this woman’s work

You are browsing the archives from 2003 November.

My mother-in-law who gets “feelings” about things has a feeling that T. will not place with us. This bums me out. Not that T. might not place (although that doesn’t make me exactly happy but I trust T. to make the right decision for her and — ultimately — for us) but that she told us this. It kind of wrings a little of the excitement out of it. Then having the lunch put off…

Couple that with the impending visit of someone I do not like and I’m in a bad mood. I don’t have to see this person but people want Noah to see her. I don’t want Noah exposed to her. I think she puts off bad ju-ju.

In defense of Brett’s mom, she really wants this for us and does trust that the right baby is there. Also, she has the Unity prayer line praying for us. I’m just feeling let down from all of the excitement so I’m allowing this to get to me. Tomorrow I’ll be feeling better. And you know what Annie says, “Tomorrow, tomorrow, I love ya tomorrow; you’re only a day away.”

Right on, you loveable, curly-haired, little moppet!

Well, we didn’t meet T. We went to the restaurant and there was a note saying that she (and the social worker) would not be there. We decided to have lunch anyway because it isn’t often that I’m in a sit-down restaurant with my handsome husband without a small charge in tow.

During lunch Brett and I processed the likely event that T. had backed out completely and that we would now go back in the pool. This sounded pretty good, actually, because last night my social worker told us that they have twice as many birthmoms as they have waiting parents in the Biracial/AA program. Even given that about half the birthmoms won’t place, the odds are excellent that there’s a baby in the works for us. And we discussed T. and how she must be feeling now. Relieved, we hoped, that she had come to a decision at last.

Then we got home and called the social worker who told us that we are still matched but that T. had childcare issues at the last minute and couldn’t come but that she still wants to meet with us and still intends to follow through with her adoption plan.

This may be true; it may just be childcare issues. Then again, I know that when I don’t want to do something, I can find obstacles to doing them. It may be that T is feeling understandably ambivalent and so maybe didn’t try as hard as she might to make plans for someone to care for her children. I do that kind of thing all of the time. You know, forget the phone numbers when I need to call and make an appointment or delete files I probably should have kept. Then again, reliable babysitters can be pretty darn rare. Who knows.

It’s hard to be here, waiting. I wish we had an unambigious promise. If T. doesn’t place, I wish she would decide that sooner than later so we can get back in the pool. Then again, it may be that the fates have us waiting out of the pool because our baby isn’t ready yet and we’ll come back in at the perfect time. Or it may be that T. will still place.

In short, Julie is absolutely 100% correct that “just adopt” is bad advice. There is no “just” about it, no matter what adoption path you take.

I want to write more about that but I’m emotionally wiped so I think I’m just going to go cuddle Noah for a bit.

I just talked to our social worker and she told me a bit more about T. She (social worker) told me that there are some birthmoms they can read pretty well and say with some certainty (to themselves, they don’t say it to the waiting parents because it would make them — us — crazier than we already are) whether or not the moms will follow through with their adoption plan. Then she said that T. is very hard to read. And hard to talk to. She warned me that our lunch might be extra-awkward.

“But you’re a talker,” she said, in an impressive example of understatement. “You’ll do fine.”

It sounds to me like T is exploring her options and that we are part of that for her and I am starting to think that she may be our first match but not our forever one.

I’m still seeing this as an enormous blessing. I feel lucky that she did pick us and that we get to learn something by being a part of her life, even if it’s for a very brief time. Of course I’m going to be absolutely nuts-o while we wait and I plan to give in to bemoaning and bewailing at least once a day. Ok, maybe twice a day.

Still, it’s good. And in answer to d, yes, I think the lilac skirt will be worn tomorrow but only because my black one is in the wash!

Last night I dreamt that we were trying to get to our scheduled meeting with our birthmom and I couldn’t find Brett because he was trapped (literally, locked in) at work. I spent my entire slumber trying to get him released and trying to get to Cleveland, which was where the meeting was weirdly supposed to take place.

In truth the meeting is taking place at a restaurant downtown and Brett has the entire day off (the inlaws will be watching Noah).

I spent the morning going through our extensive family photo collection so I can put together a short album for her. The social worker suggested bringing one and I don’t think she needs to sift through the 6+ albums that chronicles our lives thus far. Also, if we make a smaller one, she can take it home if she wants to show it to anyone else in her life — not that she necessarily would want to.

It’s hard to think about what to put in there because it’s hard to know what she wants to see. I left out most of the pictures that are simply part of our Noah adoration and left in ones of us doing things. It seems that we do quite a lot. But how many times does anyone want to see us at the zoo — again. I also made a huge effort to make sure that I was in there, too, since I’m the family photographer and am absent from most of our pics.

Well, I plan to keep myself busy around the house today. I’ll update you all sometime tomorrow after we’ve met.

The Gender Genie

The Gender Genie Inspired by an article in The New York Times Magazine, the Gender Genie uses a simplified version of an algorithm developed by Moshe Koppel, Bar-Ilan University in Israel, and Shlomo Argamon, Illinois Institute of Technology, to predict the gender of an author.

Simply type or paste your text . Click submit for the results.

It’s supposed to be right 80% of the time. I used my “birth mom” post below so I’m off to try another one and see if I can get the program to recognize my femininity.

Thanks to a*biz*mal for the link!

BabyBaby is finally a mother!!!

(And let me add that I am a complete idiot because she wrote his birthdate as 12/11/03 — she’s Australian — and for a minute I thought, “Wow, she had him in the future?!” Ok, I didn’t actually think that but I almost did.)

Sometimes on the adoption boards I’ll read about someone whose adoption was disrupted (mom decided to parent) and there’s such hostility towards the birthmom. I’ve been thinking about this because right now I feel so sure that I wouldn’t feel that way and I’m wondering if I’m fooling myself.

Grief I can understand. Loss, sorrow, anger, frustration — yes, I can totally appreciate having those feelings in general but when it’s targeted at the birthmom, I don’t get that. After all, it is her baby and as much as I want T. to place her baby with me, I am always aware that I can’t know the path that their relationship is meant to take.

What really disturbs me about some* of the anti-birthmom posts is the underlying racism and classism. There’s an idea that some people have that says that poor women should not have babies. Or that uneducated women or young women should not have babies. The implied flipside is that those of us who are privileged enough to pursue an adoption must (by mere material privilege) be better suited to parent. Not true. Not true at all.

Poverty, youth, and lack of education don’t a bad parent make. Poverty, youth and lack of education may be linked as risk factors for bad parenting but they aren’t predictors. Even in shelter working with women without any resources or support, I saw examples of wonderful mothering and I don’t think that those children — even living with the horrors of homelessness — would necessarily be better off if they had been placed for adoption at birth. And I know that some of these children were disrupted adoptions, meaning that mom had made an adoption plan and then chose to parent.

I think it must be extremely hard if the potential birthmom is a complete mess, i.e., drug addicted or has lost other children to foster care due to abuse or neglect. Still I think it’s impossible to know how another child can impact a woman’s life. I know women who have turned their lives around and I can only hope that this will be true for an at-risk birthmom who chooses to parent. Mostly though I don’t think that those of us who are emotionally involved as potential adoptive parents are in any place to judge.

Perhaps I am not feeling this entitlement to the same degree because this is an agency adoption and not a private one. There is always the presence of the institution between us, which is one reason we chose this route. I did not want her to include any sense of obligation to us in her decision-making. She does not rely on us for financial or emotional support and if she is concerned about hurting us, the social worker can remind us that we will go back in the pool and wait for a baby who is meant to be ours. I also like that the social workers for the birthmom make sure that their clients are aware of community support that might allow them to keep their babies.

I wish they were able to do that a little more actually. In fact, I wish that there were independent birthmom social workers whose interests (i.e., paychecks) were not tied to the adoption agency and who could take even more time to work with potential birthmoms on a parenting and/or adoption plan. Ahh well, if wishes were horses then beggars would ride and birthmoms would have more options.

I’m trying to examine how I feel about this particular baby, the one who is in T’s womb. I see myself attaching to him certainly but there is this baby that’s been floating in my head for the past four years and I have learned to be flexible about who he or she is. I have already said good-bye to a very specific little boy (with Brett’s tilted-up brown eyes) who represents the bio child we did not have but with the loss of his image came the comforting knowledge that the child who will come to us is still waiting.

I wonder how it might be to hold T’s baby and then have her choose to parent. As of now, she wants us to come to the hospital after he is born. Our being there and holding him does not mean that her adoption plan is still in place. As our social worker said, there are women who take their babies home for those three days to nurse and to rock and to sing to and they still choose to place. There are other women who refuse to do more than glance at the babies while in the hospital who choose to parent. Some put the babies in temporary foster care while they struggle with their decision. No action, our social worker tells us, can predict what she will choose.

I try to appreciate that bonding to this baby is part of bonding to our ultimate baby. I know from the grief of miscarriage that loss of a child about which I’ve been dreaming is excruciating but I also know from getting the thermometer back out and trying again, that hope sustains me. I must try to remember that we are part of T’s story, too, even if we never get to hold her baby or take him home. This is part of the tie in adoption, a tie that Maria so eloquently explores when she writes about the death of the twins and her relationship with the woman who bore them.

*I want to add that I am fully aware that I have not been through a disrupted adoption and cannot know the grief of one. I hope not to know, frankly. My discussion here is based on a particularly hateful post about a birthmom I read on an adoption board recently and a tone I’ve read in others. I also recognize that venting on a bulletin board does not necessarily paint an accurate picture of the poster’s heart.

We went to a dog show today because it was cold and rainy and altogether a pretty nasty day. This is the first one I had ever been to and while I’m theoretically appalled by the resources that go into creating perfect dog breeds, it was still fun to go and watch. We keep trying to figure out what exactly created Peanut but today didn’t give us any more of a clue. Brett says that he thinks that she’s the last dog. You know, that all of the dogs in the world mated and at the end of the line was Peanut.

We’re sure she has terrier in her because of her shape, size and temperment. She is wicked smart but also really energetic and prone to jump all over people and make a huge nuisance of herself. She’s very obedient in every other way but getting her to calm down for visitors continues to be a challenge. As one of the terrier owners said to us today, “They have a lot of personality in a pretty small body.”

Other than terrier, we just can’t tell what she is. She’s got a brindle coat but it’s pretty thick, unlike most brindles I’ve seen. She also has a ridiculous fluffy, curly tail. Her ears don’t flop down like a beagle’s but don’t stand up like a German shepherd — they kind of fold over. She also has an enormous chest and a tiny waist — she’s really fast — and tiny little paws.

I had one mutt expert look at a picture of her (she doesn’t photograph well) and this is what she said, “Just looking at her, I’d say she has quite a bit of different dogs in her. Maybe some terrier (staffordshire) which would probably explain the brindling and her head. A small dog — maybe Cardigan corgi (which btw, has brindle as well) in her. And probably something spitz-ish (curled tail and coat).”

The vet said maybe a dachshund was in her, too. The rescue pound where we got her thought maybe boxer, which is insane when you see how small she is. Mostly she’s funny looking. Brett takes her running and people actually slow down in their cars to point and laugh at her.
(more…)

We met some friends for lunch and Noah was clingy and whiny and all around miserable for the first half of our lunch date. As other kids arrived, he loosened up but it sorely tested my patience. It doesn’t help when I get frustrated when he gets like that but knowing that doesn’t make it any easier.

On the way home, I asked him what was going on that was making him feel so unhappy but the conversation wasn’t going anywhere and my patience was swiftly disappearing. Eventually it came to this:

Noah: I’m running away from home! I’m finding another family!
Me: (Trying another tack) What kind of family would you choose?
Noah: A circus family!
Me: That sounds interesting.
Noah: A circus family that’s mean! And hits me! No, no, I want to live in an empty house without food and water!
Me: (At my wits end) Noah, you’re telling me that you’re so angry that you want to live someplace awful more than you want to live with us. But I don’t understand what you’re wanting me to know! I can’t make any sense of it!
Noah: (in tears) I’m trying to tell you that I don’t want another member of the family! Why do you want to get that baby anyway???

Oh lord. The age difference that will between them will be positive in a lot of ways but I think there’s something to be said for having a sibling show up before the big one figures out that they were ever on their own in the first place.

Noah doesn’t believe this but I believe that this call that we’ve heard to adopt means that he is meant to be a brother to this particular child. I have faith that this is true but I also have a lot of sympathy for how he’s feeling. And guilt, I have a lot of guilt.

We came home to talk more then cuddled up to read books. In the middle of our chapter book a package arrived, which was meant to be for Christmas. It was this cool rocking seesaw balancer and of course I gave it to him right away. I’m a softie. He’s really good at it and me, I’m really bad at it. I’m always trying to find large muscle things he can do indoors for when the weather is impossible so I was happy to find this, which is relatively cheap and easy to store.

I am hoping that Noah finds the gift in having a sibling sooner rather than later. I know how hard this is going to be for him and I also know that he’s right to grieve what he’s going to lose by having to share his parents. I just pray that what he gains will make up for it.

I got the birthmom’s health history and now I know why she picked us. It lists her hobbies and they include (I think I can type this without infringing on her privacy) singing, dancing and writing. Our family health histories are actually pretty similar. I think it’s pretty weird that we both share the same risk factors.

Now I am not only in love with the baby, I am in love with her. Our social worker told us this would happen; she said every family is convinced that they got the best birthmother. I can’t wait to meet her!