We took some time off.
The miscarriage exposed fault lines in our relationship that we hadn’t
even known was there so we took some time to work on our marriage and
ourselves. Oh yeah, there was
another deployment in there too.
Finally in the fall of 2011, we moved forward with the
adoption process. We originally
were going to adopt internationally from Haiti, using Carolina Adoption
Services as our agency. We love
them, by the way. They’re all
awesome.
We moved again and had to update our home study. Not long after that we found out that
Haiti had stopped all adoptions as they tried to get Hague certified. We were stuck. It was a possibility that they would
bar our agency from Haiti adoptions as the country was looking only to work
with a handful of US agencies. We
weren’t far enough along to get “grandfathered” in and yet we were too far
along for it not to affect us and delay our process.
At this point we were contacted by the agency in Louisiana who
had also found out about the Haiti adoption delays. They let us know that they had birth moms that were waiting
to be matched and offered to switch us to their domestic program. After much debate, we decided to move
forward domestically.
It seemed like a dream at first. Within two weeks of switching over, we were matched with a
young woman that lived only an hour from us. She was having a girl.
We did a phone interview and she apparently loved us and chose us. We worked with her until about 5 weeks
before the date of her c-section.
That was when our agency found out that she was scamming us. Through a roundabout circle of events,
we found out that she was taking our money, but then she went to another agency
and matched with another couple out of Canada.
It was a nightmare.
In many ways, it was worse than our miscarriage. That we had gotten that close to
bringing a baby home and then having to watch it all fall apart in such a
horrible, dramatic way just wrecked me emotionally.
So then we were back to waiting. Eventually we matched with S, our current birth mom. She’s been awesome to work with and
I’ve really enjoyed getting to know her.
I go to her doctor appointments and ultrasounds.
But as wonderful as she is, there is always a part of me
waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Waiting for her to change her mind. And even if she doesn’t, we still have so many landmarks
that we have to get past where things could go wrong at any moment.
And I see how people look at us. When she and I walk down the halls at the hospital. And when we sit in the clinic waiting
room. I see the maternity nurses
look at me out of the corner of their eyes before leaning over and telling her
that she can change her mind at any point.
Like we don’t know that. Or like she doesn’t know that.
We’ve been very careful about our verbiage around her. As lovely as she is, we never assume
anything. We never refer to the
baby as “our” baby.
We’re careful to treat her like a human being and not our
baby’s incubator. Because she IS
lovely. And because, under
different circumstances, she and I would have been good friends. And because how can I NOT respect and
adore the woman who plays such a large role in making our dreams come true? How can I NOT respect a woman who is so
selfless?
I’m still hopeful.
I hope that our story will have a happy ending after all. I hope that we breeze through the
remaining legal landmarks without too much drama. I hope one day, not too long from now, that little boy will
be reaching chubby baby arms to me and crying, “mama.”
I hope that one day I will once again draw a full
breath. Maybe it’s in six months
when the adoption finalizes. Or
maybe it’s in six years when he shrugs off the taunts of schoolmates who just
realized he has skin that is a different color than his parents’. Or maybe it’s in 18 years when he comes
home from a trip to meet S and his siblings and still wraps his arms around me,
his “second” mom that cleaned up after he got sick and rocked him to sleep and
kissed his boo-boos away.
Then again, maybe that’s what motherhood is all about
anyway. That inability to take a
deep breath unless your child is literally laying in your lap where you know
he’s safe and sound and cared for.
Maybe that’s what I signed up for.
And, you know, I’m okay with that.
Until next time,
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