A month and a half with no post.  Things are good right now.  Really good.  S is doing really well at school.  We had a conference with her teacher this morning and it seems that she is right on track.  They did testing the second week of school and she got everything correct that they had already gone over.  She is having the most problem with recognizing sounds.  Like she sees and ‘M’ and knows what it is, but she can’t tell you that the word ‘mom’ makes an ‘M’ sound.  The teacher wasn’t concerned though.

There was one incident at school a couple of weeks ago that involved one of the extended care workers.  S had had a particularly rough morning and she was having a meltdown when it was time to go to school.  She was still crying when we got there.  I carried her in all the while trying to calm her down.  She was hugging my leg and didn’t want to stay there (normally she is fine going to school).  The worker who is there in the morning looked at me and said, “you can’t leave her here like this considering her history”.  We have only told three people at the school that we are adopting her.  Her teacher, the guidance counselor and the extended day director.  The only reason we told them was because her name change wasn’t legal when school started, but we wanted them to go ahead and call her by her new last name.  Anyway, this woman, who we hadn’t told about the adoption, says that in front of all the other kids in the cafeteria.  They weren’t really paying attention, but still, it was way out of line.  So she’s adopted, so what?  At that moment, she was a 5 year old having a tantrum.  I ended up picking her up and carrying her out to the car while she was biting and scratching me and we sat there for twenty minutes until she calmed down.  I was 45 minutes late to work that morning.  Yesterday DH spoke with the director about what happened and he brought up that she was violating FERPA by saying that.  That definitely got her attention and she said it was unacceptable and that she would speak with the worker about what happened and assured us it would never happen again.  We aren’t ashamed that she is adopted, but it is her private information that the school shouldn’t be sharing with others.  It should be her decision whether she shares that with other people.

We have seen major improvements with her behavior in the past few weeks.  We have started giving her melatonin at night and it has been a miracle for her routine.  Now she actually gets sleep and is in bed asleep by 8:00 most nights.  Well, on the floor because she likes to sleep there, don’t ask me why. 

We found a new therapist for S because the old one just didn’t seem to be working for us, plus she wasn’t covered by our insurance.  The new one is and we really like her.  It’s more like family therapy instead of just therapy for S.

Our life has really been turned upside down in the last three months.  We have decided to take ourselves off of the waiting list with our agency for an infant.  We just can’t afford it now that we have adopted S.  We want to be able to enjoy her and not have to worry about saving every single dime plus fundraising.  In that same vein, we donated our last frozen embryo.  That was a tough decision.  We got a bill in the mail for $300 to store it for another year.  We knew we weren’t going to use it, but it was a hard decision letting it go.  I was torn about what to do with it.  I asked DH if he would consider donating it to someone we knew (no one in particular) who needed it.  He said that he wouldn’t be able to handle that.  I see his point, but it’s hard for me to imagine that someone out there might be carrying and raising my genetic material.  Not that genetics matter for shit anyway, but it is what it is.

So it seems that we have an only child.  Not what I envisioned for my life, but really, what I envisioned for my life went out the window years ago.  I was kind of sad about that for a while, but I think I’m actually happy about it now.  When all was said and done, I felt relief.  We’ve been on this never-ending ride for years now and it was so nice to be able to step off and just sit in the moment and enjoy it.  

As an update to my last post, the anxiety ramped up and I think it's starting to go back down, with the help of some meds that I'm so glad I have.

Work has been insane the past few weeks, but we are coming off a busy period so I think things are going to settle down.

Life with S is great.  She has good days and bad days, but overall pretty good.  She has her second play therapy appointment tomorrow and I think we are going to ask the therapist about a few things she does behavior-wise that we would like to work on.  We also got a kitten.  Did I mention that?  I was coming back to work after lunch and there was a little kitten trying to get in the building.  I just walked by at first and on the elevator decided I was going to get a box and go back down to rescue the poor thing.  I work on the 17th floor so I was worried it would be gone before I go there, but she was still there!

I wasn't originally going to keep her, but you know how that goes.  So now we have a dog, and cat and a kitten.  S loves her and we constantly have to tell her, "gentle!" because she just wants to carry her around and squeeze her all day.  She has been missing the dog that she had at her birth mother's house and I think this has helped somewhat with that.

That's pretty much it around here.  We've gotten into a routine.  I'm tired, but it's a good tired.

I've been struggling lately.  My anxiety is back full-force.  Dealing with S, going back to work and dealing with dad-drama is taking its toll on me.  I saw my therapist this past Tuesday and will be making another appointment with her.  I'm just counting down the hours until I get off work today and the weekend starts!

So I really need to update.  I have been posting on my other blog and you can head on over there for details: www.newsonnix.blogspot.com.

I wanted to post some other stuff here, just for posterity and so I can look back to see what kind of progress we have made (or haven't).

Disclaimer beforehand: Life with S is awesome.  We love her to bits and are having a blast.  What I'm going to be talking about are the hard parts.  Because not everything is unicorns and butterflies.  We knew that going in.

A little backstory on S: I am best friends with her mother's stepsister.  That is how we got involved.  S had been in foster care and they were terminating the birth mother's parental rights which is when we entered the picture.  Birth mom signed over rights to us.

Because of a crazy judge, when we got full custody, the judge did not cease the weekly visitation that BM (Birth mom) gets.  She had one visit and S regressed majorly.  She still misses her mom, as any five year old would.  She doesn't really understand why she can't see her anymore.  We have told her that we are her new family so it confused the hell out of her that she was still getting to see BM.  We have been working with our attorney though and as of yesterday we got visitation to stop.  We are on the fence about having one last visit for the two of them for closure reasons.

Anyway, on to how she is adjusting.  She is a happy little girl most of the time.  But she has her moments.  Mainly when we ask her to do something like put her shoes up and she ignores us.  When we make her listen to us and do it she melts down.  I'm talking screaming, kicking, scratching, the whole nine yards.  We have been doing a lot of bear hugs with her until she calms down.  Often when she is relaxing after a meltdown I will rock her in our rocking chair.  The other night I was lying with her in bed (one of us stays with her until she falls asleep).  I told her she couldn't play with her toys because it was time to go to sleep.  She gets up out of bed, looks me straight in the eye and touches her dollhouse as if to say, "what are you going to do?".  I pick her up and put her back in bed at which point she melts down.  Then she starts screaming that she wants to rock.  She did that just so she could get in trouble and have a tantrum so she could get in the rocking chair.  We had a talk after that.  If she wants to rock all she has to do is ask us.

As far as attachment goes, she called us mommy and daddy right off the bat.  She is a little too giving with her affection.  I don't know if I would go so far as to say she has reactive attachment disorder, but she is definitely disordered.  She will go to anyone, which is not a good thing.  We have her first therapy appointment this Friday and we are going to discuss with the therapist things we need to do to help her realize that we are her parents and no one else is.  (At one point she told us that we were her new family, but that next year she would have another new family.  She has been moved around so much that she doesn't understand that adults stick around).

She has regressed a bit in the toilet training area.  She is fine during the day and will tell us that she needs to go to the bathroom.  At night however, she still has to wear pull-ups.  When we first got her, she would wake up dry about half the time.  Now she wets her pull up every night.  Sometimes she will go in her pull up while still awake, immediately after we put it on.  I don't know what that's about.  We asked her and she said she likes to go in her pull up.  : /  Speaking of the bathroom, when we first got her, she would say she needed to go to the bathroom to get out of doing something.  Example, we are eating dinner and she wants to leave the table.  We tell her she needs to wait until we are all finished.  Then she says she has to go to the bathroom, but instead of doing that she goes to her room to play with her toys.  After we figured out what she was doing, when she said she had to go, one of us would take her to the bathroom, put her on the toilet and then bring her back to whatever we were doing.  She hasn't done that in a few weeks now.

The other night she had the worst meltdown so far.  She is taking ballet classes.  I told her she needed to get ready to go.  She dragged her feet.  I said she had 15 minutes to get dressed and get her shoes on or she wouldn't be going.  She got dressed, but didn't put her ballet shoes on.  I gave her a two minute warning.  She acted dumb, like she had no idea how to put them on (putting them on backwards, putting the elastic behind her heel, etc).  Finally she was out of time so I told her we weren't going.  30 seconds later she had her shoes on, but it was too late.  I said we still weren't going.  That's when she lost it.  45 minutes of constant screaming.  It devolved into her being upset about ballet class and then went to her crying about missing her mom.  She has got so much going on in her little brain and she doesn't know how to deal with it, hence the meltdowns.  I think she has a lot of anger too (justifiably).  I'm going to ask the therapist about how to help her deal with her anger in a healthy way.

We are changing her last name to ours when the adoption is finalized.  At first she was adamant that she was not going to change her name.  Then about a week or two ago she asked me when her name was going to change.  I told her and said her full name out loud.  She got super excited and spent about five minutes yelling, "I'm S---- K---- N----!".  Some days she still isn't happy about changing her name, but more often than not she is accepting of it.

Like I said before, it's not all gloom and doom at our house.  There are just some difficult times.  But then again, she's five.

The adoption finalization is set for August 9th.  She starts school on August 20th.

I still can't post too many details, but we are having a blast.  Right now we get Little Bit (her name until I can actually share) on the weekends.  Of course there have been some stumbling blocks, but I think overall she is doing very well.  I'm sure that it is confusing to come to our house on the weekend and then to go back to her foster family during the week.

Her birth mother sent over a lot of clothes and her toys last week.  Most of the clothes don't fit her anymore or they were just in really bad shape, but I was able to keep a few things.  DH picked her up on Friday and when she saw her toys at our place she asked him why we had them.  He explained to her that her mom couldn't take care of her anymore, but that she wanted us to take care of her from now on.  He said that she cried and told him she needed to go home so she could take care of her mom.  :(  He explained that parents take care of children, not the other way around.

She definitely has some attachment disorder.  She started calling us mommy and daddy on the second day we had her.  She didn't even know at that point that we were adopting her.  I think she would call anyone who paid her attention mommy and daddy.

She has been testing us to see how far she can go.  She has a meltdown pretty much every day.  DH has bruises all over his legs from when he was holding her in his lap while she kicked and screamed for half an hour.  I've been doing lots of reading and know we have a long road ahead of us, but I think it will be good.  We already have a good time with her.  We took her ice skating on Saturday and she loved it.

Our court hearing is on June 12th and hopefully then she will be with us full-time and I can share more details.

I've been keeping a secret and it has been killing me not being able to share. We are adopting a four year old little girl. I can't give too many details right now because it isn't finalized yet. She is currently in foster care, but the birth mother has relinquished her rights to us. She will be spending weekends with us and on June 12th we have a court hearing at which time we will be granted full custody. I wish I could share some pictures because she is freaking adorable. We spent time with her last weekend and we all had a blast. She is the girliest of girls and is obsessed with princesses and barbies (lord help me). Her birthday in early June so we get to throw a birthday party! As soon as we are able to share details I will be back with pictures and all the fun stuff. Until then we will be running around like crazy trying to get our house ready for a four year old!

Have you checked out our giveaway for a Kindle Fire?  Go look and help us out!

So what's been going on here lately?  Our homestudy is in the process of being finished if it isn't already.  Now we just wait.  And wait. And wait.

Last weekend was my brother's wedding.  We all flew out to Texas to be there.  It just so happened that we flew out on my birthday.  We got there and realized that our hotel reservation was for the next weekend and they were all booked up.  ALL the hotels in this tiny town were booked.  There were four weddings going on that weekend.  My mom offered to let us stay with them in their room.  Only problem is they were already sharing a room with two of my brothers, my sil and nephew.  With us that would make 8 people in 1 room.  We didn't really have a choice though.  There was so much luggage in that room we could barely even move around.

We all went out to eat dinner and my brother bought me a beer (after we had been sharing is flask of whiskey, it had been a stressful day) and then surprised me with ice cream and got the band at the restaurant to sing me happy birthday.  Later on the four of us (me and my brothers) decided to go visit my dad.  He was staying in a different hotel that we had to drive to.  We talked about the hotel debacle and had a laugh about it.  Then my stepmother told me that they had an extra bed if I needed to get away from everyone.  Stupid me assumed that she was talking about me and DH.  Against my better judgement I texted him and said that we could stay there if we wanted (there is a history with my dad and honestly I don't trust him all that much).  He arrived with my SIL after they had been to Wal-Mart.  He showed up with a birthday/sorry I screwed up the hotel room gift.  It was an iPad 2 which I have wanted for a while.  When he mentioned it was an iPad 2, my stepmom went off about how awful it was that he didn't get me an iPad 3 and that she would be so pissed if my dad did that to her.  I didn't even know how to respond so I just said nothing and kind of shut down.

A while later I asked them if we could stay there with them.  My stepmother looked at me and said, "well maybe I don't feel like sharing a room.  Especially considering what happened in LA".  A few years ago I shared a hotel room with them when we were in LA.  She accused me of stealing some of her stuff.  I didn't and wouldn't give in, so I guess she just still thinks that I'm a thief.  That was the tipping point to a bad day, my birthday of all days.  I got up and told DH that we had to go.  Didn't even say goodbye.  My SIL came with us.  I started crying in the car.  I know that my stepmother is a bitch, but my dad just sat there and didn't say a word the whole time.  That's what hurts the most.  

I have been avoiding both of them since that incident.  Didn't say a word to them at the rehearsal dinner and the wedding.  I'm not making any effort to keep in touch with them.  I'm sure they don't think that they've done anything wrong.  After all, I'm a "thief".

Their loss.

Kindle Fire giveaway!

Go look at our other blog for info on a fundraiser we're doing.  We are giving away a Kindle Fire.  You get one entry for every $5 donated.  At $25 the number goes up.  Click here for details.  You don't have to be local to enter!!!  Please share with your friends too!  If you share on your blog, facebook or twitter you get an extra entry.

Parenting Class

Tonight is our parenting class that we have to attend for our agency.  It's done by a local hospital and is for women and their partners who are about to give birth.  There are four classes in the series with the last one being about newborn care.  We are only taking the last class since we don't need to know about labor and delivery, tour the hospital, etc, etc.  We'll be surrounded by big old pregnant bellies.  That should be a blast.

All joking aside, this is the last thing we have to do before our homestudy.  Speaking of which, it's on Saturday.  Ack!  We've got to do some major cleaning!

Now for a rant: About two months ago we got an email at work saying that our company was going to announce a new maternity/family leave policy at the end of the quarter (March).  Our company has no maternity leave.  Only FMLA which guarantees up to 12 weeks off with no pay.  If you want to be paid you have to use up all of your vacation and sick time.  We can't afford to go three months without my paycheck so I was excited when they announced this.

We got the details about the program yesterday, and honestly, it's more of an insult than anything.  Women who give birth are given two weeks of pregnancy leave followed by one week of parental leave paid at 100%.  After that, she will have access to 100% of her accrued sick pay balance up to 6 weeks for vaginal birth or 8 weeks for a caesarean section.  Following that period, new birth mothers may also use up to 50% of their remaining accrued sick time balance.

Since this is based on giving birth, adoptive mothers are only allowed the one week of parental leave and then 50% of accrued sick days.  That's right.  Whenever we have a baby, my company is SO GENEROUS, that they are going to give me a whole 5 days of pay.  I hope you can read the sarcasm there.  I know that a lot of companies in the U.S. don't have any maternity policy at all, but really.  Five days?  The funny part is that the description of the five day parental leave is for parents to be able to bond with a newborn or newly adopted child under the age of 18.  All of this is in response to feedback from employees wanting a better work/life balance.  Give me a break.  Right now I have about 20 sick days accrued.  So if we had a baby right now, I would get 5 days paid, then I would have 10 more days of sick time that I could use.  Wow a whole three weeks.  Daycares won't even take a baby until they are 6 weeks old.

Besides which, I'm taking the full 12 weeks off.  I have no choice in going back to work, but I'm going to delay it as long as possible.  Under FMLA, I can use all of my sick time and vacation days, which is what will happen.  All of the discussions around this new policy are in response to people complaining about going on maternity leave and exhausting all of their vacation and sick time.  When they come back to work with a 3 month old baby they no longer have any sick days that they can use if the baby gets sick and they have to stay home with him/her.  This new policy doesn't do much to alleviate that problem, especially for adoptive parents.  It blows, but there's not much I can do about it.

I did the calculations and if I don't use any sick days for the next 18 months, I will have exactly 12 weeks paid time off after which I'll be tapped out.

Can someone find me a job in Canada???

The issue of race

I am hesitant to write this post, but it has been on my mind so here I am.  

When we were filling out all of the paperwork for our agency there was a section where we had to talk about what sort of child we desired.  This included things like race, gender, prenatal drug or alcohol use by the birth mother, medical conditions, birth defects, etc.  It was hard to go down this long list of different possibilities and decide what we could and couldn't handle.  

One sticking point for us was race.  At our agency, approximately 1/3 of the babies that come to them are black, 1/3 are bi-racial (black-white) and 1/3 are white.  We were told that the wait time for a caucasian baby is 12-18 months.  If we were willing to accept any race, the wait time would only be around 6 months.  We decided that at this time we are only willing to accept a white baby (both of us are white).  

After typing that out my instinct is to hurriedly tell you that we are not racist by any means.  There are so many factors that play into our decision and I don't know if I can even verbalize all of them.  I've done so much research on trans-racial adoption, on whether or not it hurts the child to not be raised by someone of the same race.  In a perfect world it shouldn't matter, but we don't live in a perfect world.  So many people have told me that it doesn't matter what color a baby is.  They all need love.  And yes, that's true.  But that baby grows up into a child and then an adult.  An individual with thoughts and feelings.  Love does not conquer all as some people would like to think.  I feel that many people see adoption as this wonderful, warm, fuzzy thing and just gloss over all of the challenges that come with it.  You're "saving a child" after all!  

Adopting a child out of your race has additional challenges and additional responsibilities (over and above the challenges of adoption by itself).  I'm not saying that it's not worth it to do this.  Just that I feel people should really think hard about it and be sure that they want to open themselves up to those challenges.  

And let's face it.  My husband and I are as white as white can be.  The blog Stuff White People Like is us 100%.  All of the reading I have done says that you should seek out communities and events where the child's race is the majority.  We live in the deep south and as awful as it sounds, it's still pretty segregated around here.  My high school was about 96% white.  When I went there, they were actually still busing students in as part of a desegregation order.  There is also my family to consider.  As much as I hate to say it, a lot of my extended family is pretty openly racist.  I don't keep in contact with them because of this, but they are at family gatherings during the holidays.  And then there's my dad.  He's said some pretty awful things too when it comes to race.  Sure, I could just avoid these people all together, but it's really not that easy.

Who knows?  In the end, we might change our minds and end up with a child of another race.  If that happens, I will do everything in my power to help that child feel loved, like they belong and that there is nothing wrong with them or their family because it is different from the norm.  But as of right now we are not there.

I haven't written much since our decision to adopt.  I keep telling myself I need to post something, but then I can't think of anything to talk about.

I feel like I'm getting into unfriendly waters when I think about my feelings on adoption.  Like people will be so much more critical of what we're doing/how we're doing it.  I don't know why I feel that way.  Maybe it's just a hangup that I have and nobody else would even think of.

We have been working on all of our paperwork to submit to our agency.  Once that is all done then I think we can start the homestudy.  All that is left is our financial statement and our autobiographies.  I'm almost done with mine and DH is working on his.  I need to get on it and finish it this week.

Our fundraising is going well.  You can visit the other blog to check it out.  www.newsonnix.blogspot.com.  If you're an amazon shopper, click on the banner at the top of that blog and shop through that.  We get a portion of the purchase price.

I'm also thinking about getting a second job to help come up with some of the money.  I worked retail all throughout high school and college.  I won't say the name of the store, but it had three B's.  I'm sure you can guess.  Anyway, my old manager is now the manager of another 3 B store, but one that deals in baby stuff.  Again, you can probably figure it out.  I don't know why I'm being so obscure about it.  Anyway, I'm going to check with him and see if he'd be willing to hire me to work nights and weekends.  I'm thinking one night a week and Saturday and Sunday.  It would suck, but it would be extra cash going straight into savings, plus a discount on baby stuff which would come in handy.

So that's where we stand right now.

4 months

My laparoscopy was in October, 4 months ago.  In the time between then and now I had miraculously pain-free periods.  Then this weekend happened.  We were out of town with my in-laws for a wedding shower.  I woke up in the middle of the night with some horrible cramps.  Luckily I found some advil in the bathroom medicine cabinet and was able to go back to sleep.

When I woke up the next morning the cramps were back.  Took some more ibuprofen and after about two hours they calmed down enough for me to feel kind of normal.  I had one lor.tab left from an old prescription in my purse and I took it that night so that I could sleep.  The next morning I was still crampy, although not as bad as the day before.

This blows.  Maybe it was just a fluke and next month will be fine.  Either way I have a follow-up with my doctor next week and I'll talk to him about it.

I'm waffling on the going private thing.  I know it's so much easier for people when a blog is public.  I know it is for me since I rely on my google reader so much.  I just forget to check the ones where I actually have to go to the blog link.  Maybe I'll keep this one public, but just edit it to make it more anonymous.  I love that this is my space to lay it all out there where family and "real life" friends don't know.  That sounds awful, but a lot of the stuff I'm feeling would just hurt their feelings because in the end, they don't get it.

So where are we on adoption stuff?  We've turned in our application and are working on the rest of the paperwork.  I've been working on an autobiography for over a week now.  That shit is hard.  I have all of these questions to answer and it's tough.  DH and I both went today for our physicals.  Our doctor was really happy for us and said he thought it was great that we are adopting.  Then he said something that sat kind of funny with me.  He said that we're getting a baby, but we're also saving a life.  I'm not really sure in what context he meant that, like a pro-life thing, or that the baby would have a better lifestyle with us or what.  But it still just felt weird and I didn't quite know how to respond to it.  We want a baby.  We're not doing this to "save a life" as selfish as that sounds.  I'm probably just reading too much into it.  I do that a lot.

We've got fundraising ideas going on the other blog (www.newsonnix.blogspot.com).  I met a friend today and got a carful of stuff for our yard sale.  And she said she has more!!!  So that's all good.

I have lots of other things rolling around in my head, but not quite sure that I'm ready to post about yet.  All of this adoption stuff is so new to us.  It's still kind of sinking in.

I can say that DH has been awesome about this process.  Once we decided that this is what we were doing and we picked our agency, he kind of took over.  He's been organizing all of the paperwork, getting stuff mailed, etc.  He's way more organized than I am, so it's probably a good thing that he's handling all of that.

We're heading down to a wedding shower for one of DH's cousins this weekend.  Who wants to bet that they're going to have a kid before us???  :)

Did you miss me?

I'm thinking of making this blog private, as in invite only.  We have started a new public blog for our adoption stuff and that one will be open for everyone.  Here is the link:  www.newsonnix.blogspot.com.

I'll keep this one open for a week or so and then will go private, so email me if you want in.  brandyshea @ gmail.  Let me know who you are, how you found this blog, blog address if you have one, etc.

It's official

We have decided to go with the agency that we met with on Monday.  That was quick, I know.

We had a great meeting and then at home after work we discussed some more and DH still didn't seem like he was all that committed even though he liked the agency.

On Tuesday I wrote him an email just laying it all out there.  I told him that when he brought up the adoption plans he had given me hope that I haven't had in a while.  Then, when he started hemming and hawing it started sending me in a downward spiral.  I'm tired of being in limbo.  I can't live like that anymore.  We need to either take the plunge into adoption, do our embryo transfer, or move on.  So I told him to shit or get off the pot.  Not literally of course, but he got what I meant.

And here we are.  We're working on our application to the agency.  We've decided who we want to write our letters of reference (we need 6!!!!).  We're coming up with fundraiser ideas.  I even started an official blog (you know, where I have to be nice and not bitch about anyone).

I'm not sure how I'm going to move forward with the two different blogs.  The "official" blog will have all of the detailed updates on how the process is going, mainly for family and friends to stay updated.

I'm sure I'll still have a use for this blog for the stupid shit people say.

For example today.  We went to the police department to get our fingerprints done.  The guy doing them was nice enough.  DH mentioned that we're adopting and he asked where from.  I told him domestic.  He replied, "good".  It wasn't a, "that's so great you're adopting 'good'", but more of a judgey, "good that you're adopting from this country because we need to take care of our own before providing charity to foreign countries 'good'".  He didn't come out and say it though so I kept my mouth shut.  It's entirely possible I was just reading too much into it.  I'm just letting it roll off my back though.  I'm sure everyone will have an opinion that they will feel the need to tell me.  It's amazing how people think that their opinion matters and that our decisions, be it IVF, adoption, child-free or whatever are any of their business.

So that's our update.  Let me know if you want the link to the blog.  Or if you click on my blogger profile you can find it that way (this one is hidden).

Adoption plans

Sorry to leave you hanging with that last post.

We are nowhere near decided what or when we are going to do anything.  We are looking at the pros and cons of all the different options out there for adoption.

We have an appointment with a local agency on Monday to see what their process is.  I am leaning towards this one right now.  That option would cost us around $25,000 total.

I am meeting with a friend who adopted internationally next weekend.  I specifically want to talk fundraising with her.  International adoption also interests me, but the cost and travel requirements make me hesitate a bit.  Both of us work and we don't have unlimited time off.  Some countries require multiple trips before you can bring a child home.  We would have to figure out how we could do that.  There is an international agency in town that I plan on scheduling a meeting with.

We are going to set up a meeting with Catholic Family Services.  They have a sliding fee scale where the top fee you would pay to them is $10,000.  I'm pretty sure we would have attorney fees on top of that.  It would probably still be cheaper than the first agency I mentioned.

Another option is to adopt through the state.  Alabama does not require you to be a foster parent before adoption.  Perk with adopting through the state: absolutely free (besides attorney fees I think).  They do your homestudy and 10 weeks of training classes absolutely free.  The only condition is that you agree for the first six months after your training that you only adopt a child from the state of Alabama.  No problem.  The only thing is we would be getting an older child.

We spent a good couple of days discussing this pretty intensely.  It got heated a few times.  Coincidentally we had a counseling appointment yesterday and were able to talk through some things.  Of course I bawled throughout the whole meeting.  The Lex.a.pro is definitely out of my system!  After our counseling session yesterday we agreed to give the adoption talk a rest for a few days because it was stressing both of us out.

Money is the main issue.  It's expensive.  Prohibitively expensive.  I've been brainstorming some ideas for fundraising.  I need to do some research though.  I'm not sure what all of the laws are around fundraising.  I need to figure out if we would have to pay taxes on that money.  Also, I think that raffles are considered gambling in Alabama, so you have to have some creative solutions to that (I thought of getting donations and people could get chances to win when they donated to our adoption fund).  I played around with some knitting last night and I think I've found something that I could easily knit and sell.  I'll post a picture when I have a finished product.

So that's that.  Agency meeting on Monday.  That's the only concrete thing right now. Does anyone have $25,000 laying around that they want to give to us??? :)

Hold the phone!

I can't believe I'm writing this.  It looks like we might  be switching gears and going for adoption.

I know.  I'm the last one I ever thought would say that.  I've written a lot in the past about how I do not want to adopt.  It still isn't my first choice, but neither is having to go through fertility treatments.

Yesterday DH totally shocked me by asking if I would like to look into adoption.  We have a few friends who have adopted internationally (one is in Ukraine right now working on bringing her daughter home).  I don't know what changed his mind, but he is open to the idea now.

We are going to have to do a lot of fundraising because as you all know adoption isn't cheap.  We're weighing our options with what direction we're going to go.  Right now we're leaning towards international special needs adoption.  But we're also going to set up a meeting with a local adoption agency to look at domestic.

My head is spinning.  This is insane.

Plans

I have a friend who lives in Italy.  She moved there about six months ago and will be there for 3 years for her job.  I've never been to Italy so I really want to visit her while she's there.  I was talking to my husband the other day and we decided this: If the embryo transfer in May doesn't work, and if we can save enough money for the flight, I'm going to go visit my friend in Italy at the end of the year.

On one had, yay Italy!  On the other, no baby.  I'll just think of it as a consolation prize.  :)

I just got back from my first therapy session of 2012.  We're counting down the months until May and our frozen embryo transfer.  I did another EMDR session with my therapist again today.  

During the EMDR, she asked me if I felt different this go-around, since I've been doing so much in preparation for the transfer.  My response was that I did not feel as stressed  and  desperate  as I did with the last IVF.  Looking back, I was hanging by a thread and I'm surprised I didn't totally go off the deep end.  She asked me what words I could use to replace stressed and desperate when describing my state of being now.  It was hard for me to come up with one.  The word "relaxed" kept coming to mind, but I'm not relaxed about it.  There is still stress, but it's a good stress I guess.  When I think about the upcoming transfer, I know that I've done everything in my power to make it a success.  At some point I have to let go.  Let what will happen happen.  

So instead of a word, we came up with sentence: "I am realistically hopeful".  I'm not pessimistic about this cycle, but at the same time, I'm not convinced that it will work.  I'm realistically hopeful and that's all I can really be right now.

It's a new year...

What is it about the new year and pregnancy announcements?  Three in the past week!  All on facebook of course.  I can tell that I'm off the lex.apro.  I had gotten to a point where pregnancy announcements didn't bother me, but apparently it was the medication talking.  Each new announcement is like a punch in the stomach.  Literally, I feel it in my gut.  It takes a few days for me to stop constantly thinking about it.

A question was posed on Prompt-ly recently that got me thinking:  Are you happy to leave this year behind or more excited at the prospect of the oncoming year?


That's a hard one.  Last year that would have been easy to answer.  After two failed IVF cycles this was what I said in my first post of 2011:

It's the first day of 2011 and I am welcoming it with open arms.  The last two years have been kind of shitty.  This year is a bit different in that we're not currently seeking treatment or doing anything to change our childless status.  I have hopes for this year that I didn't have last year.  


I did a lot of healing this past year.  I started living again knowing that our frozen embryo was out there waiting for us, but there was no pressure.  I got out of a miserable job and got a new one that I actually enjoy, working with people who are pleasant to be around.

Now that 2012 is here, we're gearing up for our frozen embryo transfer.  It's happening in May, which means we go back to the doctor in March to get the ball rolling. That's three months away!  Someone commented to me the other day that I must be so excited and counting down the days until May and our transfer.  Not so much.  I'm kind of ambivalent about the whole thing.

Like it or not, our fate will be decided come May.  This is it.  Either it will work or it won't.  We're done after this.  No more treatments.  No adoption.  No kids.  I don't know how I should feel about this.  I'm so conflicted.  On the one hand, this past year has been so nice.  I've gotten back into living and have actually enjoyed myself.  I've reconnected with friends.  I've started some of my old hobbies.  I feel like I'm experiencing life again, rather than enduring it.  If I get pregnant everything will change.  Yes, it's something I've wanted for a long time, but still a change.  Sometimes I find myself wondering why we're doing this.  We are happy now.  The best we've been in a long time.  It took a lot of hard work to get to that point.  So why would we want to mess that up?  And then I get that unexpected pregnancy announcement and it hits me.  I feel that hole in my heart that seems like it will never be filled.

So I don't know if I'm happy to leave this year behind.  I don't know what the second half of this year will bring.  Right now I'm in a good middle ground.  The outcome of this transfer will either really good or really bad.  I don't know if I want to go there yet.  I haven't let myself even think of the possibility that the transfer is going to work.  I just can't even go there right now.