52 Days!

That sure sounds like a lot of days to me to continue this pumping schedule...whew!! Less than 8 weeks, possibly 7 if they are scheduling her for a C-section.  He is considered full term on December 30th!! 

Monday I sent an email to our case worker inquiring if it was too much of me to request that our potential BM get some ultrasound pictures at her appointment this Friday.  In return I received this "Kim, please call me so I can explain to you last night's events".  Anxiety and sadness over took me and I walked around the house thinking 'nope I don't want to call you', I was scared to get bad news.  I paced the house for like five minutes and then just faced the call and immediately told the case worker 'I'm scared of what you are going to tell me'.  She told me not to be scared and I felt a tiny bit of peace.  So, without sharing what was discussed because it is personal - I will share that it was baby mama/daddy drama - who needs that?!  In this world of adoption what we are experiencing is considered normal and par for the course but it totally zaps the warm and fuzzies from my heart about this process.  There is an unbelievable amount of drama in our adoption journey.  This is hard to deal with and I continue to just try and focus my energy to the end result.  I surely hope and pray that we are not being taken and this is a solid match.  That is a thought I have to continue to bounce out of my daily thoughts and it's real hard.  Here I am pumping 9x a day for our hopeful baby and seriously starting to get prepared and I honestly can say that I believe in this match, it's just not going extremely smooth.  I truly believe that this couple is not going to change their mind because of many reasons that I can not disclose but living with the day to day drama is challenging.

Over the weekend as we pulled out our Christmas decorations and put the tree up, Joe also drug out all our baby gear.  It was good to take inventory on what we still have from Lola.  We lent a lot of our stuff out over the years and some of it doesn't work anymore, and some we never got back.  Also one of my friends swapped car seats with me and brought me an infant car seat and I can check that off my registry.  We also found our Diaper Genie and I got to delete that from the list as well.  That felt good. I started cleaning up the items we have, washing stuff in baby detergent which smells so good and I finally mailed back the girly bedding I had previously purchased from the last match.  

Less than 9 weeks...

I wrote a post and tried to keep it up beat on Tuesday but never posted it.  I admit - I complained a little about all the red tape, all the in's and outs about this particular adoption without getting too personal.  The bottom line is the communication between us and the agency could be a little bit better.  I'm not going to get into the nitty-gritty because I really wanted to keep these last few weeks on the positive side.  Some of you I've shared a bit with but I still have left some stuff out and have had to because it is personal information about our potential birth parents.  This process is definitely challenging and all I can do is focus on the end result and try my hardest to not sweat the so called process in the mean time.  Let me put it this way - there is a lot more to just being matched and waiting for the birth of your hopeful baby.  There is paperwork, major decisions, an extreme amount of trust and much much more. 

So we have less than 9 weeks till baby boy's due date!! I know that the BM is going to be getting a sonagram on Friday and I sure wish I could be there...  How neat would that be!  Anyhow - it wasn't offered and I didn't press for it because logistically it's kinda impossible for us to work that out.  However I am looking forward to getting possibly a picture (I will try and press for that), as well as finding out how he's doing in there! 

I have officially been pumping every 2-3 hours around the clock since last Thrusday, not to mention I also was bed ridden with a horrible cold/flu for the first 4 days too!  That was fun...  Actually it wasn't all that bad.  The cold was/still is rough, but once the pumping started progressing, it became something I looked forward to seeing.  It has really been great for me because it makes me feel more connected to this match and hopeful, like in a few weeks I really am going to be feeding a baby.  This journey for us has been much longer than the adoption process.  It's been about 4 years in the making and we are almost there...

10 week countdown!!

I've decided to snap out of my mood and start preparing for bringing home our baby.  I am going to do a weekly countdown on his due date.   Our potential birth mom is 30 weeks!!  That means that this is our longest match, we were matched when she was around 23 weeks and I'm glad we've made it through her second trimester into her third.  In seven more weeks he will be considered full term and we will hopefully have a more accurate idea of when he's coming (she's most likely having a c-section), and we will be making our plans to attend the birth per my hopes and our potential birth mom's wishes.  When we had that amazing phone call (still the only one), she told me 'this is your baby' and she wants us a part of everything.  She is aware that I am preparing to breast feed and she is all for it and comfortable with it which makes for the possibility of the hospital allowing for that.  I have spoken with the hospital and they informed me that most likely Joe and I will be getting a room and that's where we will be with the baby when he's born.  There are still a lot of worries I have.  Please pray for our potential babies birth parents and the health of the baby.  I can only have faith that she is healthy and he will be born healthy.  I tried to just touch base with our case worker via email last Friday morning and she has not replied.  Maybe as time gets closer to his due date she'll be more proactive with staying in touch with me.  That part is frustrating.  Thank you everyone for continuing to ride this journey out with us, I feel like we are so close to bringing home our baby but not without some bumps in the road.  I can only pray it goes smoothly from here on out.

Lately...

The truth?  I haven't felt pumped for a while with our adoption.  I headed everyone's advise and tried to just live as though everything is normal and not focus on adoption when in actuality time has gone by but so has my excitement.  This is so different than being pregnant and I am very blessed to be able to experience them both.  This one is definitely a challenge though.  I think through the two failed adoptions and the extreme highs and lows, my joy of this process has been zapped.  It's also hard to be matched so far in advance of the birth of your hopeful baby.  Plenty of time for things to go wrong.  With all that said, I'm still very grateful that our adoption is still moving forward.  The only issues we have had has been the continuous re-scheduling of our next birth mother/father phone call.  It was rescheduled four times now and still hasn't happened.  A few of those times I never even received correspondence from the agency that the call wasn't going to happen.  I was left to wonder all night if something was wrong, this has been hard to do.  I finally expressed my feelings to our case worker and she then advised me of a couple things specific about this process and since then I have totally lowered my expectations and am not holding my breath for another phone call. 

I've learned SO MUCH in this journey.  I will admit that once we finished our profile book and how good I thought it was, I was thinking we'd be matched very quickly because 'who wouldn't want to be part of our family'.  HAHA!!  Yeah, that is not how this works.  I am not in control here, that is evident and continues to be for me.  It's real hard sometimes when the case worker tells me how busy she is with her several birth mothers giving birth in one day and we are still waiting.  I picture how excited those adoptive parents must be and feel like 'why can't that be us?' - I have to be patient, I have to have faith that our match is going to go through, this is the baby we have been chosen to have and just need to hold out a couple more months and soon it will be us, it will be our day!  I'm trying really hard.  I've dreaded writing about it at times because of how hard it's been.  I feel like how many times do people really want to hear me gripe about what isn't happening in our adoption.  Since it's only 2 months away I am really going to try and focus on baby a little bit more and maybe we'll tell Lola that we are working with a potential birth mother but nothing is for sure yet or maybe we won't.  Who knows, I just gotta get my joy about this back somehow.

I'm also taking all these herbs and stuff and some of the medicine makes me fatigued, gain weight - I'm serious I have no idea what I was thinking when I decided to breast feed :)  I start to pump next Friday and my lactation nurse told me I need to go on a 'milk moon'.  I was like 'what is that?'  She was adamant about me pumping every 2-3 hours a day for what I'm assuming is until the baby arrives.  That's time consuming, that's painful, that's going to be different!  So my life really is changing, my body is changing and I really wish I had an ultrasound picture or more information on the baby but I don't other than he's healthy.  I'm a bit scared about the what if's and I really just need support.     

50 Weeks Pregnant!

That is seriously how I feel lately!  I'm SO over it as of late.  We've come so far and I just feel like throwing in the towel at times.  I hate to sound so pessimistic on here but it's either that or I seriously have my guard up and have not gotten totally excited about this.  Sure when we had our birth mother/father conversation on 10/13 I felt excited, touched, and a bit more into this situation but since then we've only had disappointment.  It's not awful stuff or anything it's just we were supposed to have another birth mother conversation on 10/19, all the agency's idea, and 10/19 came and went without any indication as to why nobody called.  I even had sent out an email on the day before the upcoming telephone call to inquire a time frame and I never heard back.  How am I to feel when I don't get any correspondence, not even an 'I'm busy over here and we are going to have to reschedule'.  That is what this waiting mom needs!!  It's been too many failed adoptions, too many months of what if's, that I need to know that everything is still alright when things don't go as planned.  I even reached out this past Monday via a telephone message inquiring if everything was OK since I haven't heard from them and I got an email the next day with a 'let's reschedule'.  Since then I received the  document we had been waiting for that we wanted before signing anything, and of course it didn't have the part I needed/wanted.  So now I have to ask for the six or so time about this certain part of the records.  And of course I did and still no word from the agency.  I am so over doing adoption homework!  This is like the pregnancy that never ends or at least feels like I'm over due!!  Here I am complaining when I'm matched and should feel excited, pumped that we are having a baby boy, but until I get what I need, until we are signed on, until we speak again (10/29), I am just in limbo.  I am at the mercy of the agency to get me what I need and if they can't then we are just going to have to have faith that all is good which is risky but then again so is adoption in it's entirety...and so is having children any way you go about it.

We still have not told Lola about this match and she does bring it up time to time. She's been wondering when we will be matched again.  She's back on the whole 'let's have a boy and a girl kick'.  I'm happy she's still excited.  I'm sure she's heard us talk on the phone about this match or to each other but since we haven't sat her down like before and shared the news, she hasn't picked up on our match yet.

On the whole breastfeeding note:  What was I thinking?!  First of all for an adoptive mother this will not save you money - formula would be much more budget friendly.  Secondly, since I had started this process prior to the failed adoption and then the new match, it really didn't matter since this new match is a later due date then the first.  All it did was change my protocol.  Here I am taking all these herbs and pills just a tad bit longer.  As I stated before, the idea is to fake your body into thinking it's pregnant and the longer you have to do that the better. So in all actuality for breastfeeding purposes, this match's due date gives me more time.  With that more time, I get to stay in a constant state of PMS longer!!  I'm dealing but I am ready to start the second part which is stopping the birth control and then pumping which will most likely happen in 3 or 4 weeks.  Our potential baby is due in January, I don't think I've shared that on here yet.

So with all my griping, everything is still on and this birth mother is great.  Our plan after Monday's phone conversation is for her and I to talk more frequently after each of her Dr. appointments.  We won't need the middle man (the agency), and hopefully all will go well.  I'm very anxious to hear about the baby on a more weekly basis.  I need to hear about the baby, I want to know as much as possible about his last trimester.  I also am not trying to talk negatively about the adoption agency, I'm very grateful to them, I realize they are working very hard and have very busy schedules and don't blame them for how things go down.  I'm am just simply stating my feelings on it all.  I'm still very happy with them and this isn't stuff that they can predict or prevent. 

Totally Amazing!

The phone call was so much more than I could have ever expected.  In fact I had NO expectations going into it, I really was wondering when it would be either last night or today.  As I was clearing the dinner table last night, I checked my phone and there was a text from the social worker that said 'Guess Who' and then a picture to follow, then the message 'will be calling you after dinner'!  Yup, not only did we get their picture but they called us after they all had dinner together.  While we were waiting for the phone call, we kept staring at the picture in delight!  Then the call came in, I was super nervous and all I can say is that went away quickly and the social worker maybe had 3 sentences throughout a 30 minute or so phone conversation. We all talked so much, we laughed, we all were very grateful to each other not just us to them which totally shocked me, I just wasn't expecting that. 

In the beginning while I was educating myself on all the different types of adoptions, reading some adoptions stories and realizing how I would be suited for an open/semi open adoption, I had this idea, a vision of how I hoped it would be for us.  Having not walked down this road before it was only an idea, I truly didn't know how it would feel or what my idea would actually be like.  Well, so far this situation is unfolding in the way I had hoped  for.  It actually has a little part of everything I wanted and it feels really wonderful!  I was in awe for most of the conversation or smiling and then very sentimental at times and I could tell she was too.  They had just for the first time been given our profile book, which they could not have been more excited to look through.  They loved our pictures, she acknowledged some of the things that I did as a mom that made her feel excited for her child.  I appreciated the acknowledgement, for us moms sometimes don't always feel like the little stuff gets noticed!  That made me tear up, she noticed!  I didn't want to end the conversation without expressing my deepest gratitude for her situation and their decision and to let them know how amazing this blessing is to us and how grateful we are and they too did the same, that my friends was how our call ended - it was beautiful!!

On a Lola note, Friday afternoon after I picked Joe up from the airport (he was gone all week), she (out of the blue) blurted out 'what if our birth mom changes her mind and wants to raise her own baby?'.  Yes she did and Joe was back in the bedroom so I realized, we are both home, now is the time to tell her.  I got Joe and told Lola to repeat her question and we told her, she frowned.  It was short lived but she was disappointed and probably confused a little, but we told her there will be a baby for us sometime and we just have to wait and pray for it.  We have not spoken with her about this new one and probably aren't until we feel it's the right time which will be further down the road.  We will be speaking with our potential BM again this Friday afternoon, after her Dr.'s appointment!  I'm/we are really excited!!  YAY!! 

An update...

Last week we received both the BF and BM's background's.  Included in these background's are questions and a lot of answers from both the BM (birth mother) and BF (birth father) on several topics from health to relatives health to life style to what lead them to adoption. It is neat to have both.  These two were very giving with information and very mature with their answers.  Answers on topics that will come up in our child's life.  The more information, the better.  That is what some semi-open to open adoptions allow for.  This Saturday their case worker is meeting with them and we will be having a conference call with them as well!  Every time I think about this conference call I remind myself that in the beginning of our journey we had an interview (where we were not picked) with a potential birth mom, so I've done this before but in hopes to be picked, this time around we are already matched.  The nerves will be going a mile a minute I'm sure.  It's similar to an interview but it isn't, it's soul purpose is to introduce us verbally, each ask questions, and that is a bit unnerving to me.  I think my concern is 'what if they don't like us?' and then they decide to walk away or vice verse.   I don't even know if that is a possibility!  What a new, different experience this will be!  We are still waiting for one more document before we are signed into this, but for the most part we are moving forward and this is a solid match.  I just pray for that document before Saturday just in case it has something on it that doesn't feel right to us. 


I wouldn't necessarily say that I am 100% mentally committed yet to this opportunity.  Because of how this journey has unfolded for us, it hasn't allowed for the time to grieve the failed one and allow me to get excited to be picked again.  Yes, being told you are not getting this baby but you can have this one helped as in something/someone to look forward to, but I haven't found myself doing that yet.  I say mentally commit as in my way to bond is to start preparing the nursery with that baby in mind, buy some clothes for that baby, pray for that baby and it's BM and BF.  I'm hesitant to do some of that.  I had just given away the boy stuff I originally got for our first match.  Then I felt comfortable starting to plan for the girl with the second match.  Now in order to prepare would mean returning all the girl stuff.  Yes, that means this one is a BOY!!   Having a closet and crib dedicated to a girl when all of a sudden you are not having one feels uneasy to me.  I know I am only talking about materialistic things here but I don't know how else to explain it.  Also, every time Lola says her prayers, she prays for the BM (the failed one) and her soon to be baby sister.  Maybe that is what is bothering me.  We have to tell her - UGH - PARENTING!!  That probably has a little to do with why I haven't felt 100% yet too.  I know it will take some time.  Our plan also isn't to tell her about the new match until things unfold and the due date gets closer so that also leaves a bit of secrecy in our family and that makes me feel uneasy too!  Part of me thinks she can handle the truth but then Jack Nicholson rings in my ears and says she can't handle the truth :)  We've always been honest and forth coming with the news with her and to not be, just doesn't completely feel right.  Since the call we haven't been outwardly talking about adoption (bringing home our baby) a ton.  We started to tone it down a bit in our daily lives but Lola certainly speaks of it often.  Just two days ago she asked us if we were flying or driving to get our baby.  She preceded to tell me that if we drive her teacher is going to mark with push pins on a map in her classroom every state we go through and everyone of her friends will be able to follow along our journey with her!!  Very sweet!

I had started writing this blog entry last week but kept walking away because I wasn't sure of what I was trying to say.  I can share that today I shredded the BM and baby girl's records and took all their information off my adoption clipboard, so I'm starting to get there and get excited about our phone call this weekend with the new BM, hopefully my heart will start to open and embrace this new experience...  I look forward to sharing how Saturday goes...specific prayer requests would be that it is a comfortable conversation for all involved and that our hearts open up to this and that we receive the necessary document we are waiting for.  Thank you all...much love...