Monday, May 31, 2010

Weirdest dreams...

So I think I've been having dreams about babies every night this week. But probably not the dreams most people have when it comes to babies.
Mine all involve adoption.
The first dream I had entailed Steven and me sitting in a hospital waiting room, waiting for the news about the baby while Elizabeth was in labor. (I'm hoping in real life that Elizabeth invites us into the room yet, but that hasn't been decided, yet.) Anyway, this waiting room was filled with other couples who were adopting and waiting for the news. See, I told you: the dreams are weird.
Anyway, I think everyone's attorney was inside the rooms with each birth mother for some reason. Suddenly one of the attorneys comes out (not ours) into the waiting room and announces that a woman in the hospital just decided at the last second to give up her baby for adoption and it's a girl, and did any of the couples want to adopt two babies instead of one since we were all approved already? And then couples started fighting over the baby and who would get to adopt her.
Luckily the following dreams haven't been as weird as that first one. Last night's dream just consisted of me trying on about 20 outfits when we got the call to come to the hospital because our baby was being born. I kept trying on the craziest outfits because I couldn't decide what to wear. In my dream, I settled on this outlandish dress. (Perhaps this was because we went to the "Cheesy '80s Prom" at Respectables in West Palm Beach last night.)

Saturday, May 29, 2010

Here we go!

We've been matched with a birth mother!!! Elizabeth is 10 weeks and 1 day pregnant today, and for various reasons knows she wants to give her child to a loving family.
She is due Dec. 23, so we have a long road ahead of us. We are very excited, but cautiously excited, as she is still very early in the pregnancy, and it is never guaranteed that the birth mother wont change her mind. If that happens, then it was not meant to be, but Elizabeth is very confident and at peace with her decision.
It has been a roller coaster of emotions already, and the journey has barely begun. We are nervous and a bit scared, but mostly we are excited and happy, and full of dreams of the future.

Let's go back a little bit...

I realized that maybe I need to start a little further back in this story.
Steven and I always knew we wanted kids. Sadly, after almost two years of trying it still hadn't happened for us. Two fertility specialists later we received a diagnosis of "unexplained infertility." This is a frustrating diagnosis, because although it's a relief to hear they can't find anything wrong with you, there is nothing for them to treat.
We considered trying In Vitro Fertilization, but at $15,000 a pop, and the average taking three tries to work (if it works at all) we feared that if we tried IVF and it didn't work, we'd end up with nothing: no child and no finances left for adoption, the next step in our plans.
We first went to JAFCO (Jewish Adoption and Foster Care Options Inc.), thinking we could start there. However, because JAFCO focuses on fostering, and the birth parents have two years to try to get their lives together and welcome their children back into their homes, we decided that wasn't for us. Neither of us thought we could handle that heartbreak if we were to lose a child after spending two years with him or her. even though we'd be happy for the family to be reunited.
So we went to our rabbi for advice, since he and his wife have actually adopted three of their own, and he referred us to a local adoption attorney.
Around this time we were also in the process of purchasing our house. We knew that part of the process of adopting included a home study, so we decided to wait a few months to start the process.
In late March we met with our adoption attorney. The costs involved are higher than we even anticipated, so a loan was in order, in addition to lots of belt-tightening. Hoping we'd be able to pull that part off, we decided to begin the process because we knew in the end it would be worth it.
So we collected letters from our family and friends, who wrote beautiful words about what kind of parents they believed we would make and the loving home we would create for a child. We went through background checks and clearances, and began the home study process.
And we waited for the phone to ring.

Thursday, May 27, 2010

We got the call

So this past Monday, on May 24, 2010, we got the call. I was at work at the magazine, and it was late in the day, around 4 p.m. So when my cell phone rang I almost let it go to voicemail, because I didn't recognize the number at first. Then I noticed it was the same first three digits as the adoption attorney's office number, and my heart stopped realizing it could be the call for which we had been waiting, and the attorney was just calling from a back line in the office.
I picked up the phone and our attorney said "We have a situation I'd like to tell you about." This is where our story begins.