So Many Mixed Emotions

Tonight Mo and I attended our first adoption informational meeting with a local church.  In our area, there is a non-profit, Christian-based organization that works hand in hand with the DHS in finding foster and adoptive homes for the children in its custody.  Basically the premise is that they help you with the paperwork, speed up the process a little by providing more convenient training times, and as such hope to draw more families in to care for needy children. As I told Mo, I can put up with a little "God-talk" if it helps this process along a bit faster! :-)

Because of this meeting, I've run the gamut of emotion today.  Mo and I have talked of attending this meeting for several months.  But, for some reason, as it approached tonight, I found myself dreading it.  To be honest, I was looking for reasons to not go.  I was cranky and almost called it off.  I'm glad I didn't.

I didn't learn anything at all at the session (it was basically a Powerpoin.t of what they have posted on their website), but I did get a chance to talk to Mo.  And, amazingly, we are somehow on the same page again.  I don't know how it happened, but he's done a complete 180 from where he was after our last loss in August.  He actually looked at me tonight and said, "We're going to be parents.  I don't care how. "  I swear, my heart did triple flips.

I was so nervous going into the meeting, not knowing what to expect.  And, I will admit, there was a bit of bitterness/resentfulness that I even had to attend this meeting -- why can't we just have a baby the "normal" way????  Why does this have to be so hard?

But by the end of the evening, I was feeling happy and calm once again.  We have a plan.  We have no answers, no idea HOW we're going to make this work.  But -- we have a plan.  And we all know how much Jo loves her plans.

Basically, we've decided to keep all of our options open for the time being.  We are going forward with the FET sometime in January/February, depending on when we can get the cycle timed.  I'm still not holding out much hope for that, but I can't NOT take the risk.  We are also going to go ahead and complete all the paperwork through this agency/DHS.  It's free, it will get us a state-approved homestudy on the books, and it may even lead somewhere.  (Mo is more hopeful of this than I am, so we shall see).  We have agreed to be very specific about the type of situation we will accept, even knowing that this will prolong our wait.  Some very good friends of ours have recently (within the last two years) gone through this exact process.  They have been parenting two beautiful little girls since they were 11 months and 22 months old.  After being told many times that the parental rights were being terminated and that they would be able to adopt the girls, the judge very recently reversed her position and my friend is losing her daughters (who are now 3 and 4 years old) in the next few weeks to what she knows is a terrible home life.  It is beyond heartbreaking, and I simply cannot put Mo and myself into a similar situation.  We can't foster, knowing that re-unification with birthparents is the goal.  That being said, we know (or at least I do) that we may wait a very long time for an infant to become available that is free to adopt outright.  But, by having everything completed, if such a situation does turn up, we will be ready.

We also discussed being open to sibling groups (provided that they are a fairly young group).  We have always wanted a big family (we planned on four, before IF was in the picture), and if we can build our family "overnight" than all the better.  Again, I'm not banking on anything -- I'm simply putting us into the realm of possibility.

If all goes according to plan,we will be open and waiting in a few months time.  We will have finished our final FET, and have made a plan for future treatments (which will not, we've agreed, include IVF again).  I am still waiting to broach the idea of DS or DEmbryo with Mo -- both are fairly inexpensive, and would finally answer the question of whether or not I can carry a pregnancy. Plus, they have the added benefit of not having to risk a disrupted adoption down the line.  If that doesn't work, or if we wait a while and don't get placed with DHS, we will begin looking into either hiring a lawyer and searching for a private adoption, or contacting an agency.  So far, the big ones in our area are well out of our price range, but there are some smaller agencies that we may be able to afford.

I am excited to be doing SOMETHING concrete again.  Waiting, and being lapped over and over again (another colleague announced her pregnancy this week -- ugh), is just not leaving me in a good place.  I need things to do, even if those things are a long-shot.  And so I'm off to gather paperwork, and check things off a list, and hopefully take a few more baby steps toward my future child(ren).  I love you kiddos, wherever you are, and hope that you will hurry up and come on home to me.