10 Things. By Sarah

This is going to be a list of sorts.  A wordy list, because after all, I have discovered that I can overdo it on the verbiage on the blog.  I have been giving a lot of thought to the process of adding to our family and the last few years of our journey.  Here are my thoughts, starting with trying to conceive naturally and ending with where we are today, waiting in a bit of limbo for our child.

1. Trying to get pregnant (and failing) every single month is the single most emotionally and psychologically draining thing we have ever been through.  My heart sank each month that it didn't happen and it sank even further when I had to tell John the bad news.  Wondering what is wrong with me, if it will ever happen and if I was disappointing John began to take control of my life.  It is a section of my past I don't often like to look back on.

2.  Fertility tests are miserable and painful.  Maybe just for me, because my left fallopian tube was humongous and blocked, but really, I have had plenty of medical procedures, including a bone marrow biopsy and I still rank the HSG the worst pain of my life.  I have even broken a rib and cracked my sternum.  HSG = worst.pain.ever. There was shaking, almost throwing up and cussing like a sailor (sorry Doc).

3.  Deciding to stop trying to conceive and move forward with adoption was the most wonderful AND difficult decision of our lives thus far.  There was relief, but there was also grief.  We grieved over the fact that we were giving up 1.5 years of struggle.  We celebrated the fact that we had a path to go down, that would someday end in our baby coming to be with us.

4. Adoption was actually our first plan of action.  We had always planned on adopting, but my doctor threw us a curve ball that set us on this side story of conception.  I can't say that I don't often kick myself for not just moving forward with plan A - adoption.  I knew that my surgeries had likely taken their toll on my reproductive organs, yet we still got a little pregnancy-bewitched at the thought of me carrying a baby. It was more the urge to be pregnant rather than the result of a biological child.  In the end, having our child be biologically related is not important to us.

5. Telling our friends and family that we were going to adopt was so much harder than I thought it would be.  My parents were and are completely and utterly psyched.  My brother and his family are also excited and completely supportive.  I was really nervous to tell John's mom, because I didn't know how she would react.  She, of course, is happy and supportive and can't wait to have her first grandchild.  Phew!  Friends reacted in different ways.  They didn't understand the process, they didn't know our entire history of trying to conceive and they had so many questions.  That is all pretty much resolved and we are left with amazing, supportive people.  I am an open book at this point, so if you don't understand something, just ask.

6.  People judge.  Oh my god, people really know how to criticize. I know that people can be ignorant, but man, this has really brought out the opinions in people.  Luckily, I don't care what these people think.  It is a lack of education on the subject. 

7.  Waiting is hard!  Feeling idle is not my cup of tea.  I have to be doing something to feel like we are moving forward at all times.  Whether I tweet out our profile (SarahSaysAce by the way) or add a picture to Instagram (Our Instagram), I have to keep it going.  Why?  Because I have no control over anything else.  There is a serious lack of control in this process.

8.  You can't really pay a lot of attention to "average wait times" there are too many variables to make it completely accurate.  We are "paper" or "electronically" pregnant.  We don't know if we will wait a short time like the opossum whose gestation period is like 12 days (yeah, yeah, we have blown through that time frame, I am just making a point) or wait as long as an elephant whose gestation lasts approximately 2 years!  Some hopeful adoptive parents wait even longer than that.  Some wait a week....seriously, that happens too.  It is really unhealthy to compare your wait to other people's wait times. 

9.  The strangest things uplift you, but unfortunately, the strangest things also get you down.  Found that blanky that reminds you of the one you had growing up?  Yes, buy it, wash it in special sensitive skin detergent, fold it over the side of that perfect crib you found and relish in your find.  Shopping with friends or family and they want to go look at the baby section, you get excited, because they are excited about your potential little one. But wait, suddenly you realize they aren't thinking of you or your baby.  It isn't real to them yet.  Remember that it wont ever be as real to them as it is to you. Yes, feelings are hurt, but would you look ridiculous letting that be known? Maybe they are too scared of how you will react if they seem too eager and excited?  Let's hope.  Deep breathing exercises at Target...

10. Finally, you aren't actually alone in this, it just feels that way.  Even if your family and friends don't know how to breach the subject, they are still there, internally and sometimes externally rooting for you.  The adoption network is also bigger than you can ever imagine.  From the people you can meet through your agency, to the general online community, it spreads far and wide.  Sometimes I want to talk to someone, but knowing that people in my immediate circle wouldn't fully understand, the words fail to come out.  In those moments, I know we have our fellow waiting families or friends who have had successful adoptions to turn to and it stops feeling lonely.

This turned out to be so much longer than I had intended.  A little summary of this week, since I took up so much room with my list.  It snowed!  Woot!  We had to miss the show at the Fox Tuesday night, because we were iced in.  We were lucky that we didn't attempt to go because we had friends stuck for hours in their cars on the interstates.  I really hope they are all home getting some good rest now!  We played hard in the snow like children.  We spent a lot of time talking about how fun it will be when our kid sees his/her first snow.  The snow will  melt this afternoon, as it is supposed to be sunny and above freezing.  Back to the real world tomorrow.

The house looks so pretty in the snow.

Meow

 

A Few Quick Thoughts

We have just crept by 4 months of waiting for our child's birth parent(s) to find us (or us find them?).  This is by no means a long time to wait.  The average is 15 months.  We are still hopeful.

I added some small details to the nursery.  Owl door knobs to the closet, a crib mattress, and curtains.  We removed some excess furniture that was taking up room in there and it finally looks like a real nursery.  Once we know whether we will have a son or daughter, we can add the finishing touches.  I can't tell if a baby-less nursery will continue to be motivating or become a reminder of things being quite stagnant.  For now it remains a symbol of great things to come.

Owl knob for the nursery closet

We have had some amazing friends share our blog and iheartadoption site.  Thank you all so much!  It means more than you can ever imagine to us that even one of you would be willing to help us out.  If you want to share, but feel like you don't know us well enough, push that out of your head and share away.  We are thankful for each and every person who helps us get the word out.  Links are on the right side of this blog.

I have always been anti-blog and anti-twitter, but now that I have somewhere to put my verbal spew, I may be a fan of both.  It may become self-indulgent, if it hasn't already.  I hope my thoughts about this process will help someone who is considering adoption, either birth parent or potential adoptive parent.  I also want to be able to look back on the process after we are basking in new family glow and read about how we got there.

We are going to the Fox theater tomorrow, if the weather doesn't keep us home, to see the Book or Mormon.  Part of me wants the snow to stay away so we can still go and the rest of me is getting mad at that part of me because.... snow!  I am not getting my hopes up though, it is Georgia after all. 

On Feeling Exposed - Literally and Figuratively

Can we just talk about baring one's soul for a minute here?  I've done it, I am doing it and I have a love/hate relationship with it.  On one hand, I am or at least used to be a pretty private person.  On the other hand, blogging about this has become such a great source of coping with what has become a very public journey.  Anyway, some thoughts on feeling like you can all see through me now.

I find so many parallels between adoption and becoming a transplant recipient.  In the process to be evaluated for my kidney transplants, I had to bare it all.  Every nook and cranny of my body was explored, my psychological state had to be "signed off on" (literally had to see someone who wrote a letter stating that I was sane.... good news! I am!).  I even had to run on a treadmill hooked up to a bunch of wires to prove I was healthy enough to handle surgery.  During the treadmill test, the nurses made jokes like "it's cool, we have revived every person who has temporarily died in this room!".  Yay!  I was nowhere near dying, so I was cool with the morbid jokes and I am always down with the medical humor.  By no means is kidney transplantation a walk in the park, but I really didn't have to put myself out there so much, because I had two living donors volunteer without me asking.  Could I ever feel more loved?!  People who are searching for a kidney donor do in fact have to put themselves out there a little more. Generally by asking friends and family and using social media.  How interesting that we are doing the same thing to find our potential birth mother. 

In the process for adoption, I have had to bare it all emotionally and psychologically.  I am not talking about having to be signed off on by a psychologist, though I did have to explain why I saw one during my transplant evaluation, I am talking about exposing my soul to my friends, family and strangers.  To those who know me personally, there is no question that this "soul baring" has been harder for me to grasp than either transplant ever was.  Here is what is in my inner most thoughts: I want a family, I feel it in my heart, my brain and my soul.  I feel it in every single cell that makes up my body and I know for sure that adoption is how my family will become complete. 

It has taken me months to come to terms with having to use social media to get the word out that we are adopting.  The blog I could handle fairly early on, because I can use it as a way to document our process and keep people updated on what is going on.  I eased into making a Facebook adoption page by initially posting adoption related stuff on my personal page.  Making the Facebook adoption page and sending out requests for people to "like" it was hard!  I don't like to ask for help!  I don't like for people to see my guts!  The recent addition of Instagram and Twitter was HUGE for me.  I shook like a crazy person when I made the post on Facebook to ask people to follow us on yet another social media outlet.  Is it asking too much of people?  To me, it was a lot like saying "Please click here to see what I look like nude".  Another level of letting the world in.  Deep breathing, hit submit.... 

We went through quite a bit a of research to make sure what we are doing is ethical.  We have a lot of faith that our agency, the Independent Adoption Center, is the most ethical agency around. We want a family and there are people out there who cannot parent for one reason or another out there. We offer a stable, loving home and only want the best for our future child and his/her birth family.  If I have to do some exposition of my inner thoughts, some swallowing of the pride, some asking for help in getting the word out, then that is what I am going to do. 

Lastly, I may have written about this before, but it really has been on my mind lately.  The parallel between adoption and organ transplants.  Often, if not always, both situations are bittersweet.  One family's happiness is a result of another family's loss.  In organ transplantation, often a family member will be lost and the organs donated.  Many people will get a second chance at life and at happiness due to that loss- families will be created and maintained.  In adoption, there is also loss.  The birth family is experiencing having to place a baby, which can trigger those same feelings.  As a result, another family is created.  Happiness from grief.  Quite the difficult scenario for all involved in the adoption triad ( child, birth parents, adoptive parents).  We can only make the best of it and promise to be great and supportive parents and keep an ongoing open relationship with the birth family. 

To end things on an uplifting note, I went to the zoo with my sister-in-law Heather and nephew Henry yesterday.  I included a couple of pictures.  I like that Henry wanted to be the big lion instead of the baby.  It is very representative of him wanting to be a big boy.  He is two going on five in his head. 

Henry and I conquering the carousel.  He used my entire head for safety.

Heather and Henry being lions. ROAR!

Curling, Adoption, Smoking Popes

Hello again, John here. Giving Sarah a break since she's doing such a great job with the blog posts, figured I should keep up with things going on as well! I'll try to make mine just as good...here goes.

Well, we are well into curling season. The latest in my long line of obscure sport participation (lacrosse? what was I thinking?), curling has been my favorite sport in the Winter Olympics since I was a kid. I remember watching it in 1988 and then later in the 90's and 00's. I like it because it's a true team sport - everyone working together at once on the ice - and because of the unique straytegy involved. You'll be hearing a lot more about it in the next month with the Olympics in Sochi, and the Atlanta Curling Club (of which I am an officer) is going to be very busy over the next couple of months giving everyone a chance to try it and to promote the sport around the metro area. It's a lot of fun and I've made a lot of new friends. On Wednesday nights we have our league going right now, and there's a youth hockey team that uses the ice before us. I always get there a little early, so I get to see some of their practice. We've been live with our open adoption since September, and I notice that things that I took for granted or ignored before have a new meaning now. I like watching the youth hockey practice, wondering about our future child and what interests they'll have, if they'll be into hockey or curling or football or music or whatever. I can't wait to find out.

Speaking of music, I came across a song on my computer recently that I hadn't listened to in a long time. Going back to how things have new meanings now since we've been focused on the adoption, this song really resonated with me when I listened to it for the first time in a while as it relates to Sarah and the adoption process, so I wanted to share it. Hope you like it. "Don't be afraid" by the Smoking Popes.



Don't be afraid of anything that faces you today
You might not know this but I'm with you all the way

Busy Busy

Sorry for the delay in updating the blog!  It is a new year and that means a lot of new activities and responsibilities. 

John is getting ready to work with the Atlanta Curling Club to hold a bunch of "learn to curl" classes.  With the winter Olympics coming up, there may be a spike in interest to join the club or spend the evening learning what curling is all about.  http://www.atlcurling.org/ is their site if anyone wants to check it out.  My classes for Spring term just started.  I decided to take two this semester- digital photography in instruction and a course on designing technology for enhanced instruction.  So far I think that both of these classes put together will be less rigorous than the one course I took last term.  They should sufficiently distract me from the adoption wait!  It turns out my dinky little point and shoot digital camera is not really good enough for the photography course, but it is all I have, so I will make do.  A nice digital camera is not required, but is suggested.  Perhaps once I win the lottery that I don't play, I will buy an $800 camera.

In other news, it has been unseasonably cold in Georgia!  Yesterday morning I got locked out of my doctor's office in 5 degree weather.  They opened the door late to a very grouchy, frozen human.  I believe my words were "Really?  I wouldn't even leave a cockroach out here."  I totally would though... gross.  I hate cockroaches! Everyone was hoping for a surprise snow/winter weather day off of work.  Even though the news got our hopes up, we all trucked it in Monday morning and begrudgingly worked all day.  It was the first day of classes here at the University where I work, so it's probably best that we were open.  It's a huge exciting deal any time Georgia is threatened with snow (at least to us Georgia natives!).  It has been a couple of years since we have had a good snow.  I am like a child when it snows.  Some people want snow, because it is pretty, I want snow so I can play in it.  I want to build snowmen or even snowcats!  I want to make a sled out of whatever we can find in the garage and then go home worn out and drink hot chocolate.  I totally live in the wrong region of the country.

On to adoption stuff.  This is an adoption blog after all.  I have been thinking a lot lately about what open adoption really means to me.  Open adoption to me, means that our family will only grow larger.  Not just because we will have a child, but because our child's birth family/mother will (hopefully) become like extended family to us.  If they aren't comfortable with that, it is understandable, but from what I have read, it is psychologically healthiest for all involved- mainly the child- to have that sort of relationship.  To me, open adoption means that our child will have the answers they need when times get tough, like when their teacher wants them to draw a family tree or when they hit the teenage years and have angst about life (as we all did.... don't pretend like you didn't).  Open adoption means that if our child gets sick, we can access medical history and make informed decisions about treatment.  Open adoption to me means that somehow, someday, we will complete our family.  All of the hardship and disappointment will be in the past.

We made an adoption Facebook page about a week ago.  https://www.facebook.com/johnandsarahadopt?ref=hl Our agency recommends doing a lot of our own networking and it took me quite a while to embrace the idea.  I don't want to come off as forceful or like we are "advertising" for a baby.  It is more about just getting the word out  that we are a homestudy approved hopeful adoptive family.  Please think about liking our Facebook page and sharing it with your friends.  You never know who may know someone who is planning on making an adoption plan for their baby.

Until next time! Here is a picture of Waffles demonstrating how cold it has been lately.

Resolutions 2014

Yes, this is happening- a blog post mere minutes into the new year.  I just got home from spending New Year's Eve at my brother's house.  In true Sarah form, I wanted to be out the door right after midnight to avoid the drunk drivers who will be flocking to the roads shortly.  On the 5 minute ride home, I gave some additional thought to my 2014 goals.  So, in no particular order, here are my goals or resolutions or whatever you want to call them.

First and foremost, I resolve to be a good person.  We all have our judgmental moments, our selfish moments and our angry moments.  I resolve to have less of them and to be the best friend, wife, daughter (and hopefully mother) that I can be.  I resolve to say YES whenever humanly possible.  I resolve to tell people I love them even if we haven't been all that forthcoming with those particular words in the past.  How hard it is to look at someone you love and utter those 3 simple words?  What an impact it makes to love and to be loved.

I resolve to make the most out of life.  This suburb, that cubical, that empty nursery....  I will make the best of it all.  I will go on adventures and overcome fears.  I will accept myself and others just as we are.  I will be a positive influence on my nephew and my future children, because I will believe in who I am.  I will set out to make a difference in this world.

I resolve to be brave and confident when asking people to spread word of our adoption.  I will keep my pride intact while asking for help and support.  I will keep my head up, even when my choices are challenged.   

I resolve to pull John along with me in all of it. For people going through such transition in life, a new year offers new hope.  Resigning to the fact that 2013 was not going to be our year was painful.  We have a new lease on our hopes and dreams.  Hello, cheesy blog post!  I am allowed to be sentimental once a year ok?

I do not resolve to drink less coffee.  I love it.  It brings me pleasure and makes me cheerful and productive.  Bring on the beans.

Happy New Year to everyone.  In the morning, I will wake up and drink my coffee, step outside and breath in the cold air, and just live.