Prayers answered

The boys were down for their naps and I was watching Bringing Home Baby, one of my TLC guilty pleasures shows. This couple was adopting a baby. I've been praying quite a bit today because a birth mom was scheduled to have a c section today and we were waiting to find out if it was a girl and if we were picked. When the show came on, I was hoping it was a sign.
About 20minutes later the phone rang. It was our social worker. The c section was bumped for emergency patients so we have no information on her. However, they just met with another girl and wanted to pass on her social/medical information to us. This mom has some issues. At this point, I can't go into the specifics. I talked to Jon and our pediatrician and while their is one area of concern, we can't say no to this baby.
I called our social worker back and asked her to submit our profile to the mom. She asked me to make sure we were confident in this decision and not just getting impatient. Any potential issues wont be known until she is born or beyond, and she could be fine, so I assured her we wanted to proceed. She said great, because she already has your profile and she picked you!
I don't think I said one coherent sentence for the next few hours. It was a lot of laughing, crying, are you kidding and so on. It still hasn't completely sunk in yet.
The birth mom will be induced next week. We'll be able to bring her home for New Years.
We still need some prayers though. We need to pray that this baby is healthy, that the boys adjust, that they will be ok for the few days we spend away from them. We have to travel to meet her and then travel for the birth and pick up and probably stay for the 72hrs in between. We also need some prayers about those 72hrs. They start once the baby is born and the birth mom can change her mind at any time until those papers are signed.
I'm shocked, excited, nervous, scared, grateful, anxious, giddy etc etc etc. This next week and a half is going to be the slowest ever, but it will be so worth it in the end. Thank you for all your prayers and please keep them coming. We'll post more as we get more information and things become more official.

Hope

Every week we check in with our social worker and every week she tells me that nothing is happening, no movement, no ER's, no calls etc etc etc. Every week we walk away feeling a little bit defeated. Their have been a couple times that something might possibly be happening, and even though I tried not to get my hopes up, I did, and walked away with my head a little lower. I thought about writing about those situations, but it SUCKS to tell everyone something might happen then have it fall though. All you're left with are people asking what happened and where is your girl?
I was going to keep my mouth shut now, but some things are happening and we need prayers more than anything else. Our agency has 3 girls delivering in the next week and a half. They don't know if all of them are girls and they don't have a good read on all of them--our social worker has a pretty good track record of guessing if they will go through with the adoption or decide to parent. While each girl seems to have her own set of problems, this is more activity than they've had in months, so I can't help but get excited. They also have 2 girls that have a bit more complex situations, but you never know what could happen so I can't rule out anything.
So I beg you, send up some prayers for us and for these girls. If one of these situations works out, I promise you will be the first to know. If you don't see any major announcements or get any excited phone calls, please think twice before you ask about it. As excited as you are for us, we are 150% more excited, nervous, scared and potentially let down.

Waiting patiently

Another month has gone by and still nothing. According to our social worker we are still in the middle of the slowest period they have experienced in years. They are averaging less than one placement of AA babies a month since May. Seriously?!?! Our profile went out to two birth moms last week. We found out today that one mom is so annoyed they don't have any AA families to place her child with that she might end up keeping the baby. We have no information on the other mom at this time. Even if she picked us, I think I'd be really hesitant to match with a non-er situation. It seems like most of the moms that have considered adoption recently have decided to keep the baby. I guess thats good??? I don't want to tear kids away from their moms, but at the same time, why do so many moms think adoption is the best option for them just to change their mind in the last month? Statistically 50% of white moms change their mind, its slightly less with AA moms--until this year. I just have to keep reminding myself to be patient, to trust Gods plan and know that it will happen when its right for us.

Nothing

It occurred to me last week that I haven't put anything on this blog in a really long time. Sadly, there is really nothing to talk about. We are waiting. Every week I check in with our social worker and every week she tells me there is no movement. What happened to, "hurry up and get your home study done cause you'll be placed immediately" or all those agencies begging us to go with them because they have such a need for families open to AA babies??? It absolutely sucks. I know we will get the perfect girl for us and it will happen on Gods time, not ours. Seriously though--its been 4 months since we finished the home study. Some people didn't think we'd wait 4 days. I'm trying to be patient, I try not to think about it some days, I try to stay positive. I try to think about our friends who have been matched with the most handsome baby boy who are going to meet him next month just to turn around and leave him in Ethiopia for a few more months. I think about the China program we almost went with way back when. We would still have a 3+ year wait if we stuck with that program. Really, 4 months is nothing. We can do it, and it will be so worth it!

Domestic training

Our adoption agency requires every family working with them to attend a training class put on by the social workers. When I first heard about the training class, I was a bit annoyed. First, we have already gone through a ton of training. Second, its in Columbus on a Friday. That meant Jon had to use a vacation day to sit in a class room.
It turned out to be not so bad. We turned it into a fun weekend, which you can read about here.
It wasn't the emotional, heart wrenching stuff we discussed in our training back in February. It was specific to the domestic adoption process. We covered every step start to finish. We heard from a birth mom that placed her baby up for adoption. She was very open about her story, how she came to each decision (adoption, the agency, picking a family etc). We talked about some new Ohio laws and court cases which are currently changing laws. We talked about meeting birth moms, gifts, potential areas of concern, walking the line between being happy about the baby and not ignoring the birth mom and finished with the finalization process. I thought I had all the information I needed especially being this far into the process, but I still learned quite a bit.

The hard part is to think about how random the process is. We have been turned down by a birth mom because she wanted her daughter to be an only child, at least for now. The birth mom that came to talk to us wanted the same thing. Its hard to hear that and slightly discouraging, but then they reminded us that just as many moms want their kids to grow up with siblings and seek out families with kids. Race has also been an issue for us. It matters quite a bit to some people and not at all to others. The same can be said for our religion, pets, hobbies, jobs, pictures we put on the profile etc. We will be the absolutely last choice for some, but the perfect choice for one mom. That isn't reassuring for a control freak like me! A friend told Jon that this is the best place to be right now. Its out of our hands and in Gods hands. We have no pressure. All our work is done. In a way thats comforting, but in a way it doesn't really make it any easier.

We did get a pleasant surprise. Another family in the training class is from Lakewood. We also met a family from Bay Village and North Royalton. We are on our way to starting a Cleveland adoption support group. We also got to finally meet our social worker. I've been talking to her at least once a week for the past 4 months. It was great to put a face to the voice.

So now we are home and back to the reality of waiting. Back to pushing the anticipation to the back of our heads and praying for more patience.