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.

Okay, so we haven’t left for the Caribbean just yet. And with all this snow outside, I’m hopeful that we will get to fly out of here tomorrow. My fingers and toes are crossed.

In the meantime, this snow day has given me a wonderful opportunity to draft one last post before we fly off to clear blue Caribbean water.

I am starting a book club and I hope you will join me. Since I started down the adoption path, I’ve been having really interesting conversations about adoption, adopting after infertility, pre-adoption, post- adoption, transracial adoption, same-sex adoption, you name it. One of the things I learned is that almost all of us  have been touched by adoption in some form or other, and we all have feelings and opinions about it.

And as many of you know, I”ve even started a weekly Teachable Moments Column, precisely about times when I learn something about myself or other people or when I have the opportunity to teach someone about my point of view.

Now, I am starting a book club, appropriately names, The Ultimate Adoption Book Club, which  will focus on adoption stories. The idea is that it will be a little bit like talking around the water cooler. It will be stress free, nourishing, and an escape from the day to day. In the month of March, we will read, The Blind Side by Michael Lewis.

If you are interested in learning more about the club and how you can get involved, click here. I hope you will join me.

 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!

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?

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?

“We don’t give up our babies,” she said.

These words were spoken to me by a very, very dear friend who is an African American senior (senior=older than 65).

She said this in response to me telling her about our decision to adopt after three years of trying to conceive. I was talking to her about the pain and heartbreak of letting go  of one dream and the mixed feelings I had about building another.

During our conversation, I asked for her help. For many years, she had worked with young  African- American and Latino mothers and I thought that she may be able to help us with our adoption outreach.

As I’ve mentioned before, Nadia and I have decided to pursue private adoption, which means that a birthmom (or dad) will have to chose us from thousands of families who are also pursuing private domestic adoption. So I consider Nadia and me the equivalent of  a needle in a haystack.

Anyhoo, back to my friend.

Given her connections  to birth moms of color, I was asking her to be on the look out for women who may be looking for birth parents. And her response was “we don’t give up our babies”

“Huh?” I replied.

“Yeah, we don’t give up our babies.”

I waited two beats to process my reaction to what she was saying.

One. Two.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, in my 30 years of working with young mothers, I learned that African Americans and Latinos don’t put their kids up for adoption.”

I took a deep breathe.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

This time I wasn’t going to let this go. I don’t think I gave the best response but I’m not ashamed of my response either.

“In my limited experience with adoption”, I began, “I’ve learned  that there were many, many African American and Latino children that were put up for adoption. So many in fact that domestic transracial adoptions have really exploded in the past 10 years.”

There simply are not enough families of color that are in a position to or open to adopting a newborn or older African American child.

I found some stats  but they pertain mostly to foster care. I wasn’t able to find stats on the number of African American infants adopted last year, but based on the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS), in 1998  approximately 64% of children waiting in foster care were of minority background; 32% are white. Out of all foster children waiting for adoption 51% are black. 

I know that my friends point is not adequately addressed by the stats above. Obviously, having a child forcibly removed from your home and put into child into foster care is not the same as voluntarily creating an adoption plan for domestic infant adopti0n, but I think that the data overwhelming shows that African American children desperately need stable homes. Adoption planning is one option to providing that kind of stability.

Additionally, in my experience, I’ve encountered several agencies that have created separate programs for African American  and bi-racial kids to deal with their demand for adoptive parents.  Some agencies even have different pay scales to encourage waiting couples to adopt what are referred to as “biracial” ( in this case, children born with African American genes mixed with another ethnicity) or “full African-American”, kids with two African American parents, like myself, which happen to be the  kids least wanted in this world.

So my dear friend was dead wrong. But her reaction speaks to the fact that I that there is a lot of shame and ignorance about what’s really going on with African American domestic adoption, particularly in communities of color.

In the coming months I plan to do more research on African American infant adoption. Because the truth of the matter is that we “do give up our own” for myriad reasons and, thankfully, there are people out there who are anxiously waiting to embrace them mind, body and soul.

Even though it hasn’t been that long, since I stopped trying to conceive and started down the adoption path, during this short period, I’ve heard a lot of ‘comments about adoption’ from people that could be my BFFs. Many people, including me, have deep seated biases against adoption, and discovering that about myself and others has bothered me.
So, I’ve decided to dedicate Monday’s to “Teachable Moments”, growth opportunities for me and my friends; right now I have about six weeks worth of material soooo… let’s  begin.

 
I was having lunch with a newish friend, not quite a BFF, but she could become one, I suppose. We hit it off  really well at a work party, and since our offices are close to one another, we started having lunch together on a regular basis. One day at lunch, I was feeling like I wanted to “talk”.

It had only been about a week since my last IVF cycle was canceled and I couldn’t take it anymore. It was hard for me to sit across the table from her and not share what was at the forefront of my mind—”Holy Crap! We’re going to adopt!”

 Since I didn’t know her that well, however, I started off gently, testing the waters.“Nadia and I are thinking of adopting an infant,” I said while sticking a piece of lettuce in my mouth.

“Oh,” she replied, , you don’t want to have any of your own children?”

“Ouch”, I thought. And said, “Well, I don’t think that’s going to happen; we’ve been trying for years.”

There, I said it. And my sense of failure hung in the air, as I kept munching on croutons, but there was something else that was hanging alongside my failure—fear and bias.
I must admit that she was very sweet about my ttc failures. We talked about it and she admitted that she never wanted to have kids but that she admired people that adopted because there are so many kids who need homes in the world.

It was a perfectly fine exchange, but her comment still stung. It pained me to hear her make a distinction between having my own child and adopting; particularly in the midst my own doubts about how I would feel about a little adopted one. And, when I think about that lunch, I feel bad that that I didn’t say more at the time. I feel ashamed that my only response was “well, that’s not going to happen”, validating her assumption that adopted children are different, inauthentic.

 At that time, I was harboring thoughts and  that my adopted child could somehow be different, not truly my own because their DNA would be different. I had doubts, after all, I had been obsessed with getting pregnant for three years, and I still had/have a lot to work through about ending that pursuit. Don’t get me wrong, hers was an “innocent remark” and I countered with an “innocent response”, it was just a simple lunch exchange, but our “innocence” packed a powerful punch.

 Since that lunch I’ve started to fantasize about a little one, Little Wing entering our lives, and because of those fantacies I’ve replayed that exchange several times in my mind. Eva, how wouldy you answer that question today?

 I know that next time I’m asked I will respond differently. I have to. I don’t want Little Wing to enter my life with my baggage. I want him or her to feel completely legit from the start, so I’m going start creating that space for him or  her in my heart and in my actions, words and deeds  right now. 

So next time I”m asked, “don’t you want to have your own children?” I might say, “well, an adopted child would be my own child, but Nadia and I have been trying to get pregnant for about three years and have decided to stop trying. This is just different path. And we’re very excited.”

 Next time, if I say that, I know that I’ll feel better about myself and the lessons that I’m learning and creating on behalf of Little Wing.