Presentment #2

Let me time travel just one more time.

On December 6th, we got an email from our amazing social worker about a birth mother. My husband and I were both at the office, in the middle of getting ready for our office move to a new location. People were frazzled trying to get everything packed on time, but we managed to duck into a meeting room and call her on the speakerphone.

So what happens in this first call? Our social worker tells us the circumstances of the pregnancy. We are told the ethnicity, ages, occupations, medical history of the bio-parents and their family.  We are usually told why the birth mother is exploring adoption.  And then we are asked if we want to be presented to the birth mother for consideration.

In this instance, we immediately said yes.

A couple of days later, we dropped our profile photo book to the adoption agency, and emailed a copy to the birth parent counsellor, who had been working with the birth mother.

And then the waiting begins. During this time, the birth mother is given a few profiles to choose from. After that, she might ask to see the home study, which is pages and pages of everything about us... from our relationships with family, to income, to what our house is, to what our childhood was like.

More waiting. I can't even remember months later, but I don't think we told many people we were being considered. We remembered what it was like in July, and tried not to dwell on the possibility that we would be picked. Work kept us busy, as did preparations for Christmas.

Finally, we were told December 14th that we were not chosen.

This wasn't a huge heartbreak for some reason. I did think about feigning illness to get out of Christmas, but I cherish spending time with our families so much that I sucked it up and went and loved every minute of it.

We carried on and tried not to think about the baby that was not meant to be ours. And that brings us back to the present...

December is the hardest month

Wow, I have been horrible at updating. I shouldn't be surprised, I have every intention of keeping this blog up, but really:
(a) there are no updates or
(b) the updates are hard to write about at the time, and then I get distracted by shiny objects.

I might as well start with December. I am backdating these posts because I've always wanted to time travel. Pay no attention to having actually been created in March.

December and I don't really get along. Christmas is extremely hard when you are childless not by choice. Out of all the holidays, it hits you the hardest. You witness the kids in your life giddy with excitement over wrapped presents. The moms are all discussing about what happened at school, or how their kids are progressing, or the newest thing that they've started to do.

If you're REALLY lucky, you get a comment from an exasperated mom about how her kids are a handful, and doesn't she wish she could just give you one?

Thank God for wine.

Truth is, I would be doing all those things if I had a child. I can't fault people for having kids, or wanting to talk about them. The situation sucks, it's difficult and sometimes I just want to go home and cry. (Confession: sometimes I do.)

Years of this hard journey has made me a bit better dealing with things. I still get sad. I don't think that will ever change. But I choose to harp on it less.

This leads me to my next post...

The baby watch is over for now...

I'm not talking about the royal baby.

On July 9th, a baby was born somewhere in Toronto. The birth mother contacted an agency to start the process to find adoptive parents.

Our social worker called us on July 10th to let us know what she knew about this placement (which was not a lot), and confirmed she was submitting our profile to the agency. Most likely, we were one out of 3-5 profiles being presented to the birth mother.

I will admit that I blanked out a bit during that phone conversation. We had her on speaker, all the while staring at each other with incredulous looks. When I hung up the phone, I noticed just how much my hands were shaking.

And so our baby watch began.


What do you do when you're waiting for the news you have waited so long to hear?

- We made sure all of the items needed to pass the final home inspection have been completed. I now have a spiffy handrail up to my attic, all to code.

- We put the call out for baby items to some close friends and family. A car load of items came back from a visit to my brother-in-law's house. They had a lot of things to give us, now that our niece is two years old. I don't think I could have squeezed another thing in the car! It just goes to show how supportive our friends and family are, that we literally do not have to purchase a single thing.

- We mostly cleared the room that will house the nursery. My office desk is still in there, but it is now joined by bassinets, mobiles, bedding, clothing, baby bottles, and anything else we will need. The desk will be moved of course once we have our child.


And then we waited some more. We were cautiously optimistic. Our social worker was great in keeping us up to date as much as possible, letting us know at each point the agency confirmed that the birth mother still had not decided.

We got word two days ago that the birth mother has decided to parent.

How am I feeling? I am happy for the birth mother and the baby. All throughout this wait, I kept her in my thoughts knowing how hard of a decision it would be. I never wished that she would give the baby up. That is a horrible thing to wish for, and all I hoped during the wait is that she would do what was the best for her baby.

Of course, I am sad for us. It just wasn't our time to become parents. I am also sad for the others who were chosen to be presented to the birth mother and also received this news. I wish them well in their own adoption journeys.

I haven't been into the room we set up. It will be ready for us when we need it. A part of me wanted to sit in the room on Saturday night and let all my emotions overwhelm me.

I didn't. That room is all about dreams coming true. I want the crying in that room to be my tears of joy, or cries from my baby wanting our comforting arms around them.

I chose to shed my sad tears while lying on my couch, letting my beagle lick them off my hand. 

All I ever wanted...

Little girls have varying answers to 'What do you want to be when you grow up?' A princess, a teacher, a doctor....

My only answer was that I wanted to become a mother. As a child, I would tell people that I wanted five kids. I even had a preferred order to them: boy, girl, boy, boy, girl. My reasons? A boy first, to be a big brother to everyone. A girl to even out the pair of them. Two precious boys that follow that would be best friends and playmates for life. And finally, a baby sister that would even out the group and be the little darling of the siblings.

I dreamed about their personalities, of everyone piling onto the bed for bedtime stories and snuggles, of the fights that I would have to break up between them. I have to smile a little, thinking about that little girl with big dreams of a large brood to look after (and yes, even a planner at that age!)

Those dreams have changed, and the little girl isn't so little anymore. Five has turned into 'we would be so happy with one'. But the desire to be a mother has never gone away.

There are simply no words to describe how much we want to be parents. No words. If hearts could burst with the amount of love just ready to spill out, they would. We will love them through every dirty diaper, every late night feed, every temper tantrum.

My medical issues are such that we will never be able to have kids of our own. There will be no unplanned pregnancies, and no magical oopsies that people always talk about when when couples have given up on trying to have a baby. Adoption is our only option. And I'm perfectly OK with that. We will love our children as much as any parent could.

I still wonder why I was unable to conceive when it is so easy for others. You can't help but wonder what the master plan is.

My only answer is that there must be some child out there that needs our love. Maybe they have already been born. Maybe they have yet to be conceived.

All we can do is wait, and trust that it will happen.

Remember me? My nose has been in books...

Yes, it has been a while since I've posted. In that span of time, we've received the final version of the home study, worked on our adoption profile book (which is challenging, as I hate being in photos!), went on vacation. But we haven't stopped hoping for our little one to come along.

I have been doing some reading on adoption, and have been taking books out from our public library.

The library in the little Ontario town where I grew up in had a great kids section. I remember leafing through the magazine Owl sitting on tiny chairs and tiny tables. There was an huge ostrich egg in a glass dome on a shelf that always piqued my curiosity. I would secretly hope that while watching, a little beak would peck its way through and imprint on me so that I would be forced to take it home and make it my pet. I would read everything I could get my hands on, so much so that in Grade 1 I was working from the Grade 3 reader and assignments.

Fast forward to today, and I will admit, my literary appetite has lessened considerably. Sadly, my reading is usually work documentation, and books that TV shows and movies based on books. I  am currently reading the Game of Thrones series. I gleefully read all of the Harry Potter books.

Every so often, I do get into a "I need to read everything I can about <blah>". The last subject was international human rights. Lately, it's all been about adoption and I suspect this will go on for some time, expanding to various parenting books that swear that one method is the tried and true solution to all of a child's problems.

So on to the adoption reading. One of the pages I follow on Facebook is Portrait of an Adoption. The 30 Adoption Portraits in 30 Days on the right hand side of their web site is a fantastic read, exploring adoption from all angles - the good, the bad, and the ugly.

J and I have been taking turns reading out loud to one another from The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades before Roe v. Wade. How times have changed. My voice may have quivered a bit as I read the stories out loud to my husband. Somehow, it made me feel better to read out loud... these women, whose stories may have never been told before out of shame, out of guilt. By reading out loud, I felt like I was giving them their voice. It was a  recognition of what they went through. It might have been a heavy read, but cemented the fact that should a birth mother want an open adoption, we would be all for it.

The other book on the coffee table right now is Attaching in adoption: practical tools for today's parents. I will admit that I have not started this one yet. I think this is one for this weekend in the hammock!

I'll end off this post with a quote from a book that I haven't read yet but might also pick it up this weekend... Nia Vardlos's Instant Mom:

“Anyone who ever wondered how much they could love a child who did not spring from their own loins, know this: it is the same. The feeling of love is so profound, it's incredible and surprising.”

I cannot wait!

Reference checks and fingerprints!

We needed five names in total to give as references: a friend and family member for each of us, and a couple who knows both of us.

Everyone we chose jumped at the chance to help us out by filling out a questionnaire and sending it to our social worker, and we are so thankful to have such great friends and family that have helped us through one more step of the journey!

A local police and an RCMP check is also mandatory for all who wish to adopt. The local check was just a form, but the RCMP required our fingerprints and so we headed off to an agency to have this done.

I grew up in the 80s watching crime dramas when the innocent protagonist gets fingerprinted and you see the ink all over their hands. Alas, we are in the digital age, and so instead of an ink pad I was presented with a scanner. It was still really neat. The tech geek in me loves this kind of stuff!

First they took your hand and gently pressed your four fingertips down on your hand and captured those images. They then captured an image of just the thumb.

Then they took each finger and did a wide print: rolling your finger from one edge to the other (same as in the movies). The program them matches this wide print with the gently pressed print. If there are too many anomalies between the two, it will make the user scan the wide print again until there are fewer anomalies.

My left pinky kept giving us problems. I made a joke that if I ever committed a crime, I should only use that pinky. Finally it scanned with some anomalies, so it was flagged orange. Still useable and they assured me that the RCMP would not reject them for quality.

Next was J's turn. Right away there were issues! Almost every single print he did came back as having to repeat at least 4 times. Finally we managed to complete his digital prints, but out of 10 prints I think about 6 were red (acceptable but with many anomalies).

The agency thought it should be fine to send to the RCMP as is, but just in case, they decided to take a set of ink prints from him.

Small signs... check out the box of Pampers wipes in the corner!

Three more things checked off the list!

Not flesh nor bone...

Not flesh of my flesh,
Nor bone of my bone,
But nevertheless still my own.
Never forget for a single minute
You weren't born under my heart
But in it.

~Fleur Conkling Heyliger