Best Christmas Present EVER!

Happy New Year!

Hello all,

Yes, it’s been a long while since our last entry. We didn’t even post in 2010! That’s because we thought 2010 was the year. We knew that 2009 was always going to be about The Wait, and we believed that 2010 was going to be the year of The Referral, and ultimately of bringing home a baby. Well, we were right about one of those things…

A few days after turning 40, my birthday wish came true: we got a referral!

I got the call at work. It was someone from our agency, but different than our regular case worker so I wasn’t expecting anything except maybe more excuses or changes in the program. Then she said she was calling to give me some good news. I asked if she had called Bekah. She tried but got VMs. So I conferenced Bek on the phone and we got the news.

First a bit of the details: We’re having a boy! He’s cute and adorable and he was 2months old when we got the referral. (He’s about 3 months old as of this writing.) His given name is Bedilu, which means “in his luck” in Amharic, the official language of Ethiopia.

When we got the referral, of course the initial reaction is complete joy. This whole thing becomes REAL. I’ve gone from this abstract concept of parenthood to knowing that I am the father of a baby boy…should we choose to accept the referral.

This is where it gets complicated. It’s not as easy as Oh gee it’s a boy! With international adoption, you are given a week or so to decide whether or not you will move forward and accept the referral. We’re given a couple of photos, a brief history (if available), and some medical records.

We retained a pediatrician at Oakland Children’s Hospital who specializes in international adoption. We sent her Bedilu’s file, which includes weight, length, head circumference, and a whole slew of blood work. This is extremely nerve wracking. Of course we want to say YES, but we know that we’re not doing this for charity, or charity alone. We’ve engaged in this process because we want to be parents and we want to raise a child together.

When we began the process, there are a number of forms to fill out and decisions to make up front. Do you want a boy or a girl, or are you open? How many children? What age range? And of course, what health conditions are you open to? We know that adopting a child of another race from another country is already going to be a challenge. We didn’t want to add health problems on top of that. So we go through a checklist and ruled out HIV/AIDS, cerebral palsy, and a number of other things.

Bedilu’s blood work comes out clean. He was born a perfectly healthy baby. But now he is malnourished and undersized, presumably having lost a lot of weight post birth. Our doctor presented us with a number of worst-case scenarios which put a scare into us. She has reviewed hundreds of Ethiopian adoptees over the years and told us that on a percentile spectrum of healthiness, Bedilu is in the bottom 1/3. There are healthier babies out there, she says. We would not be out of line to refuse this referral. Nor would we be frivolous to accept it.

How will his development be affected? What is his long-term prognosis? We had a little more than a week to decide. We got the news on a Friday, and the following Friday was Christmas Eve. The agency’s office would be closed, so we’re given until the following Monday. We spend several days talking to the doctor, consulting various adoption message boards, we research online, we meet other Bay Area adoptive parents of Ethiopian children, we do a lot of soul searching.

As Christmas approaches, we really want to tell our families, but we haven’t yet made a decision. We are strongly inclined to accept. Bedilu is beautiful. Something feels very right. But we also got a lot of encouragement from the adoptive community. These kids are fighters, they are resilient, they say. We meet a number of families and their Ethiopian kids/babies at a well-timed brunch. We share the news and all are thrilled. They tell us tales of their children and others they’ve known or heard about. Get them home and they’ll turn around.

We want to believe every word of it. We learn that Bedilu is being cup fed. No bottles, no nipples, for sanitary reasons. We research and find that that is not uncommon, but it also makes it more difficult for the babies to consume enough to get their weight up. That explanation actually makes me feel better because it helps explain Bedilu’s slow weight gain. Perhaps it’s nothing more than that?

The day before Christmas Eve, we have dinner with Bek’s family and share the news with them. We got a referral! They are thrilled. We tell them we haven’t decided yet, but all are thrilled by this major milestone. On Christmas Day, Bek and I do a Skype video conference call with my family. Mom and dad are visiting NYC and the whole clan is together at Keith & Kim’s and my parents had just met their granddaughter for the first time. We tell them the news via Skype! Pretty fun like that. Again, we say we haven’t yet accepted.

But we are strongly inclined to. I think it was that day, on Christmas, that we decided, yes we’re going to do this. Bedilu is our son, and we are going to do everything we can to get him home as quickly as possible. We just don't know when that will be.

A Milestone

Happy New Year, everyone!

As we close out 2009, we are that much closer to getting our baby. We've now been on the wait list over a year, and when we got on it the wait was expected to be at least 12 months. Time frames have been adjusted, and it looks like it'll be at least a few more months before we hear any news. But this much is encouraging: 2010!

2009 was always going to be about the wait. We got on the wait list in December 2008, and we knew that nothing would happen for a year. It would be easy to get caught up in the wait, twiddle my thumbs, and go crazy. Instead, I tried to focus on other things in 2009, and for the most part my life has been pretty much the same. It's strange to have such an abstract experience with "expecting."

So this year was about doing the things that would be more difficult to do (if not impossible) with child: Travel and Remodel. Yep. As many of you may know, Bek and I went to Jamaica in March, and the Austria and Spain in October. I know, I know, you want to see Europe pictures. And as for the remodel, we've been in the middle of it since we got back from Spain! But when it is complete, we're going to be totally dialed in. In the meantime, we're living out of a suitcase, hopping around between places.

Come 2010, we know that's going to be our year. The year we bring home our child. So we're pretty excited about this New Year, more so than I have been about any new year in recent, or not so recent, memory.

So Happy New Year! And with some good fortune, we'll have our baby soon!

Dreams From My Father

I recently finished reading Obama's first book, Dreams From My Father, and adored it. He's a master storyteller AND listener - so rare to have both of those skills! The book covers his experiences from a young child to early adulthood and it was a fascinating story and such a beautiful read. I felt like it gave me a window into some of the things our child might experience or think about while growing up, having biracial parents, so that was really interesting to think about. Highly recommend it for anyone though!

Shiftings

I've noticed something shifting in me as of late. Now when I hear about friends or family that are pregnant it feels like a stab in my heart. I've been going to baby showers for years and I felt like I could separate our experience from other people's and be genuinely happy for others, but now it feels really, really hard. Of course I don't wish any misfortune on others; it's just that this has become so drawn out that I'm losing my ability to be in mommy/kid-centric circumstances. It's not that I don't want to be around parents with their kids at all, it's just events that are focused on motherhood and/or new babies.
I'm sure this is all made more difficult because of my job as a Postpartum Nurse - working with moms and their new babies everyday! Huge irony, I know. I've considered looking for different work, but it's a tough time to find work in the Bay Area, even for a nurse.
So, I'm trying to look at this as a positive sign that I'm REALLY ready for motherhood. Meanwhile, those of you newly pregnant or newly moms, I hope you'll have patience with me.

Good News/Bad News

Finally, something and nothing all at once. Nothing in that we're still waiting. Something in that we got a message from our agency with a little update! Good news and bad news, one in the same.

Bad news: as our agency was preparing our dossier to be authenticated and forwarded on to Ethiopia, they noticed that two of the four Power of Attorney forms are no longer valid due to staff changes in Ethiopia.

The good news? They're actually doing something! They were preparing our dossier to be authenticated and forwarded on to Ethiopia! (I know I said that already.) The point is, we've had nothing to go on pretty much since our dossier was approved back in December. But now we know they're doing something. That kind of begs the question, What took so long? Shouldn't this have been done in January? We know that there's a wait, but we figured the back up was in Ethiopia, not at the agency.

Now what? The dossier consists of dozens and dozens of documents, four sets of finger prints, all kinds of financial information, four letters of recommendation, and notarization of many of these forms and docs. The powers of attorney, which are notarized, must then be certified by the Secretary of State of California. Basically, state certification proves that the notary is for real. Whatever. hoops and hurdles. At this point, it's nothing we haven't done before. But it's still a drag to have to do any of it again. And we might have to "update" our dossier if this takes much longer. more on that if/when that happens.

So that's where we're at. We've got some tasks to do again. At least there's something. After months of no real news on what's going on behind the scenes, this is something. I'll take it, though I know Bek's not very happy about it!

Awkward comments and questions

It's been challenging dealing with the bizarre comments people make when I tell them we're adopting an Ethiopian child. The most common reactions are:

Many people just fall silent and looked shocked, or may squeeze out one word, like "interesting".

"Wow, how much is that costing you?" This question is most commonly asked by people we don't know well and I find this particularly strange. It's like someone you don't know asking you what your salary is or how much your mortgage is.

"Aren't you terrified that your child will have AIDS?" All the children are tested and screend for HIV, TB, and HepB. If we wanted an HIV+ child, we could have gotten one many months ago because there are many of them and they are not in demand, but we, like most waiting families, want a healthy infant, and this is why there's a wait!

"Oh, you couldn't get pregnant?" This is not only extremely insensitive, but it makes huge assumptions.

"I know someone that adopted and(fill in adoption horror story here)."

"Do you have any real kids?"

"Why does it take so long if those kids really need families?"

"You must be a saint! What a lucky child that will be." More like, how lucky all 3 of us will be! And, we're not adopting to save a child; we're adopting because we want to be parents. 'Saving' a child is definitely a great byproduct of this and we're happy not to be contributing to overpopulation, but these are not the primary reasons for our adoption.

So, this is the kind of bizarro stuff people say that I seem to encounter much more often than Chaat. You'd think nurses would be more supportive, but I guess I work with such a huge cross-section of people from different backgrounds and countries that people have different opinions(or ignorances). Chaat seems to work with more like-minded people. Although I have to say I've encountered these comments outside of my workplace as well, so I probably just talk about the adoption in general more than Chaat does. Anyway, if anyone has some clever comeback responses to these comments I'd love your input. I'm often rendered speechless, particularly in talking with people I don't know well.