Paving the way

Full disclosure: This is not my first adoption.

When I was about six, I adopted a little girl named Jean. This isn't her (Jean still lives at my parents' house), but it looks just like her, minus a dimple. Also, this doll's hair is intact; whereas Jean has some unfortunate bald spots because I unbraided her hair. These dolls are not meant to have their hair styled -- trust me. Underneath is a dark brown bald skull painted to match the doll's hair color... horrifying.

As an aside -- I have no memory of this, but I'm told that I specifically asked my parents for a black baby that Christmas. I lived in a nearly all-white town and went to an all-white school and an all-white church, so I'm not sure where that idea came from. Must have been TV. Regardless, I never remember thinking that Jean was tanner (albeit only slightly) than my other baby dolls.

Back to the point -- I filled out Jean's adoption paperwork and proudly kept the adoption certificate that finally arrived in the mail. I adopted again the next Christmas. I still have my second doll's adoption papers in a box of "treasures" in the closet of our future nursery. It says: "In front of another person, raise your right hand and say. 'I promise to love my Cabbage Patch Kid's Preemie with all my heart. I promise to be a good and kind parent. I will always remember how special my Cabbage Patch Kids Preemie is to me.'" (I think it gave me a false impression of the ease of adoption paperwork. Name and address? Done.)

And it wasn't just dolls. I loved all things orphan-themed.

Anne of Green Gables.
A Little Princess.
The Secret Garden.
Annie.
The Boxcar Children.

I can only conclude that my path to adoption was paved by my childhood orphan-love. The next time someone asks me why I decided to adopt, instead of fumbling around while I decide whether they want to hear about RPL (Note to self: they don't!), I'll just tell them about Jean. And Anne-with-an-E. And Sara. And Mary. And Annie. And... drat, I have no idea what the Boxcar Children were named.

Was anyone else an orphan-story fanatic as a kid?

The Grand Plan

Pardon the silence. We've been busy checking off activities on our Summer of Fun list - most recently a short vacation to the Pacific Northwest.

Also, I've been avoiding telling you something. We got a referral. (For those of you not hip to the adoption lingo, that means we were matched with a baby.) We don't expect to meet said baby until next year; international adoption is not a simple process to complete (understatement alert). And now, as they say in the movies, "I've said too much already." I'm bursting to tell you more, but I'll behave and abide by the agency rules and not blog about it.

I will, however, tell you that the referral happened a few months sooner than expected. Suddenly. On my due date. A cynic might see that as just a coincidence. I am not a cynic - hey, stifle those snorts of laughter! - I'll have you know that the proper term is "bitter spontaneous aborter with a hopeful gooey caramel-filled center." I cling to the belief that the trauma of the last two years was part of The Grand Plan - as opposed to A Cruel Joke, the feeling that usually prevails. (The cruel joke is the dead baby part, not the adoption part. See the usual disclaimer.)

The post-referral feeling is very similar to pregnancy - simultaneously thrilled yet terrified that something will go wrong. But for this post, we'll stick with thrilled! 2012 will finally be our year.

The disclaimer

* I always wanted to adopt.

I manage to insert that disclaimer into nearly every blog post. It's a fact. I truly have always wanted to adopt. mrohkay and I never had a "should we or shouldn't we?" conversation. It was only a matter of when. Should we try pregnancy again or wait? Adopt now or later?

And yet, when I write "I always wanted to adopt," there's a defensiveness. Maybe you sense it; maybe you don't. I know it's there lurking.

The thing is, I miss my lost babies. Often desperately. No one is surprised by this revelation - I still grieve for them. So I write "I always wanted to adopt" to offset that. I feel defensive about still needing to process the emotions of recurrent loss even after months or a whole year has gone by. I feel defensive about whether you will think that I wasn't ready to make an adoption decision yet.

I am confident that adoption was the right choice for us right now. We're six months into the process and I have no regrets - only excitement (and, yes, impatience). I don't need to be convinced that our decision was well-reasoned and emotionally appropriate. I say, "I always wanted to adopt," to convince you of what I know in my heart is true: "I am so glad we're adopting."

And yet I say, "I always wanted to adopt" to convince myself of something else. That I can be thrilled to adopt even while I still grieve for the loss of my babies. That missing my lost babies is not "cheating on" my adopted baby, who probably exists already (!). After all, I care for each one of the lost babies and wish they had survived even though life for any one of them would have resulted in the non-existence of the other two. And the baby I'll be matched with - the baby that's meant for me - would never have become my baby if one of the three lost babies had survived.

So when you read my disclaimer: * I always wanted to adopt, what I mean is: * I still grieve, but that's okay.

Extra, extra - read all about it

Looking back, it's funny. Sometimes people can't remember how they used to feel before something momentous happened to them. But I remember exactly how I felt before recurrent pregnancy loss: I always thought Facebook pregnancy announcements were weird. Don't get me wrong, I planned to announce my own pregnancy anyway. I hadn't been personally introduced into the world of infertility yet, and I didn't have any infertile friends (that I knew of), so I didn't realize pregnancy announcements were hurtful. Just weird. Like "I just wanted you all to know that my husband and I have been having sex!" Or "Here's a picture of my uterus, everyone!" So instead - not kidding - my plan was to wait out the allotted 12 weeks and then just write: "So... I have one of those awkward Facebook announcements that everyone makes." Everyone would draw the obvious conclusion... goodness knows they jump to that conclusion at the drop of a hat anyway. (Last year, when my sister was coming to visit me, I wrote on FB that I was excited about sisterohkay's arrival tomorrow, tagged her in the post, and yet someone still managed to conclude that I was announcing the birth of my child.)

Now that we're adopting, I'm a little perplexed about how and when to announce the adoption. Most of our family and close friends know already, but many others don't. Adoption is trickier because I don't have a set number of weeks to wait until a baby arrives. "mrohkay and I are expecting a 0-4 year old in 14-18 months!" would lead to some pretty bizarre questions, I suspect.* Like on my blog, I'm limited by the agency about what I can say on FB too. "We're pleased to be adopting! Now please refrain from asking any questions unless you know me well enough to call me (but if you really knew me well enough to call, you'd already know we are adopting)." Then there are the contingencies... so should we educate people as to the risks of international adoption? "We're adopting! Fingers crossed for no coups!"

*I'm not actually blogging our real stats here, since that might be forbidden.

We're thinking we'll announce after we get a referral, which under the country we chose is still many months before the baby's arrival. Maybe too many months, in fact. mrohkay told one of his relatives the other day that we were adopting from Africa and that it was probably a year away. The very next day, the relative saw a picture of mrohkay holding my (white) niece captioned "uncle" and she asked if the baby was ours. I can only be grateful our baby won't have that person's genetics!

So what do you think? When and how do we announce this?

Lesson #1

I can't blog about my adoption, but nothing is preventing me from blogging about other adoption-related topics, right? (I think. The rules are a little vague on this point.) So I have this friend -- and I am truly talking about a friend, I pinky swear -- who is also adopting internationally right now. We started at about the same time, so we've been at the same stages so far.

When she got the draft of her home study, her agency had made some errors in the details of their lives -- not a big deal since the agency had only known them for, like, three hours or something. She sent the changes back to them. The next draft came; the changes had not been made. She wrote back again. The next draft came; they fixed one thing but not the rest. At this point, she sent them a polite but "seriously, WTF" email, and they wrote back a rude response. So she wrote back again (we are both lawyers -- so paying attention to details and winning arguments are kind of our thing), and she explained that this is a legal document and the details need to be correct and should match the other documents being submitted to the foreign country. I'm not even asking you to fix the typos, she said (slam!), just please fix the factual errors.

Ah yes, they wrote back, we're so sorry. You're right. They changed the errors and sent it back to her -- with a new factual error that hadn't been there before! She finally got it sorted out. And then...

wait for it... (little homage to Barney Stinson for ya)

The agency sent her an invitation to a stress management course with a strong suggestion that she attend! Bwahahaha! OK, that's not actually funny (and shows a stunning lack of self-awareness). I would have had a stroke if I received that email, though I've had similar (not nearly as egregious) experiences with my home study provider too. So this little story demonstrates the first important lessons I've learned in adoption: #1 The agency is always right. #2 You will be perceived as high maintenance no matter what.*

*And of course, it will all be totally worth it. Just look at the blogs of anyone who's ever adopted :)

The girl I used to be

[This is my 2011 Creme de la Creme submission, but after I submitted it, I moved to Wordpress. Feel free to read here or visit this post in my new spot. Thanks.]

I'm picturing A Beautiful Mind when the guy becomes obsessed with numbers and sees them everywhere. We see his face framed by a window on which he's feverishly written equations. I'm picturing Lost when kids in soccer uniforms run through the airport - 4 8 15 16 23 42. Significant numbers are swirling around me, but the numbers aren't equations or ill-advised lottery tickets. The numbers are dates.

I remember this day last year - the day before my first positive pregnancy test. We'd been trying in earnest for five months and kind-of trying for three months before that. I took a test and the familiar "Not Pregnant" popped up in the window. (Naive as I was, I had no idea that I could have seen two little lines, probably for days already, if I'd been using a different test.) The next day, I'd stare in shock at the "Pregnant" stick, and wonder about the ways in which my life had just changed. We were having a baby!... until we weren't.

Two weeks from now. The estimated due date of our second baby, Ant. Poor Ant. Never even got to the gestational sac stage. Ant, our baffling 6w4d pregnancy diagnosed as "chemical" (though I struggled to understand how a chemical pregnancy could last for so long).

Four weeks from now. The one-year anniversary of our first miscarriage, Lima Bean. The earthquake that shook us to our cores. After that we repeated to ourselves so many times, "We can't go through this again. We just can't."

Nine weeks from now. My sister's due date. I've never stopped being terrified for her, even though her pregnancy has been a breeze. I won't breathe easy until her little girl arrives, safe and sound. The little girl that would have been ten weeks older than her cousin Carlos. Or seven weeks younger than her cousin Ant. Or six months younger than her cousin Lima Bean.

I reflect on these dates not because I'm sad. I'm actually okay. Good even. But to borrow a line from the talented Kimya Dawson, I'm haunted by the ghost of the girl I used to be. I still find it hard to wrap my mind around the fact that, at this time last year, none of this had happened yet. Pregnancy was idealized. Yes, vomiting and tiredness and frequent urination (and please, let's not even think about the birth!), but aglow with the certainty that a baby would arrive at the end. The false confidence that bad things wouldn't - couldn't - happen to me. Now I feel sorry for the girl who, at this time last year, was about to go through so much. I wish I could warn her so that she wouldn't be devastated. So that she wouldn't become bitter. So that she could smile knowingly and say, "Ah yes, three miscarriages, but then we get to adopt and we'll be so happy with that choice that we'll wonder why we waited so long." She'll know that one year from now, she'll be nearing the end of the home study. She'll be learning so much about a country that was barely on her radar screen before. She won't regret that her baby won't have blond hair and blue eyes like mommy and daddy. She'll be happy again.

I think that knowing would comfort the girl I used to be.

Things I love about adoption

I can't blog about the adoption process or the country we chose because my agency doesn't permit it right now.* So here are some generalities - things I love about adoption:

• Paperwork. Sorry folks - that's just the type of girl I am. In fact, my former manager wrote in a recommendation letter when I applied to law school that I was happiest "sitting in a mire of tedious paperwork." (I don't know what gave him the idea that being a lawyer was boring!)
• Checking things off the list. Each one gives us a sense of accomplishment that we're another step closer to bringing home our baby.
• Google Earth. It's thrilling to look up maps and see pictures and videos taken in a place where my future child is living.
• Learning about the country. Language, culture, history, geography - all of it interesting. I wish that I could blog about it, but stick with me and you'll get to hear plenty after he/she arrives.
• Buying things. With pregnancy, I was afraid that buying something would jinx it. With adoption, I'm not afraid because...
• There's a good chance that our baby has already been born! I get the chills thinking about how we're all just waiting for our lives to intersect.

(Yes, there are sad things about adoption and plenty of things that could go wrong between now and then, but I am staying focused on the happy right now!)

*In case you're wondering, the restriction on blogging during the adoption process is for the safety of our future child, as well as the safety of our adoption and future adoptions from that country. One person's actions could jeopardize adoption from an entire country. (Looking at you, lady who sent your kid back to Russia!)

If you're here for ICLW, welcome! The next post down is my "story"  :)

It's official

We have chosen international adoption.
We have chosen a country.
We have chosen an agency.
We have submitted our initial adoption application.
Bring on the piles of paperwork!

Because the agency we chose has an electronic confidentiality policy, I cannot identify the country we chose until the adoption is complete. But I can tell you that we're adopting from Africa. (And our decision has nothing to do with certain well-meaning but annoying celebrities, I assure you.) The country we chose is one we've been discussing for about six months, since we first learned that it allows international adoptions. More recently, we thought that we would choose either domestic adoption or a Central or South American country, but for various logistical or emotional reasons our research always led us back to the country we've now selected. We are excited to get started!

In other news, I feel kind of guilty about selling short my friends and family in my last post. They are supportive of our decision to adopt, even if they have questioned me about the timing of our decision and our choice to proceed with adoption before seeing the recurrent loss specialist. I do think they're looking out for me, though they don't always say the "right" things. Being overly sensitive and/or defensive are just some of the lovely personality traits I've gained from my fertility struggles!

I saw the sign

I'm a person who struggles with decision-making. All the really important decisions I've made in my life were accompanied by signs to help me along. Signs led me to a particular college. Signs led me to law school, despite never previously having an interest in being a lawyer. The best sign led me to mrohkay.

It's a good story, so I hope you'll allow me a diversion from the point of this post. I'd been dating a guy for several years and it wasn't going well. But I'm a persistent person. I'd invested a lot of effort into the relationship and didn't want to give up. Eventually, mrohkay (who I'd known for awhile) became single and was apparently interested in me. I started to question whether I should keep struggling in my relationship... regardless of mrohkay, I was at a breaking point.

I prayed and prayed and prayed for a sign. I set a deadline for myself to make a decision. I might have stayed in that bad relationship forever, just to avoid making a decision. And then one Saturday morning, I walked into a tire store and God sent me my long-awaited sign. The guy I'd been dating had a flat tire. The area had, oh, eight or ten different tire stores in a five-mile radius. We walked into one of the stores, and standing at the back of the line was mrohkay. He had a flat tire that morning too, and ended up in the same store at the same time. I broke things off with the other guy the next day and never looked back.

Six years later, I'm crazy in love with mrohkay and thankful every day for his flat tire. Now we're faced with enormous and (so far) heartbreaking decisions of how to build our family. I'm overwhelmed and full of doubt. I pray and pray for signs from God. And then I worry that I'm missing the signs or misinterpreting them or seeing signs where there aren't any.

As I've written before, mrohkay and I always planned to adopt, but we expected it would be our second child. Now that we're struggling to have our first, we wonder when, or if, we should stop trying. Even though the odds are that we will have a successful pregnancy eventually, we don't know how many miscarriages we can handle along the way. We've been debating whether our third or fourth attempt will be our last - at least for a little while. I've been researching adoption a bit.

I recently told one of my friends about our fertility issues, and she started telling me about this adoption agency she knew of. I was interested and spent a few minutes looking at the agency's website. A few days later, I noticed that someone I follow on Twitter had re-tweeted something from the agency. So I started following the agency. A few weeks after that, the agency started following me back. A few days after that, someone at the agency wrote to me and asked if I was interested in meeting. Less than a week later - today - I was cleaning around my house. I picked up the alumni magazine from my law school, which I normally throw directly into the trash, and I flipped through it.  A picture of a woman holding a child caught my eye (naturally). Yes, it turns out that the founder/director of the agency is an alum of my law school and was featured in the magazine.

Why is this agency popping up everywhere I turn? Sign or coincidence? We're officially "trying" again right now, so... what does this mean? Are we supposed to be doing something (other than doing "it")? Anyone?