happen to you, you know,” another one offered. Now, like all of the other ‘moments’ I know that they are very well meaning, but I felt that last comment in my gut.
 
 As I write this, I  realize that I often just dont’ say what I think in the moment, which I probably one of the reasons why I  need to blog. In this instance, because they were clients, I didn’t feel comfortable getting more personal with them, I didn’t want to be vulnerable but, in retrospect, I wish I had said, something like, “it’s been very, very hard for us and we definitely, definitely want to have children.”
 
When I told Nadia about it, she told me that I should have said, “it’s complicated” and left it at that.
 
What would you have said?

So Nadia was doing laundry and look what she found outside our laundry room…

A bassinet. An (almost) new bassinet that snaps into a stroller. It’s beautiful.

Nadia was actually quite excited to discover this treat, which is funny because she warned me against going out and spending what was left of our saving on baby items.  It’s nice to have in the house.

Now all I need is a matching stroller and, oh yeah,  a baby.

Well, that’s moving along. We had part deux of our homestudy. Chatty Cathy was not so chatty this time. She had several appointments scheduled on the day of her visit so she breezed right through. And yes, she did take a tour.

At one point, I said to her, “Well the house just isn’t as clean as it was the first day you came.” And she responded, “Good, you are more comfortable now. This is better.” So it was all good.

During the interview, she wanted to know more about our work history and relationships with our family. And that wasn’t such a big deal. Then, she asked, “So when did you decide that you no longer wanted to be with men?”

And I had to break it to her. “I didn’t decide, I just fell in love.”

Okay, so this time I need your help because I wasn’t sure how to respond when I tripped over this week’s adoption moment.

I was speaking with an adoptive mom who happens to be a very notable infertility to adoption specialist about a lot of my issues, including my mother’s death, my tensions with Nadia over the years, and my fears about adoption. One of the questions that I had was about donor egg cycles.

Let me explain…

I have to admit that I’ve never considered doing a donor egg cycle. Besides the prohibitive out of pocket expense, I really wanted to get pregnant and have my own biological child to maintain a genetic connection with my deceased mother. After three failed IVF cycles and countless IUIs, I’m willing to move on to adoption, but I must admit that I was curious about the appeal of donor egg. So I asked this specialist, “Tell me more about your experience in treating women and families who have conceived with donor eggs. I’m really just curious because I don’t know that much about it.”

She told me some interesting facts about how children who were born from anonymous donor egg cycles are often very curious about their siblings, as opposed to their biological mothers. She said that donor eggs cycles allow for in vitro bonding between mom and baby. And like donor egg cycles, they allow for individuals to have more control over the genetic makeup of their child.

And then she went on to say, “You know, you have access to a better gene pool.”

“Excuse me?” I said. Because I thought that either I misheard her or maybe she had made a poor choice of words.

“Well,” she continued, “many children who are put up for adoption in this country are born into poverty and into very unstable, economic situations and their part of a cycle of poverty.  You know,” she went on “most of kids in special education in New York City are adopted.”

And I really didn’t know what to say to her. I really didn’t know how to respond. I can only say in hindsight I wish I had told her that what she said made me really uncomfortable and that I don’t believe in social pathology narratives. I don’t believe that people who are poor are inherently deserving of their plight, nor do I believe that genes are the sole reason why poverty exists but, unfortunately, at the time, I wasn’t in the emotional position to develop a strong, cogent, response.

I felt as if she framed the discussion as adoption vs. donor egg, which is weird because she’s an adoptive mom, but   I’m not sure where her kids are from.

Any advice?