this woman’s work

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We got another precall today! This is making me feel so hopeful! This mom is also due around 12/21, which again, is a long time to be out of the waiting pool if we’re chosen but I’m not as worried somehow. I mentioned to the social worker that I just loved getting these precalls and she said that for some reason things really picked up as Christmas got closer. Isn’t that strange? Maybe a baby by the New Year isn’t an impossible dream after all. If I had an annoying little exuberant smiley face image, I’d use it right about here. Sadly, I will have to stick with the colon and capital letter “D” one although it’s just not as excited as I am right now. See? Just not the same.

I have my work all lined up in neatly labeled virtual folders and I’m feeling easy in my routine. I think about how stressed I was when I first got this job and am grateful that it has all come together like this. I used to be worried that I couldn’t do this and take care of a new baby and now I’m sure that I can although my blog may not get updated as much and my email response time may lag severely.

I was on the phone with a manufacturer the other day to get some info on their company for a write-up I was assigned and she started asking me about my family. I told her we were adopting and she was very lovely, excited and congratulatory. She is sending me a sample of one of her things for the baby. Now isn’t that nice? Certainly made my day.

I wish I had something more interesting to say but maybe I will tonight. We’ll just have to see.

Tainted Miracle is a blog about one family’s adoptions. To read it as it should be read, go back in the archives to here and work backwards.

From Fatshadow

And then I thought about the notion of average sized in a world where the cast of friends is portrayed as average.

I could hear lots of “I’m not average sized. Look at my hips.”

I saw an infomercial the other day for some thing that is guaranteed to give you a flat stomach in two weeks. There were women who I would describe as average sized complaining about "their pooch." The little bit of belly that they had. One of them grabbed her belly with a look of shame and contempt and said, "I just can’t get rid of this."

Her body. She grabbed a part of her body. With shame and contempt. And said.

I just can’t get rid of this.

This is a powerful post. Check it out.

Just ‘cuz it’s confusing, I’m going to explain again that a precall is nothing really. Our bio (in theory) goes out any time there’s an interested birthmom looking for, say, a home with a dog or a big brother nicely in place. Most of the time that it goes out, we don’t know anything about it. A precall is only different because we get a heads up. For all I know (I don’t ask) our bio might be out with three different women right now.

The reason the agency doesn’t call us every time a bio goes out is that it would drive us insane to get excited over and over again. This is a major reason that I both love and dread pre-calls. On the one hand, it’s something specific on which to hang some hope. On the other hand, hope is a dangerous thing.

If the birthparents pick us (interestingly both mom and dad are involved, which is fairly unusual), then we will leave the pool and wait for the baby to be born. Then we wait to see whether or not they decide to parent. Because of this, I’m not going to be nearly as sad if we don’t get picked as I was last time. That mom was due 10/29 so if we had matched and then she decided to parent, we wouldn’t have lost a lot of time. But two months out of the pool feels really scary to me.

Best case scenario waiting-wise would be one of the occasions when birthmom calls the agency from the hospital and asks to see some bios. There’s no waiting there and no-waiting sounds appealing.

But back to reality, obviously if these birthparents picked us, we would take that risk because we knew that this process would be emotionally risky from the get-go. Will I like it? No. Will I be doom and gloom and dread for the whole two months? Most likely. Will I become increasingly hysterical as we get closer to her duedate? Without a doubt.

The rabbis (the sages of old) said that it was wrong to pray for something that was already true. For example, it’s wrong to pray for a baby of one sex or another while pregnant because the baby-in-utero already is a boy or a girl. That’s how I feel about praying that a particular baby (say the baby in this precall) will be ours. I believe that who will be the parents of each baby is already known to the universe; it just hasn’t been made known to us and so I feel uncomfortable praying that the baby will be ours. My prayers that our baby will come to us soon and that God will grant me patience in waiting but when I know about a specific situation, it’s much harder to do that because I find myself daydreaming about this particular baby.

I figured he would. We haven’t said no to any of the babies we’ve been told about. Not the preemie in the NICU, not the baby withdrawing from crack so certainly not this baby whose only real immediate issue is that it’s occupying the same city that we are.

I’ve known this for awhile but wasn’t sure if it would really happen. I just got an email asking about where to send payment so I think it’s true and I can tell you. My article that was in Brain Child is going to be excerpted in the November/December issue of Utne.

Needless to say, I’m pretty happy about this.

[edited to say that I don't know why the whole entry didn't show up before!]

“I don’t know.”

This birthmom has all sorts of other issues so I think it’s kind of funny that they don’t scare us but the same town thing does. I really respect Brett’s concerns and I love him so as much as I’d like to talk him into it, I’m going to let him handle this now. He says he’d like to come home and call the social worker and ask her some more questions about the situation. (I didn’t even ask about prenatal care; I’m always just so thrilled to be getting a precall.) Then I’ll go with what he says. Of course, I hope he says please share our bio and thank you very much but if he doesn’t, well, he’s said yes to everything up until now and he’ll say yes again. We’ll see.

Stay tuned for updates, same bat time, same bat channel.

Another precall. The only issue that might be a problem is that the birthparents live in the same city that we do and Brett wanted to avoid that; it’s not really a problem for me but I respect his limits.

So I’m waiting to give him the details and then we’ll call back and say yea or nay. Then, of course, if we say yes we have to wait and see if they say yes to us. Then, of course, if they say yes to us we have to wait and see whether or not they choose to continue with their adoption plan.

This pre-adoption thing is pretty hard.

Because I was sad about the birthmom not picking us, Brett surprised me Thursday night with two tickets to Urinetown: The Musical. We went on Sunday and it was really pretty fun. I don’t usually like to see a show if I haven’t heard the soundtrack yet because it lessens the anticipation but I enjoyed it and highly recommend it; it’s kind of the ultimate parody of musicals and so if you love musicals, you’ll get a kick out of the send-ups and if you hate musicals, it’ll make you snicker.

The cast was fantastic. I was so impressed with the performances.

We’ve decided to institute family game night for Shabbat. Noah really wanted to play that Lutheran game again last night but Sunday nights are my time to get a solid four hours of editing and invoicing together so I couldn’t do it. We’ve been looking for a way to celebrate Shabbat and it used to be the whole fancy dinner bit including homemade challah. Only that kind of ruined Shabbat for mommy since I had to clear the afternoon for baking and cooking, which isn’t always possible, and I usually can’t find a dinner that’s going to be special and delicious for everyone. I think this game deal will work out much more nicely for all concerned.