But the renewal of adoption forms is a special kind of torture.

Last year when we began our home study and we were in constant contact with USCIS and our agency to get all of our immigration paperwork settled, there was a sense of moving forward that only comes from doing something the first time.

Now, we’re renewing everything we’ve done.  I wish that this would entail sending in a form to all interested parties saying that nothing has changed (because okay, we’ve gotten minimal raises, have a bit less debt, and have another cat but really, nothing much has changed).  But no……we need to jump through the same hoops in the same way with the same people at almost the same cost.

And have I mentioned that our fingerprints have NOT changed.  Really, I promise that we haven’t filed the tips of our fingers down to throw the government and our home study agency off our trails so why oh why do we have to go through at least 2 more round of fingerprints this soon?

In “anticipation” of our USCIS renewal in February (a whole other set of hoops to jump through), we’re now undertaking an update of our home study.  Tomorrow we get to meet with our social worker to assure her that yes, we still want to adopt and that one of us hasn’t become a serial killer in the last 8 months.  Then we need to meet with her individually to assure her that yes, we really do mean it and have her to our house so that she can see we haven’t turned it into a vampire coven.

Although seeing the expression on her face might just be worth doing that.

I know that there is much in life to be grateful for.  Really, I do and I am.  But more paperwork just isn’t one of them.

But the other night hubby and I were at a party for his department and, someone asked what the wings meant and it came together.

What wings? Well (and dad, you might want to sit down here), for my 45th birthday present to myself, I got myself a tattoo from the premier artist in our area.  It was designed for me, based on an idea (wings — fairy not butterfly –, stained glass, spot color, inner wrist).  And it is stunning actually.  Every time I look at it, I fall in love with it more. Which is good for something I’m going to have for the rest of my life!

Hubby’s answer to the question of what the wings mean is usually something along the lines of “She’s writing a book about fairies.”  And that isn’t incorrect.

I’ve been a writer as long as I can remember.  But fiction has always eluded me. This changed in May but I couldn’t really tell you why.  Perhaps I was finally bored enough, or the waiting process for our adoption was getting to me, or I just felt like I needed to give birth to “something”.

And so yes, I’m writing a young adult fiction piece about fairies, and music, and love, and the salvation of love, and the power of love to heal and restore faith just when you thought you had none left. It’s about a girl who is strong and strong-willed who just happens to be human and a guy who is broken, and romantic, and seeking, who just happens to be a fairy. (Ironically enough, neither of them have wings!).

It isn’t finished.  There is a knotty part about ¾ of the way through where the plot is fighting me.  And it will need serious revisions.  But it is something I never thought I’d be able to do.  And I’m doing it.  Much like getting a tattoo actually.

There is a certain “If not now, when” attitude that I’m courting at the moment. I’m sure that this birthday, which at one time was designated as the entry to “middle age” has something to do with it. But I don’t think I’m having a mid-life crisis (no, really – I think looking significantly younger than I am helps with this!).  I may not have a lot of the trappings that I thought I’d have at this point in my life (house, child in particular) but I’m not at all unhappy with where I am. To the contrary, I feel like I’m on the brink of something; something good.

That something good may come from this work in progress, it may come from our adoption, it may just be a feeling or attitude adjustment, of falling in love with love again (different from hubby who I’ve never fallen out of love with), or just with life.  But it is positive.

Somewhere in the midst of this lives music and not just in the context of my writing.  My freelance career is as a music journalist and music is always playing in my head (usually its music I want to hear, thankfully).  But I’ve noticed that at certain times of my life the music has stopped.  It’s distracted me, I haven’t been in the mood for anything, etc…..  And those times have been difficult.  It’s a chicken and egg thing: did I stop listening to music because of an internal malaise or vice versa?

One thing I know is that I’m not a casual music listener.  Hubby will put our shared i.tunes library on shuffle and allow the 13,000 songs we have to randomly play through.  I can’t do that.  Music affects my thoughts and emotions even when I’m not actively listening to it and so I have to hand-pick what I’m listening to.  There is music I know that I love but if I listen to it at the wrong time or in the wrong context it just irritates me.

But I write to music (this comes as no surprise to me, I always worked to music in college, silence just makes my mind wander). So I’ve been listening to music with the same themes as my fiction piece: (love, and the salvation of love, and the power of love to heal and restore faith just when you thought you had none left – in case you’ve forgotten). And I’m sure that’s been seeping into my daily life too. (For those curious and because I love nothing more than to promote those who make amazing music, the bands that have been on my daily repetitive playlist for a while include but are not limited to: Anberlin, Civil Twilight, Copeland, Elenowen, and Vertical Horizon). Go off and fall in love with their music as soon as you’re done reading this if you haven’t already.

And I’ve been reading, voraciously, like a person starving for words. And writing.  And thinking about writing. And allowing my characters to have conversations in my head that wake me up in the middle of the night in hopes that they’ll say something interesting enough to write down.

These are all things that I used to do – things that I would have said defined me during college and after, before the drudgery of adulthood and real life snuck up on me. And they’re back.  And I welcome them.

I do find that it’s shaken the status quo a bit.  I remember talking to people when we were going through our infertility treatments and them saying that the process made it difficult to relate to their friends who had children or to friends without kids.  I was fortunate that I didn’t really find that so much.  The vast majority of my friends are “old” friends – or rather the friendships are old (and in the few cases where I have “new” friends, the bonds are deep enough that they might as well be old! ).  I have friends I never really hear from but the minute I put out a call for assistance they’re the first to respond with offers to pull the moon from the sky if that’s what I need. And so while I miss them, I never feel unloved.

But it seems that I’m not the only person that the winds are change are blowing for (or in my case, I guess that would be “wings of change”) and many of them are wrestling with their own changes and not necessarily in the same direction that I’m moving in.

I also realized the other day that I’m living someplace that hubby and I have already decided we won’t stay in long-term. But strangely, it will be a place of significance nonetheless. It will be the place where I got my wings, where I finished (because I WILL finish it) my book, where we bring our child home to, and where, in a very strange way, I’ve found a part myself that I hadn’t realized I’d lost, again.

And THAT is what the wings mean.

We DO finally have a registration number (why it took almost 3 months to get it has gone unanswered but now that we have it, I don’t really care) for Bulgaria.  I would almost suspect that the director of our agency made the number up just to get me off his back but I sense that they’re too sincere for that.

What, you may ask, does this mean?

Well….not much in terms of time or having any further knowledge about when we’ll actually have a referral.  But it does mean that they found all of our dossier material acceptable, which is a huge relief.

Aside from that, having a new form that now needs to be notarized, certified, appostilled and sent off we’re in a holding pattern until late August at which time we get to renew our home study in preparation for renewing our USCIS approval.  Which means social worker appointments, more fingerprinting, more checks to write, more fingerprinting, etc……

In the meantime, I have a major work project starting, my first ever fiction project which is up to 31K words, and hubby and I will be off to the UK so we won’t be bored.  But I’ll try to update more often for the 2 of your who are still reading this!

Hope you’re all well and enjoying your summer.

When my own mother passed away, I developed a bit of a hatred for Mother’s Day.  Let’s just say that infertility didn’t help make that any better.

And I’ve always been a bit confused by the fact that this goes unacknowledged by those close to those of us who have struggled in this way.

Anyhow, Serene Jones, President of Union Theological Seminary has published this wonderful piece, that I think should be mandatory reading…..

Worst Expectations: Motherhood Lost

In the meantime, I urge everyone reading this to follow the link below.  As a project to promote National Infertility Awareness Week, which ends tomorrow, the ever-diligent Mel along with RESOLVE created Project IF – asking the question “What if all of the  “what ifs” about infertility were taken out of people’s hearts and placed on the screen?

I probably won’t get my IF post done by the deadline.  But I think that Keiko (aka Miriam) of Hannah Wept, Sarah Laughed – who you might remember from our cross-pollination experiment – has summed it up for a lot of us.

What IF? A Portrait of Infertility from Keiko Zoll on Vimeo.

Adoption is not for the feint of heart.  It is a long, draining, expensive process that entails jumping through hoops without any certainty of what will happen.  I first have to say that I find it highly unlikely that anyone would put themselves through this unless they were serious about parenting a child.

I’m also certain that it is highly overwhelming for parents who have no experience parenting to suddenly try to parent a child who has spent their life in an institution – even more so than an infant and my new parent friends say THAT is surprisingly overwhelming to them even with 9 months of preparation.

THAT fear hits close to home.  I’m SURE that hubby and I, neither of who have parented or really even spent great deals of time with kids anytime in recent memory, will have our worlds turned completely upside down once we bring a child home.  And we’re all going to have to adjust to that.

But while I’ve read of parents suffering depression on par with the worst of postpartum  after bringing an adopted child home, and I’ve read of parents thinking of and fantasizing about disrupting their adoptions, I’ve never read of parents disrupting just because they felt overwhelmed by the act of parenting.

The adoptions I’ve read about that have been disrupted have been completely different.  You can get a feel for it in Welcome to My Brain’s post here. Even more so by reading the comments.  I’ve been lurking on a number of adoption listservs mostly because I have nothing to say at this point and everything to learn.  I’ve heard stories that made me feel sick and terrified – stories of children going after their adoptive parents with knives, torturing pets, sexually abusing their siblings.  And these are, in many cases, children way younger than you would think would be capable of these things.

I don’t understand what drove the woman in TN to put her adoptive son on a plane instead of going through channels with her agency (although current statistics say that 1% of adoptions are disrupted, I’ve yet to hear of an agency who have never had to disrupt one).  Perhaps we’ll never know the full story.  But instead of thinking of how awful it would be to give up your mouthy teen, or your 2 year old whose favorite word is “no”, think about how it would feel to fear for your life on a regular basis when all you wanted to do was to share your home and your life and your love with a child.

I’m not going into adoption thinking “well, if we get a kid with attitude, we’ll give it back” (in fact, given my personality and hubby’s, a little attitude would probably be a good thing!).  But neither do I have a saint complex (okay, not completely true but I HAVE learned that there are some problems you can’t solve regardless of how hard you try or what you do).  I don’t think any of us can judge in this case until we’ve been there.  And hopefully none of us will experience the fear and the pain that these parents have gone through before making what has to be one of the hardest decisions of their lives.

I’m almost glad that I didn’t know that the extension of the adoption credit had been added into this bill because I would have ended up chewing the furniture waiting to see if it would pass.

For the past number of years, the $5,000 tax credit for adoption assistance had been increased.  For tax year 2009, it was $12,5000 and was credited against the tax that you were required to pay, based on your income.

That credit was due to expire.  In fact, no one seemed to be talking about it being added into the health care reform bill.  But low and behold…..not only has the credit been extended until the end of calendar year 2011, it has been INCREASED to $13,170 AND it is now refundable (from what I understand, this means that you would get the amount back even if you didn’t owe that amount in taxes to begin with).

Now it is unlikely that our adoption will be finalized by the end of 2011 (expenses for domestic adoptions can be claimed as spent but expenses for international adoptions can’t be claimed until the child is here in the US) but certainly this extension bodes better for there being a 2012 credit.

Meanwhile, Bulgaria has been busy too. This past week saw a major conference (more information available here) in Sofia called “Status and Perspectives of Intercountry Adoptions in Bulgaria”.  There are a number of bits of information that are being disseminated across various adoption forums but no official information has been released yet.  Suffice to say, that in the next few days we should have more information about the number of children currently available for adoption from Bulgaria, any new procedures, and the general status of things.

One of things that many families (including us) are waiting for is information on referrals of healthy children.  Most of the children we’ve seen referred have been special needs due to medical issues or age. And while we’ve been approved to adopt a child with mild special needs, we are hoping to adopt a child as health as possible.

My own agency has told me to contact them on Monday if we haven’t heard first because it’s possible that our own dossier was accepted during this conference.  It seems soon compared to the timelines we were given but it would be great to know that we’re finally on the rolls!

But I did wake to a startling revelation the other morning.

I completely forgot about the follistim in the fridge.  You know, that stash that I was going to use for my last ditch unmonitored cycle because hey, you never know and it wasn’t like I could give all of those half-used vials to anyone else so why not throw caution to the wind and…you never know.

After we stopped seeing our ineffective RE in January 2009, I wanted to get the drugs out of my system and just regroup.  By May we were knee-deep in preparation for our home study.

The question of what to do with the meds has come up (particularly when hubby can’t find room in the fridge for more beer and this case of stuff is just sitting there in the back).  And I always had a plan or rather…this month was never good but 2 months from now there were no h0lidays and it wasn’t anyone’s birthday and we weren’t going to be out of town on the crucial days and……

In the course of just living life I forgot all about it.

Waking up with that realization at first made me proud (“Look how adjusted you are to the fact that you’re adopting; you completely forgot to do this crazy thing of shooting yourself full of drugs – again – only this time without monitoring which was a crazy idea to begin with”).  Then it freaked me out (“What if that was your chance; your time to actually jog your follicles and have your biological baby…the one who would continue your lines co-mingled with hubby’s? And you just forgot????”).

And now….I don’t know.  The meds are out of date – most around 8 months so.  Perhaps they’d still be good.  Or do no damage.  Perhaps I’ve just been hanging on to them as a talisman of sorts because I still don’t find myself throwing them out.

I’ve thought of going through the trial of giving myself daily shots again.  This time with the added stress of no ultrasounds to make sure I’m not over(or under) doing it.  It is less than appealing.  I look at the calendar and see my trips out of town for work and for family visits and then our anniversary and…it would be July (coincidentally the 2 year anniversary of our one IVF try) before I could realistically do it.  The meds will be at least a year out of date and by then we should be registered to adopt in Bulgaria.

I want to be someone who can just chuck out the bag (although how to dispose of this stuff is another question all together) and feel cleansed.  I want to say that I’m so firmly committed to our adoption plans (those plans which took no real emotional adjustment for me because I’d always assumed that I’d go that route) that I no longer even care about having a biological child.

But instead I’m the person who has a bag taking up room where some pretty good beer could be.  Just in case she can convince herself to give it just one more go, if the calendars and the stars align.  And frankly, I’m not sure how I feel about being that person.

There are some things that have been stomping through my mind of late and Cali’s post at Creating Motherhood really brings it to a head.

I too have been watching parts of NBC’s new genealogy show. I’ve always been fascinated by genealogy even though I’m constantly frustrated with the impossibility of tracing my own Eastern European tree back through too many generations.

Thankfully a distant cousin has taken the reins of tracing my paternal grandmother’s tree back to her own grandparents (at last I looked).  But that leaves three sides of the family that I’m pretty much in the dark about.  And of course the line that’s always fascinated me the most is my paternal grandfather’s.  But since he never knew his birth date in Russia and chose July 4th when he moved here (“if it’s good enough for the country, it’s good enough for me!), my chances of finding out anything significant is pretty dim.

But what’s distressing me more about two different but similar issues.  (1) I’m the last of that line of the family.  My grandfather has a brother who had no biological children. My father has a brother who has no children.  I’m an only child. I’m infertile.

Throughout our struggle to get pregnant, I’ve felt frustrated but I was careful never to let my inability to bear children make me feel like a failure; certainly hubby never made me feel that way and I’m usually pretty good at focusing on the work at hand.

But when I think about the unnamed family members who came here from Russia to give their families a better life, even though, in the cases of my grandfather’s parents, it meant that they died quite young – I wonder if they would have done it knowing that they were only securing the futures of three generations.

I DO feel as though I’ve let those brave people down and I’m saddened by that in a way that I haven’t allowed myself to be sad for myself.

Which leads to me issue #2. As a prospective adoptive parent, where does that leave my child?

When I was ever-so-briefly pregnant in 2007, I bookmarked a beautiful family tree kit that I was going to buy. My miscarriage ended that.  And I find myself confused as to the appropriateness of buying one post-referral.  I’ve certainly seen adopted children on family trees so perhaps it’s just an adjustment in my own mind that needs to be made. I don’t think I’m going to feel like the child is any less ours than we would a biological child.  But what are the rules for a tree?

And what of our child?  Will she, coming from Bulgaria, feel a connection with my own Eastern European roots or hubby’s strong (and probably more traceable) Scottish ones?  Certainly, we’ll be sharing both sides of the family who have been wonderfully supportive throughout this entire process. But will she feel that the family trees are relevant to her? Would we need to try to trace her biological roots to avoid being posers in the world of genealogy?

If any of you have tackled this in one way or another, I’d love to hear about it.

In the land of infertility, “Patience” means getting through the two week wait after your procedure until you know whether or not you’re pregnant.  Then it means waiting a week for your scan and waiting  a week for…..well, you get the idea.  There are lots of tiny milestones all of which make you hold your breath until you hit (and hopefully overcome) the next one.

In the land of adoption, “Patience” is measured in years.  And you can’t spend years holding your breath so what do you do?

Our dossier was sent to our agency almost 2 weeks ago.  Our check was cashed, our credit card charged.  Our agency wrote to let us know it was (1) received and (2) okay.  Yesterday we heard it was in Bulgaria! Our Fedex account hasn’t been charged though (and as much as I hope that was a lucky oversite on the part of our agency, no one is really that lucky).

Currently, unless there is some spring break or holiday going on, I’d imagine that our million pieces of paper are being be translated into Bulgarian.  Although I can’t read Bulgarian, this intrigues me. I wonder if it will end up like some of those foreign signs where the English is fractured and turned into something that means something else completely.  I’d like to see how some of the more subtle or funny parts of our home study end up reading in another language.

That process, by the way, is meant to take 2-4 weeks.

The translated documents are then sent to the Ministry of Justice, approved and filed.  THAT process is meant to take about 2 months IF nothing is remiss, expired, or needs clarification.

So in a perfect world  we’re looking at mid-June for being on roles.  OVER A YEAR from the time we began this process.

And then….well who knows.  We wait for a referral or we request to be considered for one of the kids whose info is sent to us by the agency (usually these children are “at risk” in some way – aging out of the younger orphanages, in need of medical interventions, or desperately in need of a family to get them the help they need ASAP).

A fairly limited number of people actually know about our plans to adopt.  My closest friends, family, and co-workers all know.  Hubby’s sister and a few co-workers (we won’t tell the rest of his family until we see them this fall) know.  But I do get the occasional question from a friend or co-worker I haven’t spoken to in a while.  And so I tell them where we are and inevitably the response is something akin to “The time will fly”.

Of that, I actually have no doubt.  I’m going to be on the edge of my seat until I hear that we’re actually registered in Bulgaria and then….it’s hard to explain to people and perhaps I’m even wrong but….I think I’ll be okay.  Most of the people I know in real life and follow in blogland have kids. That goes for the families who are adopting as well.  In fact, I don’t think I’ve found a single family adopting internationally who have no children already (if you know of any blogs that fit this PLEASE let me know!).

I’ve actually asked our agency to put us in touch with other families just so that we have some sort of community to go through this process with.

So OF COURSE we’re excited about all of this and most people seem to “get” that.

The other side of the coin is harder to explain to people.  Hubby and I are working hard to get completely out of debt before the referral.  Whether that happens or not we should come close without sacrificing too many sushi dinners.  We’re also planning a trip overseas to see his family later this year. We have a few trips in mind that we consider child-unfriendly (either places where our days are filled with (1) music in dark, often smokey bars, alcohol, the occasional fine dining experience, and late nights or (2) you can’t drink the water, there is no plumbing to speak of, and you’re likely to get woken by crazed wildlife in the middle of the night) that we might or might not get to take while still paying down the debt and making IRS happy.

And at 44, speaking just for myself here – regardless of how excited (and that’s a lot) I am to be a mother I’m also scared out of my mind having not even babysat since I was in high school.  After all, through all of my infertile years I avoided most children like the plague.

I have reading to do, and planning.  And like most plans, I’m sure we’ll be surprised one way or other by the timing of our referral or the child or where we’re living or…..’cause that always happens. (Speaking of which if there IS one thing I’m increasingly impatient about it’s to move out of this state but that’s a post for another day).

But for an impatient person I’m learning that I can choose what to be impatient about.  I’m trying to treasure this time that hubby and I have together when the biggest non-work responsibility we have is walking the dog.  That will change and we’ll rise to the occasion and probably love most of it.  But I’m really okay with where we are now.

Although I’ll be much better once we’re registered!

Work is a story for another day except to say that our already over-worked and over-stressed office is currently short-staffed.  We are also undertaking one of my least favorite things in the world – a strategic plan.  And we have had a change of lay leadership so we’re having to break them in. And we’re looking to redo our website – which is all down to me. And…..yes, a story for another day.

Our New Orleans trip was amazing.  Hubby had never been there and I hadn’t been there since Katrina.  Aside from the fact that my favorite Irish pub hadn’t survived the aftermath, the French Quarter has rebounded nicely. We drank, ate, drank, listened to wonderful music, drank, walked around, took photos and just soaked it all in.  We were also fortunate to be there for one of the first of the Mardi Gras parades and for a pre-Super Bowl Saints parade.  It was a wonderful time and as with everytime I’ve ever been there, I can’t wait to go back.  Someday.  My big souvenir this trip was a mask made by one of the artists currently working for Cirque du Soleil.

My dad’s visit came up as a bit of a surprise.  He hasn’t visited us here in Music City which is a shame because he loves to travel and I always joke that I keep moving just so that he has new places to visit.  His wife doesn’t like to travel and won’t fly so we knew that if we waiting for them to drive the 10 hours to get here….well, we wouldn’t still be living here so we offered to fly him in and somehow she agreed to let him.  Not really sure what we’re going to do as he isn’t a country music fan and has the most limited food tastes of anyone I’ve ever met.  But it will be great to just hang out.  As an only child, it’s hard for me to see him so rarely.

The BIG news on the adoption front is that we FINALLY got our FBI clearance letters.  It took an unprecedented (apparently!) 12 weeks – which is amazing given that hubby had to get clearance to move to the US to begin with.  But we were up against the holidays, federal closings due to snow, etc….but we have them.

I’d planned to go this morning to have everything apostilled and in some last minute burst of brilliance double-checked the secretary of state’s website to find that I needed to go to the county clerk’s office first so that they could confirm the signatures of the notaries.  So each of our 17 documents is now notarized, confirmed, and apostilled.  We now need to make copies of the lot (hence the three dead trees title and because I know the amount of physical paper being used is making hubby buggy) and mail them off to our agency who will review, approve (I hope!), and send to Bulgaria to be translated.  It takes 6-8 days to get there via FedEx and 2-4 weeks to be translated and then notarized and apostilled in Bulgaria!  They are then filed in the Ministry of Justice and, if all is well, the MOJ issues a letter of registration with 2 months.  So yes, it could very well be May before we’re actually registered.  A YEAR after we began all of this.

I’ve been feeling a great sense of relief today (particularly after the women doing the apostilles said that she wished that all prospective adoptive parents had their paperwork in as good order as we did!).  But I realize that, given the timeline, once we’re registered we need to start looking and which documents will be expiring and start refiling.

As one of my valentine’s day gifts, hubby gave me a proper scrapbook to start an adoption journal.  I’ve always been fairly frightened of the scrap-booking section of our local craft store because I could see getting sucked into it and now I have an excuse!  I just need to figure out which “approval” to start with!

What was this horrid act you might ask?

I spent a half hour in a bookstore.

Now anyone who knows me knows that there are many things in life I would give up.  But books aren’t one of them.  In this hubby and I differ.  He just doesn’t get it.  I would love nothing more than to have a room filled wall to wall with books.  He considers the three bookcases in our office to be “clutter”.

In 2008, he bought me one of Amazon’s first Kindles (1) because he thought I’d like it and (2) in hopes that I wouldn’t buy anymore physical books.  I admit to eyeing it with suspicion originally.  How could this electronic thing replace the smell of an old book, the feel of the pages and how could shopping online possibly compare to uninterrupted time in a book store?

I have to admit that it hooked me though.  It’s easy and light and I no longer worry about finishing the book I’m reading when I’m traveling and having no other to pick up in its place. In short, I love it. And so, aside from the bookstores in airports when I’ve been killing time and writing down titles that I want to sample on my little electronic bookcase, I’ve had no reason to go to a bookstore.

But this week we head to New Orleans for hubby’s birthday.  And I needed a map.  And it turned out to be the one thing that Ama.zon didn’t have. And I have to admit it was a heady experience.  A dieter walking into an ice cream store kind of feeling.  I felt like I was cheating on my Kindle.  I felt like I didn’t deserve to be there anymore even though I’ve spent a great percentage of my life browsing through bookshelves (either at a store, library, or person’s house because that’s the first thing I gravitate towards).

I think I need to start to do it more.  Not necessarily to buy anything (and yes, there is guilt associated with that too because I would hate to be part of the cause of the demise of the local bookseller) but to feel part of it again – to be surrounded by people who like to read (even if I don’t know them and an unlikely to even talk to them).

——————————————————————————————————————————-

Not much to catch up with on the adoption front.  The FBI has now had our paperwork for 8 weeks.  They estimate 8-10 for processing.  It is the last piece of this current puzzle and so we continue to wait…….

After much angst I now have an updated medical form from my country doctor.  They don’t have access to a notary and she had the gall to ask me to ask another doctor’s (in another office) notary to sign it without her there.  Which of course is illegal and she wouldn’t do.  But one of the nurse’s mother is a notary and she did it.  So I have it in hand.  Once we’re registered I’m switching…..I don’t need additional stress in this process….

1. What did you do in 2009 that you’d never done before?

I hired a photographer (and her make-up/hair team) and did a photo shoot as my anniversary gift to hubby.  It was wonderful and frightening and surprisingly fun.  And I’ve just been asked by the photographer to be in a shoot next week so I guess I didn’t do too bad of a job the first time! J

2. Did you keep your New Year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

I don’t think I wrote any down last year although I was pretty much vowing to get out of my job at the time (done), write more (done) and resolve the fertility issue once and for all (done).  This year….there are one of two very personal things I’d like to vow but nothing that I’m going to write about here! J

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

Yes, PeeSticksandStones gave birth to her lovely Coleman and I can’t wait to see him again in a few weeks!

4. Did anyone close to you die?

Thankfully no as the year began shortly after my grandmother passed away.  That was enough.

5. What would you like to have in the coming year that you lacked in the previous year?

Focus.

Financial windfalls.

6. Where did you go that you’ve never been?

Ashville, NC for our anniversary.

7. What date from this year will remain etched upon your memory, and why:

May 4.  It was the day I went back to my old job and realized just how horrible the job I’d moved here for was.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

Tied between quitting said horrible job and getting my old good job back as a telecommuter and getting this far through the adoption process.

9. What was your biggest failure?

Not getting pregnant.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

Thankfully no.  And my thyroid issue is finally being treated!

11. What was the best thing you bought?

A Canon Rebel Xsi for hubby’s Christmas present.

And my wonderful fluffy kitten.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?

Hubby for getting on board with the adoption plan and for listening to me rant while I was extricating myself from my old job.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?

My old bosses’.

14. Where did most of your money go?

Towards old debt to pay it down.

And to sushi (because you still have to have some fun!).

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?

Finishing our home study.

16. What song will always remind you of 2009?

“Eyes on Fire” by Blue Foundation.  Not because of any importance, I just listened to the Twilight soundtrack a lot this year.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:

i. happier or sadder?

MUCH HAPPIER

ii. thinner or fatter?

Thinner but probably only because I’m not stimming.

iii. richer or poorer?

Richer.  Hubby is working and I’m back with my old company and a real salary.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?

Explored more of this area.

Talking to hubby.

Corresponding with friends.

Writing.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?

Stressing over decisions.

Procrastinating.

Wasting time.

20. How did you spend Christmas?

With hubby, our animals, a roaring fire, lots of champagne and a lot of love.

21. Did you fall in love in 2009?

Yes, repeatedly.  Thankfully with the same person!

22. What was your favorite TV program?

Fringe

Royal Pains

23. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?

Nope. Although there are one or two people who puzzle me more than they did then.

24. What was the best book you read?

“The Help” by Kathryn Stockett

25. What was your greatest musical discovery?

Anuna

Radio Nigel at www.RadioNigel.com

26. What did you want and get?

A direction.

Peace of mind.

27. What was your favorite film of this year?

Probably “Avatar” but I can’t think of any movies that I really, really loved.

28. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

Hubby and I went to a restaurant that pairs each course with a flight of wine.  That’s three small glasses per course.  It was a fun way to ring in 44.

29. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

Winning the lottery.

30. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2009?

Careless.  Working from home will do that to you.  I though I HAVE put some effort into learning how to apply makeup.

31. What kept you sane?

My kindle.

32. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

Always the same ones….Rupert Everett, Anthony Andrews, Bono…..all preferably about 20 years younger than today.

33. What political issue stirred you the most?

Obama’s election.

34. Whom did you miss?

My grandmother.

35. Who was the best new person you met?

Probably the photographer/makeup people who did my shoot.  I’ve kept in touch with them.

It’s been more significant to have renewed a lot of old college and high school friendships through Facebook.

36. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2009:

“Just Do it” – although I’m still not as good at is as I’d like to be

37. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:

From Talk Talk’s “Life Is What You Make It”

Baby
life’s what you make it – celebrate it
anticipate it – yesterday’s faded.

Nothing can change it – life’s what you make it.

Ev’rything’s alright – life’s what you make it.

Yesterday’s dusting may not have been much but it served to add a pretty coating to the view from my home office. And it couldn’t have happened on a better day.  The good/bad about telecommuting is that while I consistently check and answer work emails on weekends and late at night (since my work and home computers are one and the same), there are also days when that extra work pays off, while I’m in waiting mode for people to answer my emails and provide me with work, and I can clear other things off my plate while still being available if needed.  Any yesterday was such a day.

The task that needed attending to was dossier preparation.  I’d shied away from it in fear of the overwhelming amount of detail and focus it was going to take and, honestly, I was a little nervous that I’d find something crucial that we’d overlooked doing.  Instead it went fairly smoothly.  With the exception of the xeroxing of our 2008 taxes (and associated explanation about how I’d spent half the year in a lower-paid job and hubby had been out of work for much of 2007 due to our move) and our family photo compilation (which thankfully falls to hubby because I DO find this one overwhelming), we’re darned near done.

Hubby and I both sent our respective doctors our medical forms for them to print, sign, and notarize. In hubby’s case, this is a smooth and flawless process as he’s seeing a resident at the university he works for. His letter should be ready today.

In my infinite wisdom however, I’d decided that I wanted a “real” doctor and am going to a woman who’s practice would not have been out of place on Little House on the Prairie.  Big mistake.  But one I can’t change until our dossier is filed because she’s named in our home study as my doctor of record.  Great.  I sent the letter off by email and got a prompt response from her new administrator (the entire office staff has changed since I was last there in July) that she didn’t think it would be a problem and to call back on Monday.  Now I’ve got a bit of a bad feeling about this because some of the things that my doctor needs to attest that I’m clear of she hasn’t tested me for. I could have given the form to my highly efficient Gyn but she isn’t listed in the home study….great…..as we’re still waiting for our FBI letter(s) though, I guess we have a “little” time to work with. I just wish we didn’t need it.

The other thing we tackled was the special needs list.  When we applied with our agency we filled out a very simplistic version of this.  This was was 6 pages long and necessitated a bit of time with Dr. Google to find out what these illnesses actually were and what affect they’d have on a child as they grew.  Some of the special needs were easy for use to say “no” to.  We would not be good parents to a mentally handicapped child.  There is no doubt in either of our minds about that.  But what level of physical disability would we be good parents for? It’s a difficult question to answer.  I know very few people with physically disabled kids.  We’ve certainly never seen these issues play out in a day to day way. Yes every “no” made me feel like we were missing out on a potentially wonderful child who would be perfect for us.

We both erred towards acceptance. Surprisingly, it was easier for us to make determinations on issues like clubbed feet, children whose mothers were HIV positive, sexual organ malformations, and albinism than it was on issues like deafness and missing limbs.  The last two issues fall straight into our most cherished loves: music (me) and hiking (hubby).  I’ve seen children with missing limbs climbing rock walls with prosthetics. I’ve seen children enjoy rhythms and sounds with implants.  But what if the child referred to us was not a child who tackled their issues in such a way?  Did we want to take that chance?

We fell back on the form’s cop-out answer “maybe”.  It will depend on the child.  On their personality and the level of spunk in their character.  I keep thinking that biological parents don’t get to make these types of choices. But the voice inside my head always reminds me that adopted children are already coming with issues purely from the experience of being raised in an orphanage and by moving to a country where they don’t know the language and where nothing is familiar.  If being able to choose the type of child that we can be the best parents for is part of this process than so be it.  Perhaps it is the “gift” of the adoption process.

In the meantime, we’ll get our doctors sorted out, wait for the FBI to write us, and watch our 1/2 inch of snow melt. Who knows how many winters there are left before we become a family of 3 (or 4).

So it’s a bit of relief to realize that there is nothing along those lines that I intend to do this year. Sure, I still want to lose the 15 extra pounds that is the gift of all of our failed cycles. And I’m making a concerted effort to be a better correspondent/friend this year (and that does NOT included correspondence through facebook status updates as I’m already on top of that one) including commenting on the blogs that I read daily. And there are the REALLY small issues like: walking the dog more, purging clothes I haven’t worn in at least 5 years and trying to finally file the papers that are collecting dust on my desk.

But….if none of these happen, I’ll really be okay with it. Okay the weight thing and the correspondence are pretty important to me.  But none of these resolutions – kept or otherwise is going to change my life.  And I’m fine with that.

Yes, we have a dossier to file in Bulgaria but that chance of us bringing home a child in 2010 is slim to none. Yes, hubby and I REALLY need to start investigating where we’re going to move to once we escape Music City for someplace we actually want to call home.  And those things will happen.

But it’s very freeing to be looking at the year ahead and want nothing more than to stay happy.  To have nothing major in your life actually change.  I’m not sure I’ve ever been in that position before and it’s a little odd. I’m sure that life will throw us curve balls because – like it or not – that always happens.  I’m praying that none of them are drastic and that there might be some good surprises through in there too.

I’d love to hear YOUR resolutions. But more than that, I wish you too the type of year where contentment is obtainable.

Happy 2010!

Still waiting for the FBI to send their clearances back but we’re officially in their system now so it shouldn’t be too long.  Yipes!  We need to get our new medical forms filled out and all of the other paperwork printed, notarized and apostilled.

But we’re definitely moving right along.

Happy Holidays everybody!

Anyhow, that’s my excuse for not updating my blog lately.  I’ve been doing a bit of baking, a bit of obsessive gift ordering (checking Amazon ever few minutes because you never know when the gift you want to buy will go down by 14 cents!), a lot of wrapping and too much trying to keep the kitten from unwrapping all of the presents under the tree.

But while I’ve been doing that, a bit of a war has been waged on the Bulgarian adoption listserv that I belong to.  Very uncharacteristically, I lurk on these boards.  I’m not sure why I don’t post.  I guess because it just won’t feel completely real before we’re actually registered and because I have no experience and nothing concrete to offer.

Anyhow, so about a week ago, a woman posted that she was on her way to pick up her child in Bulgaria. And the gist of her message was that anyone waiting for healthy children might have been misled by their agency and that those prospective parents should contact the Bulgarian arms of those agencies to get the “real” story.

As you might imagine on a board where some people have been waiting YEARS (and I meant many years) during the Bulgarian slowdown for their adoption to come through, there was a bit of a group freak-out. The only thing that kept me from joining the fray was (1) I don’t remember email address that I used to sign up to the list (!) and (2) what is considered “special needs’ for foreign adoptions isn’t always something that those of us with access to high-level medical care and insurance will consider “special needs”.

But one good thing that came from it all was a reply by Earth Mother from our agency.  She is usually a good correspondent to the lists but our agency has been working towards their permanent Hague accreditation and she has a very large family of her own, etc… so things have been quiet of late.  Her reply included an email she received from her counterpart in Bulgaria saying “I have meeting with vice ministry of justice on Monday and I will know how many exactly are the healthy children on register…MOJ expect on March /6 months after new Family code – which started on 01 October that we will receive so many children to their register. Remember that the new code just began and that children have to be registered six months to come available.”

No, nowhere here is a guarantee.  But it seems like the Ministry of Justice in Bulgaria is keeping true to their promise to overhaul the system for the better of the children and the waiting families.  If there are no more hiccups (see below), I’m hoping that we’ll be registered with the MOJ in March so we might even have a more accurate time line at that point (although I can almost guarantee that something will badly conflict with a mandatory work conference that I need to be at in December of 2011).

As for our current status.  The very friendly (!) FBI helpline assures me that it’s still to early to freak out about us not being registered in their system yet – even though I mailed our fingerprints off in Mid-November.  I’ve been expecting some sort of letter from USCIS but…….

I got an unexpected call from our agency’s Executive Director this morning.  He was checking on our previously discussed issue with guardianship, and letting me know that the changes in the Bulgarian family code means that two of the forms we need to send in have changed and that he’ll send me the new ones. AND…that he received a call from USCIS saying that there is a letter missing from our home study.  I DO vaguely remember seeing it in the packet submitted from our SW (who is currently on vacation) but USCIS says they don’t have it.  The ED is going to e-mail it over to them and then send a hard copy.  He just didn’t want me to worry if I got a letter from USCIS saying that it was missing.

I DO realize that this is what we’re paying the agency for.  But at the same time, it feels really nice (for a change) to know that someone is looking out for us and really working to make this happen.  It’s very easy to feel alone in this process (even more than with assisted reproduction where you’re meeting with doctors and nurses all the time) and his call – while it means a delay in truth – gives me a warm, fuzzy, holiday feeling.  This may actually happen after all!

As I’ve gotten to exchange emails with PerchancetoDream and read her blog, it’s amazing to see the similarities. We’re both Jewish, we’ve both got Hashi’s, we both have a passion for communications. I’ve recently found a lot of interesting synchronicity in my life that I don’t half wonder if our pairing was intentional on higher level. In many ways, as I’ve gotten to read her story and how she’s come to her path, my own eyes have been opened to possibilities that I so quickly push aside. But before I get into that, allow me a brief allegory.

As we start on the journey to family building, for the most part, the road looks pretty clear, the route fairly self-explanatory. We walk confidently, vaguely aware of our surroundings, but focused on our destination. We hold hands, we laugh and joke along the way, enjoying the walk. For some, they arrive at their destination, happy parents who then venture on to other paths. For some, we just keep walking, but become more aware of our surroundings, sensing perhaps we’ve walked too far, did we miss it? There’s no point in turning around because we’ve only been on this one path, but my feet are starting to hurt and he’s getting tired and here- hand me the map, let me look at it. We compare the map to the path in front of us. Everything seems to look ok.

And then… diagnosis. For me, it was premature ovarian failure, and it stopped us dead in our tracks. But there are many specific names for infertility and they all pretty much have the same effect on the travelers: are we lost? What do we do now? In my case, we hadn’t even started walking on the family path. I would bring up the map with my husband, making travel plans, but we never put on our shoes and started walking. (As a complete aside to but within the vein of this metaphorical musing, I actually fainted while walking last year. The ensuing ER visit and 3 months of missed periods following was what eventually lead me to my current diagnosis earlier this year.) We get to this point, and where fertile others just keep on walking and eventually find their way, the IF community whips out their GPS. Suddenly, a plethora of paths we didn’t initially see as we walked pop up all over the map. With a little searching on the landscape, these paths make themselves evident. And we are left dumbfounded at the possibilities.

Whether it’s IUI, IVF, donor gametes, surrogacy, adoption, or even living childfree… these are all paths, and none are easy to walk. They each come with their own perils and no guarantees. My husband and I are still figuring out just which path to take. Instinctually, I yearn for donor egg and IVF. I see pregnancy as a healing act for me: I lost an ovary almost 10 years ago and was assured my fertility wouldn’t suffer. While this may not necessarily have been the root cause of my present diagnosis, I’m sure it didn’t help. But as my husband and I look more into the nitty-gritty of assisted reproductive technologies, there’s so much more depth than at first glance. I have been staunch about using an unknown donor, but my husband is opening my eyes to the use of known donors. I have been *extremely* blessed to have not one, not two, but FIVE women offer to be egg donors, my older sister included. I am honored and deeply moved by these genuine offers. My husband is one to look at the bottom line, and known donors make the most fiscal sense. It’s still a raw concept I am tumbling around and trying out in my head.

There’s embryo donation, another thought that had never crossed my mind until my husband and I started doing some more research. That way, it’s not like I’m “left out” of the equation as genetically, the child would be neither mine nor his. Again, the idea doesn’t sit comfortably with me, but it’s there. The seed has been planted and I am a reluctant gardener.

And then there’s adoption. I stand at the foot of this path, on tiptoes peering down the way, stretching and straining to get a better sense of what’s on the horizon. My eyes were first opened to adoption when I went to a panel discussion at a regional RESOLVE conference, on Adoption vs. Donor Egg. After all of the incredibly emotional and moving stories of how these couples came to the choices and resolutions they did, I left with this buzzing in my ears: “Donor egg is a gamble. Adoption has a 100% guarantee of coming home with a child.” Now, I know there are horror stories out there, but for the most part, the odds are a helluva lot better than donor egg, and there’s less chances for failure along the way. Eggs could be retrieved and fertilized with no viable blasts, blasts could be transferred and then not implant, and the if they implant, there’s still 9 months to make it to the finish line. There’s a lot of biological obstacles to overcome. Not so with adoption: the obstacles lie more in bureaucracy. And my husband raised a good point with me: after all of the grieving I’ve done over the last nine months over my diagnosis of POF, could I even take the emotional turmoil of a failed cycle, or worse, a pregnancy loss? These are all valid things to consider.

So with this Cross-Pollination, I’ve come here to PerchancetoDream’s blog, and she has shared with me her story of how she came to her decision to adopt. After all that she and her husband have been through, of all the paths they have walked, I am in awe of the determination and confidence in moving forward with their path to international adoption. It gives me hope that no matter what the path we take on this complicated journey, if we walk with confidence, with sure footing, we will reach our destination somehow. It might look very differently once we get there from where we started, but what a wondrous tale of our travels we can share with generations to come. And these travelogues of our journeys, no matter where they start and where they end up, are so vital to the other travelers wandering around these paths.

Mine and my husband’s footing may still be unsure, our initial path unknown, but we hope. And we research. We cry, we laugh, we pray, we fight, we make up, we daydream, we get jealous, we get sad, we get angry at the unfairness of it all, but always, always we are committed to reaching our destination. We are driven, we are determined, we are courageous. And as we walk confidently along our paths, we blaze new trails, redefining motherhood, fatherhood, parenthood. As we walk, confidently or otherwise, we are guided by love. A love so strong it practically guides our feet that our brains and bodies simply follow along.

May we all walk confidently. May our feet and hearts be spared as much as possible. And may we take comfort in the day we stop walking, reach our destination, and bask in the glow of our arrival. Let’s put our feet up, and let’s laugh and laugh about how we got here. May every step we take, not matter how sure the footing, bring us one step closer.

To meet the bee that cross-pollinated this post, click here.

And the call did little to settle my mind.  In fact…I’d been feeling okay about the fact that the 8-10 week processing time listed on their website was, as our agency’s executive director said, “overestimated and just a way to keep people from calling to find out where their paperwork is.”  But the nice FBI customer service woman said that was wrong in 2 ways.  (1) I should feel free to call at any time and (2) it really IS taking 8-10 weeks at this point. She said that it takes weeks of going through many departments before we could be in the system and, indeed, we currently aren’t.

Crap!

So sure was I of all of the pieces coming together that I’ve been working to re-budget our next round of payments – the last until we have to either redo our home study or receive a referral – for JANUARY.  Nope.  That isn’t going to happen.  Having worked for the government I know how much things slow down for the holidays.  So we’re probably looking at February before we get our dossier submitted to our agency.

From there, this is the expected timeline:

• Agency reviews the materials (I’d expect that to take a week or so)
• Agency sends the materials to Bulgaria (which takes 6-8 days)
• The documents are translated (2-4 weeks)
• The documents are sent to the Bulgarian Ministry of Justice and hopefully accepted and entered into the registry (8 weeks) – putting us somewhere in the middle of May or – 1 YEAR from the date we began our home study.
• Then….we wait……

More and more I’m in envy of people who have babies the old-fashioned way.  Sigh…..