Strike 2

I was on the phone yesterday with our social worker and she happened to mention a mom that was at Metro hospital who gave birth to a girl Tuesday night. She decided not to keep the baby and the agency had a social worker on her way to Metro to talk to her. It never occurred to me that they would place babies born in Cleveland. I found out they actually go to Metro and Fairview quite a bit. Unfortunately (for us), the mom picked an African American family for her baby. They were the only AA family on the list so I guess with every baby we get closer and closer, but that doesn't really make it any easier. Our social worker tried to stay positive for me. She reminded me that August and September are the busiest months for them--all the New Years babies! Last week I talked to a friend of mine that recently adopted her second baby. She said that when we get our girl, we will be so happy we got passed up by the other moms because our girl will be perfect for us. It was comforting to hear, exciting to know how true that will be, but it doesn't make that "no" phone call any easier.

Rejection

Rejection sucks. When someone who is holding your potential future child in their hands rejects you, it sucks even more. Last week we were presented to a mom who is having a baby girl in August. She is young and already has 3 kids. The dad is gone and she decided to give her girl up for adoption. She doesn't live near the agency so when we got the call 10 days ago asking if we wanted to be presented, we knew it would be a bit of a wait. Mail time for the profiles, the holiday and lots of thinking on her part. We got the call this morning that she has decided on a family that doesn't have any kids. It does hurt, but at the same time its ok. If she rejected us because we already have kids, then its her (and her daughters) loss. We have great kids and our little girl will be lucky to have Ben and Sam as big brothers. I'm just glad it wasn't something silly in our profiles. Something that I'd be kicking myself about and wondering why I put whatever the issue is in there or why I didn't add something she might have been looking for in a family.
She isn't due until the end of August so even if she did pick us, that would have been almost 2 months of excitement, but also worrying that she would change her mind. Maybe God knew that would drive me crazy so he is sparing me all that craziness. Jon told me today that he would prefer an ER baby. A drop your stuff and come get your baby call. After thinking through this situation, I think I might prefer that too. So, we will continue to wait. When its right, it will happen.

A good idea...on paper

This weekend Lakewood hosted a 3 day city wide sale. Basically a bunch of businesses on Detroit and Madison had street sales. Since so many people would be out wandering the streets, it was the perfect time for residents to have yard sales. The city even organized a website with a listing of all the residential sales so shoppers could plan the best routes. Debbie and I decided to have another adoption yard sale. We didn't enlist a lot of help. We figured everything should be well organized and priced after our last sale..... wrong! The clothes did us in. Hanging what was on hangers, hanging more on hangers, organizing kid clothes, laying out adults shirts, took for ever. We forgot that it started raining at the end of our last sale and the clothes got thrown all together in no particular order. We started bringing over what we were storing at 4pm. I didn't get home until 11pm! At least it was really well organized so we didn't have to get up too early Saturday morning.
We had made our first buck in less than 5 minutes so we had high hopes. Unfortunately, that was the only excitement for a while. We had bursts of people, but we found out that their were around 90 sales going on, not including businesses. People were out, but they had a lot to see so we didn't get the traffic we saw for our last sale. We ended up making about a third of what we did at the beginning of the month. That stunk, but we still managed to have some fun. We thought about doing one more sale, but we decided we're done. We split some of the bigger items that didn't sell and we'll try to get rid of them on Craigs List. The rest is going to the City Mission and Good Will. The sales were a good experience, but I wont be doing another one ANY time soon!

#5

I checked in with our social worker yesterday. Things are still moving slow over there, but they have placed 2 babies this month. Both were ER calls, meaning the baby was born and the mom did not want to take it home. With the first baby, the mom told the agency to pick the parents. In that case, they go to the couple that has been waiting the longest. The second baby was a boy so our social worker did not present us.
Right now we are #5 on a list of 7. They haven't had that many families willing to take AA babies in a year or two. How sad is that? 2 of the four families ahead of us are not willing to accept a baby with ANY exposure to drugs and alcohol by the mom and are very limited as to what family issues they will accept--meaning does a parent suffer from depression, heart disease and so on. So in a way that kind of makes us #3 on the list. Its rare to come across a baby with no (or little) social or medical issues. What does being #3 or #5 mean---pretty much nothing. If a mom comes in she is still presented all the families that are willing to accept her history. The only time it comes in handy to be at the top of the list is if a mom tells the agency to pick. It happens, but not often. So, we keep waiting!

Not that kind of call

The phone rang 2 days ago. I picked it up and looked at the caller id. It was the adoption agency. In about a second 50 thoughts went through my head----is it Megan? Does she have a baby for us? What if she is just checking in? No, she checks in by e mail. This must be it. Don't get too excited, it might not be it.... and so on. I picked up the phone and heard, "Hi Jenna, its Megan and this isn't THAT call." CRUSHED!