No news is....

.... no news. We haven't heard from K (A's first mom) since placement day. I'm not entirely surprised, but I guess I was hoping that we would hear from her. We do not have a way to contact her directly, though she does have our phone numbers, and has called us once. She called over the weekend between when we first met her and placement day. We have been in contact with K's social worker several times in the last month and a half, so we do have some news about K, just no news directly from her. And it's been good news, which makes us happy.

This past week, I sent K's social worker a bunch of pictures along with a letter. In the letter I told K that we would be happy to hear from her as soon and as often as she feels comfortable. In my mind, I always pictured us having our first meeting with K post-placement sometime before December. We will be out of town for almost all of November between a visit to Chile and Thanksgiving, so really that would mean either October or December. There's no real reason for this timing I've had in my mind other than that I think it would be good to not wait too long, to help us build our relationship.

Anyway, K's been on my mind a lot. She has so much going on right now, beyond the placement of A, and I am sending all of my positive thoughts her way, hoping that she has all the support she needs and is coping the best that she can.

Books for baby (because you asked...)

and by "asked", I mean that at least one of you is curious. :)

As I mentioned in the previous post, we registered for a lot of books for our shower. We haven't received all of them, and some of them I registered for on a recommendation and so haven't necessarily read them myself. Anyway, here's a list of some of those books, many of which are adoption related and/or friendly:

• A Mother for Choco (about a bird looking for a mother who looks like him, and is eventually adopted by a bear that has three other children - an alligator, a hippo and a pig)
• And Tango Makes Three (we got this one in Spanish: "Tres con Tango". It's about two male penguins that fall in love at the Central Park Zoo. They want a baby but can't have one like the other penguins and so one of the zoo rangers puts an egg in their nest for them to hatch and raise. The baby penguin is named Tango and is raised by his two dads. This is actually a TRUE story!! How cool is that?)
• Several Todd Parr books - LOVE him!!: It's okay to be different (adoption mentioned); The Family Book (adoption mentioned); The Peace Book; The Feelings Book
• More, More, More said the baby (three short and simple stories - adoption friendly in that one of the families presented is transracial)
• La araña muy ocupada (in English, The Very Busy Spider; a classic!!)
• Si le das un panqueque a una cerdita (in English, If you give a pig a pancake...; This is a series of books, If you give a Mouse a cookie, etc...)
• Nappy Hair (The story of how a young African-American girl got her hair. It's told/written in a call and response)
• Chicka Chicka Boom Boom (A fun story that helps children learn the alphabet)
• Baby Talk (A board book with simple drawings of different types of faces - happy, sad, yummy, icky, etc...)
• A Pebble for your Pocket (A book about the teachings of Buddha written in a way that is accessible for children)
• I Love you, Dude (This is one of my favorite books to read with my fifth graders. It's about a doodle of an elephant that comes to life and goes searching for a family around New York City)
• Any book by Ezra Jack Keats (LOVE this author, I read him aloud to my fifth graders all the time. I registered for a bunch, but haven't received any, yet.)
• Peaceful Piggy Mediation (Also read this with my fifth graders last year. Very cute book about peaceful piggies and how they maintain their peacefulness!)
• Pablo's Tree (about an adopted boy named after his grandfather)
• The Day We Met You (adoption friendly, but haven't received or read it, yet)
• All the Colors We Are: Todos los colores de nuestra piel/The Story of how we get our skin color (haven't received or read this one, yet)
• Tell Me Again About the Night I Was Born (This is probably the most well-recognized children's book about adoption. I've actually never read it, but I know that someone is getting it for us, so I'll be reading it soon!)

Other authors that I love and plan to fill A's library with are: Patricia Polacco, Vera Williams (she wrote More, More, More said the baby), Eve Bunting, Cynthia Rylant, Eric Carle, Leo Leonni, Donald Crews, Gary Soto, and Mem Fox.

Wow. I could talk about children's books all day long!!!! In another post, I'll put some of the books for adults that I've read on adoption and children in general. For now, I'm off to read about what you all are up to.....

Shower Redux

So little A had her presentation to our "mundillo" (little world) on Saturday. She was very well behaved, and seemed to thoroughly enjoy being passed from person to person all afternoon long.

Several people came whom I hadn't seen in years, and it was emotional for me. However, I refrained from crying the entire day - quite a feat for me!! I did tear up just a bit when my sister showed me that she had put together a CD of music and made copies for everyone, all with a pic of A on the cover. It's full of songs about fathers, mothers, daughters, sons. So beautiful. I was really blown away by that.

I had been telling my family and friends for months (even before A's arrival) that I refuse to do the whole opening of presents in front of everyone. I really do not enjoy it. I don't enjoy opening the presents and I don't enjoy being a guest at a shower where I need to sit and watch someone else open the presents and then "ooohhh" and "aaahhh" after each one. I lived in Guatemala for a time, and the custom where I lived was to take the wrapped gift, say thank you, and then hide it away to be opened long after all guests have gone. Loved it. So anyway, despite my being very clear about this one request for our shower, it was DENIED. But as it turns out, I was pretty slick and have a big 'ole serving of banana pudding in my hands at the time and Mr. P was forced to open each and every one!! Also, we were lucky that most people had the gifts shipped directly to us (we registered at an online-only store), so there weren't so many gifts to be opened.

Even if I was a sour-puss about the opening of gifts, I have been so blown away by every one's generosity!! Since we got so many necessities in those few days before A came home, our registry focuses on really fun stuff like books and toys. We got lots of Todd Parr books. LOVE them. And several adoption-themed picture books, which I can't wait to read to A. (Well, I'm reading them to her already, but it will be especially nice once she can understand them).

The shower was also a time for people to ask more about how A came to be our daughter, including questions about her first family. Everyone was extremely respectful, and I didn't expect anything less from my friends. While there are certain pieces of A and K's story (K = what I call A's first mom on this blog) that I won't share with others, there are plenty of things that I will share, and take much pleasure in sharing! I enjoy letting others know about the process of open adoption, since most people don't know a lot about it.

The shower was perfect. Perfect day, full of friends and good food. Perfect!! Despite all this, I have to admit that there in the very far reaches of my mind, I had little nagging thoughts of an adoptive mom: "will people think that I'm not bonded to A because I'm not holding her the entire time?", "do people think it's weird that I'm letting everyone hold her all day while I socialize?" I know, I'm crazy.

sleep deprived...

.... and already behind on ICLW (again!!). Argh. But I am determined to start a commenting frenzy right.... And, yes, on cue, literally as I typed that, little A started crying. :) Well, I can type with one hand.

Our shower on Saturday was amazing. Really special. More on that later.

For now, off to soothe crying baby, read some posts, and make some comments!

The waiting room

Once again inspired by luna to write a post. The wait, and particularly issues around setting up a nursery during the wait, is something that I've planned to write about, and I love the conversation that got going over at luna's blog.

We didn't prepare anything during our wait. Our agency actually does NOT encourage their waiting families to prepare anything, though of course everyone decides for themselves and I know that some people do prepare nurseries (as evidenced by the pictures of the baby room in some of the example profiles we looked at before preparing our own). We live in an apartment - not small by NYC standards, but certainly not big enough that you could possibly avoid any part of it. So there would be no way to not see a set up nursery had we decided to convert it during our wait. I actually couldn't have anything "baby" in sight. My parents went shopping as soon as they heard we were going to adopt, and bought onesies, pacifiers and other small things. I never looked at that bag of stuff, which they kept in their house. They sent us a onesie after a vacation in February. I immediately hid it away. (And as a Christmas gift last year, they gave our future baby a teddy bear. I hid that away so well that we still can't find it!!)

When we went to the information session at our agency about a year ago, I remember one of the social workers saying, "You WILL be parents at the end of this process. It's 100% sure." That blew me away. After four years of trying to become parents, it seemed unreal that there could be any absolutes. Any guarantees.

But...

After we had finished all of the paperwork and had officially entered the waiting period, I still didn't feel like it would ever actually happen. I would tell my husband this frequently. He would talk about the future with all of the "if we have the baby by then...." and I couldn't do it. I couldn't take that leap. I really never felt 100% sure. I felt like there would be some reason that we wouldn't be parents, even with our 100% "guarantee". We would be the exception.

Because, after all, I'm still an infertile woman. And this is part of what my infertility has meant for me - there are no absolutes, there are no guarantees, nothing will be as you ever expected it, reduce/change/get rid of your expectations, give up what you always took for granted.

So, given that I thought we'd never become parents, why have a baby's room? So we never set anything up, never bought anything. (Full disclosure: because I am a planner by nature, I did research different gear and save what we decided we wanted on a registry, which I never showed to anyone.)

What is now our baby's room was our "room where we put all the crap that we don't have anywhere else to put". I had wanted to convert it into a yoga/meditation space during our wait. I got as far as clearing some stuff out and having room for my yoga mat, and put some candles in there.

And then we got the call. What I thought would never happen happened. Again, nothing will ever be as I expect it. And we went shopping. And the super in our building painted the room. Voila! Baby's room done. I am so glad we did it this way. At one point I had considered painting the room during the wait. Seeing the room painted now, I'm glad we didn't get that far. I don't think I could have even handled seeing the bright green of the walls while we were waiting.

Love, love, love the idea of gathering books for the baby during the wait. I have gazillions of children's books around the house because I'm an elementary teacher and can rarely pass up buying a good picture book (Skippyjon Jones is a favorite of mine and my students!). Now that I have an actual publicized registry, I would say about half the items on it are books.

Our baby shower is on Saturday. Unbelievable. Somebody pinch me...

Loss

The first book I read about adoption (other than The Kid, which I read over a decade ago, before I knew I would adopt myself - love, love, love that book) was this one. Although I didn't plan it this way, I think it was a great first book for me to read as we began our journey with adoption. The book is largely focused on the profound loss involved in adoption, on all parts of the adoption triad: the loss of parenting a child for the birth parents, the loss of being parented by his/her birth parents by the child, and the loss of a pregnancy and parenting a biological child for the adoptive parents. The book stresses the need to recognize and validate these feelings of loss, particularly between the adoptive parents and their children.

These losses have always been at the heart of how I feel about adoption. It may seem rather dark and depressing, but to me it is just the reality of this situation. I don't think this diminishes the happiness that we feel as parents, how much we love our daughter. Somehow all of these feelings have settled into my being and co-habitate there together.

In the months after we began our adoption process, I was enrolled as a fellow in a research study for teachers in the city where I live. The study looked at the effects of stress-reducing measures implemented by teachers and their students on their stress levels. The study involved weekly yoga classes, meditation, periodic gatherings, and it also included a weekend retreat. That retreat was so transformative for me. I consciously decided to use the weekend to process my feelings of grief and loss. Lo and behold, one of the two workshops offered during the weekend was entitled "good grief". Wow. That was the first time I had vocalized my feelings of loss and grief, and the workshop helped me work through and process that grief.

In the three days between when our agency called us about the possibility of adopting little A and when we knew that we would indeed adopt her, we decided to make a CD with music for A's first mom. One of the things we knew about her at that point was how much she loves music and singing. So I put together some songs that we love and hoped she would, too. That CD became our soundtrack in the following days and weeks and continues to play almost daily in our home. At one point in those few days I was doing something around the house (cleaning?) while the music was playing and I just burst into tears. Not happy tears but tears of sadness and grief for the situation that A's first mom was in. It was an important moment for me.

It's been quite a while since I shed tears over the thought of never having a child with Mr. P's eyes and my curls. As I sit here and watch the rise and fall of my daughter's belly as she sleeps, I can't imagine my life any other way. But as the 30 days have just passed that A's first mom had in which to revoke her consent to the adoption, I continue to be haunted by the loss of A's first mom and all first moms. It isn't always easy for me to simultaneously live with all of these emotions - sadness, joy, gratefulness, awe, worry, love. But I do happily take them all on as a new mom.

Report card

I'm taking the suggestion from Baby Smiling in Back Seat to give myself some grades. Join in if you please!

• F babymaking
• A- dealing with infertility
• A+ giving myself injections
• A going through adoption process
• B rookie blogger
• A- rookie mom
• A wife, pre-baby
• B+ wife, post-baby
• A teacher
• A colleague
• A friend
• A hostess
• C+ sister
• B+ daughter
• C nutrition
• B+ home economics (A for cooking, B for cleaning, A for bookkeeping)
• A foreign language
• C- gym
• A reading
• B writing
• C meditation & yoga

I have to say, I am happy to be diverted by my report card, but I can't let today pass, especially as a New Yorker, without sending my thoughts out there to everyone affected by what happened 7 years ago today just a few miles from where I now sit. I am sending my thoughts of peace and healing, especially to those families who lost loved ones on that day.

Our Story, Part 3 of ?

So we left off here.

Ugh. That was not an easy week. We were SURE that the agency was going to call us and let us know that they weren't the agency for us. Not only was I feeling defeated by the process already, but the fact that the decision might have something to do with Mr. P's English was really difficult to think about. (Of course, looking back, it seems improbable that our agency would make a decision based on that, but at the time we didn't know our agency so well, and we in general felt very vulnerable.)

I believe it was just a bit under two weeks when they called us back. I should go back to my agenda to check for the date of the phone call. Because I do remember the date they called us to let us know that we'd been accepted into the domestic adoption program. It was my mom's birthday. And it was a Saturday. And I cried when I got the phone call.

The first thing we did was call my parents, who were on their way to celebrate my mom's birthday in a nearby city. My mom said it was the best birthday gift ever.

The social worker who we had spoken with at the follow up phone call was in the office that Saturday because the agency was having their annual Halloween party. A party that we will attend this year with little A.

And now back to our regularly scheduled program

Since A has come in to our lives much faster than we (I) imagined, I never got the chance to record our homestudy process on this blog. So I want to continue to tell that story.

(Incidentally, my internet connection wasn't cooperating last night, so I'll save the pictures of my flying dog for next week's Show and Tell)

Today I did the math and calculated when A was conceived. According to the hospital she was born at 38 weeks, which means that she was conceived around November 12th.

I then went back and re-read a letter I had written to A not quite a year ago, just after we submitted our initial application, but before the follow-up call. Here is that letter:

Dear baby,

I am in awe to think that right at this very moment, you may be growing inside someone’s belly; someone who will at some point in the next few months choose us to be your forever parents. It is October 7, 2007. Are you out there already? Or your first mother is there, but you are not yet. She is falling in love with your first father. Or not.

Meanwhile I am here alone on a Sunday morning thinking about marriage certificates and criminal background checks that will need to be compiled in the coming months. You, on the other hand, may be out there growing lungs and feet. You have no idea what is in store for you. Honestly, I don’t either. Your birth parents may have no idea that you exist. They may be scared or simply in denial that you are there.

Each year I think about the people that I will know and that will become so important to me a year from now, but that I don’t currently know. Since I am a teacher now, I am guaranteed to have a couple dozen new very important people in my life each year. People that I cannot imagine my life without. That fill my thoughts, make me laugh, smile and cry. This year as I think about this, I know that you are out there. I don’t know if you are a boy or a girl, what color eyes you have, curly hair or straight. You will truly change my life in ways that I cannot yet even imagine. I’ve never been so excited to meet someone who I don’t even know exists yet.

This is not the way I imagined a pregnancy for myself. The one time I was pregnant was a very scary and sad time for me. It was tumultuous. Even though I was sure of my decision, it didn’t make it any easier. There was physical pain involved, sure. But the emotional pain was much worse. I don’t have any regrets about that. Nor do I have any regrets about our struggles with fertility, since I know that those struggles have led us to you coming into our lives. So this is my pregnancy. Not the pregnancy I have imagined for myself full of pictures of my belly and new clothes, but this is certainly not the first time my life has turned out differently that I had imagined. What joy! My pregnancy – my journey to become a parent – begins now, a week after I’ve submitted an application to a stranger who will judge our answers and then ask more questions. Who knows how long this pregnancy will last? Maybe an ironic nine months! Then again, maybe it will be an 18-month gestation. My pregnancy will not involve morning sickness or swollen feet. There is no week by week guide for this kind of pregnancy. No warning signs of missed periods or water breaking. No typical symptoms. This is uncharted territory for us. And I am so ready to make that map. Our family map.

I love you already.

Love,

mom

What a week

Yesterday was my last day at work before taking my family leave. I am so glad that I was able to work this week, get to know my new students, and have them get to know me a bit. It was a fantastic week, really, and of course very busy. My mom stayed home with little A, so I felt good about that and they very much enjoyed their time together.

Yesterday my colleagues threw me a surprise shower. It was so great. I was really overwhelmed by it. In fact, I am continually overwhelmed by the reception that our little girl has received. Of course I expected the warm reception from (most of) my family, but people whom I have never even met have sent gifts and well wishes. A patient of my father's MADE (yes, made with her own hands) a quilt for A that we just received yesterday. (She was in to see my dad at the end of last week, made the quilt over the weekend, then brought it in to his office when she came back for a follow-up visit early this week.) The family of a colleague of my parents also sent us clothes for her. Especially given how fast this has all happened, I am so impressed with how much people have rallied around her. I couldn't believe that my colleagues pulled off a shower - a surprise shower no less - in just the 5 days that we were all back to work. I've never had any surprise party before! I was so touched.

My students also had a little going-away party for me, with flowers, cupcakes, juice and they all wrote well wishes on cards for me. I shared pictures of A with them, and they just ate it up. It was so sweet.

And now......

I start my tenure as a stay at home mom, if only for 12 weeks. I am really looking forward to it. Having my mom here was amazing and I am so, so grateful that we could share this amazing time together. But I am also so happy to have just the three of us (well, four, if you include our dog) at home.