People
occasionally ask for adoption updates these days and everyone keeps telling us
to be hopeful, to pray, and that things will work out however they are meant
to. Adam and I smile, say thanks for the encouragement, and really have been
keeping to ourselves – as I am sure has become evident by the lack of blog
updates about the whole situation.
I think the
time has finally come to give an official “update”, but first I must back
track. Bear with me.
Over the
past two years, Adam and I have been asked about why we chose to follow the
adoption path instead of having biological children. Most of my family knows
about my struggle with Endo and PCOS as it’s something they have watched me
grapple with for the past thirteen years now, and I am very grateful that they
understand why we chose adoption. Having so much support behind us this whole
time from family and close friends has been more valuable than words will ever
express.
Almost no
one knows that we did try to have biological children and suffered through two
miscarriages. After the second, I told Adam that I couldn’t go through that
experience again. It is something no person should ever have to suffer through
and together we decided that the prospect of a third loss was too great to
think about. So we made our announcement that we had decided to adopt.
Fast forward
a year.
We’ve
completed our home study with Department of Social Services and have been certified
to not only adopt but to foster as well, in case we decided to travel that
road. We were informed that if we chose to pass up on the opportunity to foster
we would likely expect to wait five years for an infant to be freed for us to
adopt through the foster care system. After a few months we chose to also place
an application with Catholic Charities – this is where everyone's support with
GoFundMe came into play. Our adoption application fee came from the gifts
everyone gave to us last year. It was such a blessing to know that when we
placed our application on the counter at Catholic Charities, that the gifts
given to us by friends and family helped to get it there.
Two months
later brings us to Thursday, November 21st, 2013. People always say
the day you get “the call” is forever burned into your memory, and that no
detail will ever be forgotten. I know now, that “they” are right. I remember
everything in great detail.
I was
stripping paint from the French doors in the living room (I believe I posted a
picture to Facebook with a quote from Rehab Addict’s Nicole Curtis that day!)
when the phone rang. Classical music poured out from the TV, a breeze came in
through the foyer from the window I had opened to circulate in fresh air. I
answered the phone and a woman from The House of The Good Shepherd was on the
phone. She told me a baby had been born and was in the hospital waiting to be
released to a family. His mother had signed away her rights to CPS for him, and
told them she couldn’t care for him. That she wanted for him to have a family
and she knew she wasn’t capable of being his parent. The woman on the phone
told me that someone in the hospital had named the baby Sheldon, because
everyone deserves a name. She asked if Adam and I were still looking to adopt
and if we were to come down right away to discuss the situation, to sign papers
for him so that we could bring him home from the hospital, either that day or
first thing the next morning.
I ran so
fast up the stairs to get Adam that I nearly tripped and fell, flung open the
bedroom door and jumped on the bed like a child at Christmas waking their mom
and dad up because Santa came. Adam looked like he thought the house was on
fire. I was showered and dressed within the next five minutes, telling Adam he
was taking too long and didn’t need to shave. I told him I was driving because
he drove like an old woman first thing in the morning and all he asked was that
I not wreck us on the way there. When we got there we were filled with such
excitement and such hope, but things were not meant to be. The baby had
challenges that we were unable to meet and we left with broken hearts. We had
just experienced our first “failed adoption match”.
Jumping
ahead twenty nine days later – also a Thursday – brings us to another day I
remember in vivid detail. I got a call from someone saying they knew a girl who
was pregnant and wanted to place her baby for adoption. She had met us in
passing the year before and wanted to meet with us. For simplicity’s sake, and
the sake of this woman’s privacy, we will call her April. We spoke with April
that very day for over an hour and traded phone numbers. She told us that she
wanted us to parent her baby on the condition that we could have an open
adoption. We were happy to agree. Over the next three months, April and I got
to know each other better as well as what our expectations were for this
adoption. We got to see pictures, and I was able to get to go to an appointment.
Things were progressing well and we told close friends and our immediate
families. We started to buy a few clothes, and when April went into premature
labor (which was able to be stopped) we picked out a travel system so that we
would be ready when this baby arrived. We began the labor intensive process of
stripping wood trim and doors in what would be the nursery, spent days looking
at paint chips on the walls and waited as patiently as we could.
Sadly this
adoption was destined to fail as well. April sent me a text just after
Valentine’s Day when I was pulling in the driveway, and informed me that she
didn’t think she could continue down this path because a third party was
creating too many problems and it was too much stress for her. While we support
April’s choice and told her we would regardless of her decision from the
beginning, this is devastating to us. In some ways it is harder to heal from this
than it was for the first failed adoption because we had pictures and clothes
now. A car seat. A stroller. There was a baby who’s heartbeat I had heard.
While the first loss was difficult, there had been no visual and no planning
involved for little Sheldon.
It’s been
almost two weeks now since we heard the bad news and Adam and I have realized that
we are at a fork. One road leads down uncharted waters, holding who knows what.
The other is the adoption path – and we have seen how difficult that road is.
It’s a struggle no one ever wants to talk about because it is riddled with
uncertainty, expectations and often ruined dreams. For now at least, we are
standing still. We spoke with Catholic Charities and they will hold our application
for as long as we need them to while we decide if we can go through the process
of convincing yet another person, another agency really, that we deserve to be
parents. For now, we will put adoption on hold; maybe even pretend that it’s
not an option for us while we take the time we need to heal.
We have now
experienced four lost babies in just less than two years’ time. I don’t know
how long it will take for our hearts to repair themselves. They say time heals
all wounds, but what I don’t know is how time can heal this kind of hurt. Hearing
well-meaning words like “It will all work out” or “It wasn’t meant to be” don’t
help, as much as we know they were well intended.
For now, we
will work on remodeling our home, rehabbing the bathroom, trashing and
rebuilding the kitchen. For now, we will plan a crazy vacation and maybe even
do something as drastic as sell the house, move to Australia and open a Koala
bear rehab facility which will inevitably go bankrupt because no one in their
right mind would pay to keep a facility open for Koala’s to munch on greenery
in style. For now, we will live for today and stop planning for tomorrow,
because as we have seen, tomorrow may never come. Today may be all we have.
