Training Recap

It's taken me a week or so to fully process everything that happened last weekend.  I want to document our adoption process in the same way I've written about infertility -- which means sooner rather than later.  But the emotions that our first two classes brought to the surface were much more difficult, and complicated, than I ever imagined.  

The training itself was long and intense.  The program we are working with condenses 13 weeks of classes into two weekends.  So, we had 16 hours of fast-paced, gut-wrenching instruction (10 one day, 6 the next) that focused mainly on the struggles faced by foster parents.  It was so much harder than I expected.  The first night, I cried in the car on the way home, needing desperately a cathartic release of a myriad of emotions.

I am overwhelmed by the needs of these children and their birth families.  I am frustrated by my own inability to have a family.  And I am angry.  Angry  that it is so hard for some of us, and so easy for others.  Angry that some people are unable to care for their own children, and put them through such horrible experiences that can't help but scar them for life.  I don't understand the universe, despite trying to make sense of it all.  I don't know that I ever will.

I want to help.  I want to be a sea of calm in these children's rocky lives. At the same time, I am looking for MY forever family. We were repeatedly reminded last weekend that our role as foster parents would be to care for someone else's child.  That's not what we're looking for -- we are looking for OUR child. .  It sounds selfish, but I don't want to "compete" with an older child's birth parents.  I want to be my child's mother -- I just don't have it in my heart to support the conflicting loyalties experienced by a child who has been traumatized by neglect or abuse, and yet who (quite naturally) still longs for his or her birth family.  I want my babies to be mine -- whether I've birthed them or not.  Does that sound awful?
 

Last weekend just confirmed that we are rock-solid now in our preference to not foster, a decision I know many won't understand.  I totally support the need for foster parents and for reunification efforts.  Birth parents need education and support, children need a safe place to stay.  If at all possible, children and their families need help to return to a healthy state.  Many of the other couples in our class are excited to help make that happen. We just....can't.  Maybe its the years of working in poverty schools and seeing day-in and day-out the results of neglect and abuse.   We're just not in that place right now where we want to deal with all the struggles that come with fostering -- sharing parental responsibilities, the emotional ups and downs, the prolonged waiting, the back and forth with the courts, etc.


The best part to come out of last weekend was the chance it gave Mo and I to talk about our future plans.  I am so, so, so grateful that we are still on the same page.   We are going to continue the training (just one more weekend!) and leave ourselves open to the right adoption situation should it come along.  We're not entirely sure what that looks like, but we are getting more and more clear about what it does NOT look like.  And that's a start.

As we talked, Mo also brought up (of his own accord!) the possibility of going with DS.   It's a secret thought I've harbored for months, but I've been hesitant to broach it with him while genetic children were still an option.  I had planned on bringing it up post-final-FET.  I was so relieved to hear him say he's open to the idea.  He said that he didn't want to deny me the chance to be a mother.  I've done more research lately into Embryo Adoption also, but was surprised to find out how expensive it can be.  Mo even offered to do IVF again -- but my heart isn't in it.  It is all too much -- too much money, too much time, too much emotional upheaval to risk on another miscarriage.  I think I could do DS -- IUI's are so much simpler, though a loss would still be difficult to digest.  Still, it would answer the question of whether or not I am even capable of carrying a pregnancy.  So, we have options.  And I'm glad -- because the more I learn about foster care and adoption, the more terrified I become.

It's been a really, really, really long time -- but I think its similar to how I felt when I first realized we were battling infertility.  Though IVF was a long way off (I had no idea HOW long), I remember thinking: "What if THAT doesn't work?  If the be-all, end-all in treatments leaves us childless?  THEN what?"  I couldn't wrap my 24 year-old brain around it at the time.  And yet, six years later, I'm as nonchalant about IVF as any other seasoned veteran.  It's a process, one that can only be tackled one step at a time.  I have a strange suspicion that adoption will be similar, and I hope that when I look back on this journey, it won't be nearly as scary as I imagine it to be.