I know that I haven’t blogged in a while but there is actually too much to say.
Have you ever started to write a post and then stopped? Well, that’s happened to me about a gazillion times in the last few weeks.
My head is on over loaded again so let’s see if I can do this justice…
Okay, the situation with the birth mom I wrote about fell through. Thanks to all of you who took the time to read those posts and to comment and email me. I really, really appreciate it.
I may write about that in another post at some point in the future but for now let’s just say that it was a bust and let’s move on.
Since then Nadia and I decided to work with an agency–agency C. They already have our home study. And I we filled out a whole mess of paper work, signed it, sealed it, and it’s ready to be delivered.
But for some reason I haven’t been able to mail the paperwork. It’s been sitting on my desk for over a week. Something about Agency C’s matching process has not been sitting well with me.
One piece of paper stands out a part from the rest. It’s the form that lets them know what kinds of ’situations’ we are open to, i.e.: birth mom with mild drug use in first trimester, birth mom who engaged in serious drug use throughout the entire pregnancy, birthfather with serious mental illness, or birthfather unknown, etc.
After that paperwork is filled out, it goes into their central registry, which is accessed by their offices in several states, and the social workers match us with a birth mom based on the info in that registry. Based on that paperwork, our profile is shown to birth moms who fit our profile. So in other words, after that paperwork is mailed, unlike all of the other agencies we’ve considered, we will never again get to weigh in on the selection of the birth mom. That paper, defines our fate, so to speak.
And I guess I was hoping to be more involved in the process, even after we made the shift to an agency. Other agencies may call a prospective adoptive parent to say ” a birth mom has selected you and three other families. Here is everything we know about her. Would you like us to show her your larger profile? Would you like to move forward with her based on what we know so far?” And, at that point, we would have the opportunity to think about it and say, ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ I think my control issues are bubbling up again and I’m feeling very anxious about this whole adoption thing.
As you know, I’ve been working on the transition from the ttc to adoption and damnit, I feel as if I’m made a huge amount of progress since my colossal IVF cycle failure in Nov.
One thing I’ve thought about is how this kind of transition is cyclical, like the stages of any grieving process.
Now, I’m at a point where I need to make the transition from fantasizing about what my biological child would look like, and all of their other genetic traits– based on my gene pool and that of my sperm donor– to just being open to various situations, shapes, sizes and shades.
And, let me tell you something ladies, it’s a little hard.
One of the ironies here is that my family’s gene pool isn’t so damn great. I mean we’ve got serious mental illness, alcoholism, cancer-almost any kind you can think of, just to name a few. But, somehow, turning the entire process over to another ‘entity’ has been really getting to me.
In the midst of my paralysis around Agency C’s paper work, I discovered another option, Agency D.
Agency D, is a teeny tiny agency here in New York. They don’t do many placements per year. They are extremely gay friendly, and have been for 23 years. In fact, many of their board members are members of the LGBT community. They don’t have price differentials between African American or white babies and our enrollment process would be relatively quick. They also feel very strongly about allowing adoptive families to take babies home from the hospital. Out of all of the agencies we’ve considered, Agency D is most aligned in terms of values and process, with Nadia and me. The only drawback is that their census is low relative to other agencies, which could prolong our wait. Ugh!
So this week, we have appointments with Agency C or Agency D to discuss our concerns. Hopefully, we will make a decision by the end of the week.
We have our finalization date!
