Good things come in threes

Three good things happened today.

1. After having chest pains yesterday and being admitted to the hospital, my dad had a procedure today and found his arteries all clear. Even the one that he had a problem with in the past. He is already home and resting.

2. I get a mocha every afternoon at one cafe. For some reason, on some days they decide to clean the machine during the afternoon and it makes it impossible for me to get a mocha and I am turned away empty-handed. Today I show up and the lady decides to give me a free mocha b/c she feels bad that I am a regular customer but am turned away at times.

3. Let's see, there was something else I was going to mention that happened today...Oh yeah, we have a match! We are of course super excited. And overwhelmed at the same time. I don't know how my husband was able to work, but he did. Meanwhile, I spent most of the day calling my family. With my dad in the hospital, everyone was glad for some exciting news. It was so much fun to be able to call everyone and tell them our exciting news and hear the excitement in their voice. Since we had not told anyone that we were in talks with a particular birthmother, it was a surprise for everyone.

I know I said in my earlier post that I would update more once I have processed everything, but there are so many emotions swirling around that I don't know when that will happen. We have narrowed down a weekend when we can go to visit the birthmother. I put in a call to a lawyer (Mr. X, the experienced one) so we can't start getting a plan for the legal side of this. The birthmother is in a different state so we will have ICPC to deal with. We are not going to tell our employers for a few weeks. They both know we are trying to adopt. My supervisor is actually out for the next two weeks anyway so that gives us some time to make plans before telling her. One thing we want to figure out is how much time my husband will spend in this other state. We had initially thought that after I took a maternity leave, then he would stay for a month with the baby, but if he spends 2-3 weeks out of state for ICPC, then that limits how much time he can take off after my leave is over. So we might have my mom come and help me during that time.

The odd thing is how quickly I have turned in my thoughts about certain things. Just last week I would read things written by adoptive parents as they talked about their birthparents in glowing terms or about feeling a connection with them and I was like, "yeah, right, how much of that is for show". But now I totally hear myself saying things like that! I do feel like the birthmother and I are similar in many ways and even the caseworker mentioned that she thought we had the same personality and would be a great match. And even my husband shared how he was watching his fave sci-fi show last night and it had a story line about adoption of some cyborg or whatever and the birthmother had the same name as our birthmother. If you had told me last week that I would be feeling a connection to a birthmother, I would have said you are off your rocker. But now I totally get it.

The other thing that has changed in me is a desire to defend the birthmother. When I mentioned some of the details about the situation, one family member started to make some not very nice assumptions about the birthmother and talked about "giving up your baby." So I did get to practice educating our family about positive adoption language and correcting some assumptions about women who make adoption plans. This family member didn't mean any harm, so it was great practice on how to deal with comments like that. But when she started making the assumptions I felt this need to defend the birthmother and say it was not like that at all. And actually from all the information we have, it seems she is making a very reasoned and informed decision.

We ended the day by going out to dinner to celebrate. I was kind of hoping the waitress would ask us what we were celebrating with our wine just so I could say, "we are having a baby, cheers!" But the real fun came when we out for dessert at our favorite ice cream place. While I'm sure everyone enjoys some good ice cream, it is special to us b/c we went out for ice cream after our wedding reception was over for a little private time. It was actually one of my favorite parts of the day. So I thought today would be another great day to celebrate with our favorite ice cream.

So, two and a half months to get ready. eek! End of October is the due date, but we will probably have an induction before then.

P.S. For those few of you who know me in real life (or are my fb friends), please don't talk about this or tell anyone as we are keeping this under wraps for all but close family now.

Second call

We had our second phone call and it went well again. She seemed happy with our answers and said as much. We also learned more about her which was great. I've already written it down so in case this is our match we can start documenting everything we know. eek!

One thing we talked about today is how the child will be named. We are open to getting her input on the middle name and she was happy with that. In this discussion, she also revealed something that confirmed the picture I've been forming in my head about her from the various snippets of information we have. She named her son by filling out job applications in different names and seeing which name got the most hits. That is brilliant! And as a researcher, I love this method. The more I learn about her, the more we seem like similar types of people.

Our meeting

Short update: our meeting went very well! We will know more in a couple of days.

Here's the longer story:

When I came home from work, the hubby was not home and I was panicking that today of all days he gets home late. I called him and he reminded me that he did get to work late since we are in the process of getting more life insurance (checking off the list of things expectant parents need) and had a physical this morning. He made it home in plenty of time for our call.

I talked to the caseworker for a few minutes to get more information about the potential birthmother. I am not going to go into details here, but one thing I will share is that she is parenting a son who is only 7 months old. So the two children will be very close in age. The two children have different fathers. We received a list of questions that the birthmother had for us this afternoon and after talking to the caseworker we talked about how we would answer the questions. So there we were, practicing answers to questions in a way that made us seem normal and unrehearsed...

Yeah, it was a bit awkward and we were both nervous and excited. Our nerves got worse when the call ended up being about 40 minutes late. It was also a bit awkward b/c rather than us talking directly with the birthmother, the caseworker asked us the questions and she kind of led the conversation. I wished the caseworker would just let us talk, but then we were all nervous so it may have been for the best that someone was taking charge. We did get a chance to talk more informally at the end and that allowed us to learn more about the birthmother as a person rather than just a pregnant woman choosing adoption. I actually think we had quite a few things in common, such as a love of reading and education. And we had both moved from high stress states to the south and enjoy the slower pace.

We do seem to have similar ideas about open adoption. We want to exchange letters and pictures and have it be a real two-way exchange, not just that we send things to her. But we want the child to be able to know who her birthmother is (and her son) and eventually read letters from her as well. We also would like 1-2 visits a year. That seemed to be what the birthmother wants as well. That was definitely a good sign.

We talked about our extended families and how we envision raising a child from a different race. The types of things we envision doing with her. Our jobs, our family traditions, ideas about schooling. It definitely seemed like she had thought through some important issues.

After we got off the phone, the caseworker spoke to the birthmother for a little while and then called us. It was a very positive report. The caseworker herself thought we had great answers and was surprised when we said it was our first time talking to a prospective birthparent. The caseworker had shown the birthmother several profiles and she picked out two to talk to. She is talking to the other family tomorrow and we should hear something in the next few days. The next steps are likely to be an in-person visit, although I think at that point if we meet her it will be as the "chosen" couple.

There are a few things that concern us. One is that the two children will be less than one year apart and I just wonder if there are any increased risks if the mother's body did not have time to heal after giving birth before getting pregnant again. The other thing is that her family does not know she is pregnant and she does not want them to find out. So it makes me worried about what will happen if her family finds out and is not happy. I was happy to hear that she wants us in the delivery room, but on the other hand would feel better if she she had a support system there, too.

Oh! I almost forgot to mention that she is expecting a girl!

We have a meeting!

OMG! We have our first phone call scheduled with a prospective birthmother! She liked our profile and has narrowed it down to two families. We are talking to her tomorrow night and she is talking with the other family on Wednesday! The funny thing is I spent this weekend mad at our caseworker b/c she has been slow getting back to us on some questions and I was despairing that it would take us forever to get a match. And now I'm nervous that this might actually happen!

The two things I know she wants to talk about is how open is open adoption for us and whether we want to be in the delivery room. But I need your advice, what should we be asking?!

Warms my heart

One of the common advice given to prospective adoptive parents is to let everyone know they are trying to adopt. The idea is that most adoptive parents find a match through someone they know. I would read this and think, "yeah, right." Not that my family and friends have perfect lives, but I never heard of anyone I know being in a situation that would suggest they are considering adoption. So I always found it hard to believe that we could possibly find a match through our own networks.

But still, this is the advice everyone gives and I am nothing if not someone who follows advice. So I posted a link to our website on FB. And then a friend reposted it. And then another. And another. Wow. I was not expecting such a big response. Even less was I expecting the email I received today. From a friend of a friend, someone I actually know professionally but am not FB friends with. But she saw our link from a friend who reposted it. As it turns out, her sister is considering making an adoption plan. She is struggling in her life right now and is not sure what to do. Apparently she looked at our website and thought we were exactly the kind of family they would want. More importantly, it helped her and her boyfriend achieve some peace in their adoption decision. I am not sure if anything will come from this, but it warms my heart tremendously to know that at least our website is helping someone.