lots going on

This past month has been really busy and really good. School started, of course, and my new class is great. I absolutely love the beginning of the school year - the excitement of getting to know a group of young people, the change in season, the fresh start. It is a busy, busy, busy time, though, and all the work has been putting me in bed before 10pm every night. The adjustment from being home with me to being with her babysitter again has been a bit hard for Little A. Her four molars coming in at once isn't helping things, either. But she is as resilient as ever and continues to amaze us.

On the adoption-related front:

• STILL not finalized. We don't even have a court date yet. Besides checking this off our list, I am anxious to get a birth certificate and social security number so that we can renew Little A's passport. My husband had to cancel his trip with Little A to Chile because her passport wasn't going to be valid for the time required by the Chilean government. However, his cancelled trip turned into a three-week visit to the states by Little A's abuela and uncle - who haven't seen her since she was 3 months old!!
• We recently went to an open adoption picnic at our agency. We saw a couple from our homestudy and met their beautiful daughter for the first time. We also met another couple who have recently adopted a girl (she's 4 months old) and they live in our neighborhood. I'm over the moon to have met this couple. I don't know any other adoptive parents (in real life), and to have met this mom that I connect with and with whom I share the open adoption experience is AMAZING. I am really, really happy about this. And the fact that they live in our neighborhood? It's the icing.
• We confirmed that K hasn't received any of the recent letters or pictures that we've sent to the agency. In other words, she hasn't had contact with the agency for many months. We know that she got the first letter and pictures we sent, but nothing since then. Now that a year has passed I am feeling less expectant. I still do have hope that we'll establish a relationship in the future, but I've lost that feeling of expectancy every time the phone rings.
• We also found out that we could actually start the process of adopting our second child even before we finalize Little A's adoption. I guess that means we could start getting our homestudy updated, etc... In any case, Mr. P is still on the fence about this, so we won't be making any moves in the near future.
• We are going for a developmental playgroup at our agency this weekend. It's something they offer to every child adopted through the agency. Your child goes in and plays while speech, occupational and physical therapists observe them and then they give you a report, noting any potential delays. They also help get you any early intervention services they recommend. I'm not really concerned about Little A, but I'm looking forward to hear what they say. I am a big believer in early intervention, so I think it's a great service the agency offers.

All in all, life has been pretty damn good lately.

no matter where you go....

Today I took a girl day out. Mr. P was home with little A and I went to go see a matinee, went shopping, and then met a friends for a late lunch (at which point it became girls day out). I'm pretty sure this is a first since little A came home - a day all to myself in which I do things only for myself. I surprised myself by being sad at leaving in the morning (surprised because I'd been looking forward to the day for a while). I kept calling home, and when I suggested meeting up later in the day Mr. P actually told me that he really just wanted me to enjoy the day to myself. All in all it was pretty fabulous.

I'm really a biography of Julia Child currently and I went to see the Julie/Julia movie. It was great because the movie picks up exactly where I am reading in the book - so I had some extra background while watching the movie. What I didn't know, and hadn't anticipated, was the ever-so-small part of the plot that Julia wants a child. In one of the first scenes of the movie she and her new husband pass a mom and baby carriage in the street and they exchange a knowing look and a hug.

And then there was the scene that I could have starred in in my real life. Julia gets a letter from her sister telling her that she's pregnant and Julia bursts into tears. Her husband is hugging her and through her tears she looks at him and says "I'm so happy!". Ugh. I've been there. Not with my sister, but with a close friend of mine - the first close friend of mine to become pregnant. Except in my case I had to hold back the tears for several hours while we spent an afternoon with her and her husband after they'd told us. As soon as we'd left their presence I burst into tears (in public no less), while Mr. P held me. And, yes, of course I was happy for them, too. But it broke my heart at the same time. Because it seemed so easy for "everyone else".... Because I couldn't experience only joy for my friends.... Because we no longer had that innocence...

A few days ago a friend/colleague of mine told me she was pregnant. Her first pregnancy was an "oops" pregnancy. She told me about that one literally days after I had just be giving her the low-down on our years of trying and how I had just started charting my cycles. While I was telling her about that, she was saying that she really wasn't ready yet for kids. And then a few days later.... She had a little boy and now she wants a girl. She wanted to do whatever it is that people do in order to aim for a specific gender, and she asked me about charting cycles. She started charting two months ago and on month two, she was preggers! I am really happy for her. No tears this time. And I had to admire her nonchalance about the whole thing. She wanted it, it happened, and hey, she may even get that girl she wants. Isn't that how we all think it will go down? From where I stand now, I'm happy it's all gone down for me the way it has, but it certainly took me a while to get here. As my dad always reminds me: no matter where you go, there you are.

little A's name

edited to add: This has now become the 6th topic for the Open Adoption Roundtable. Be sure to check the other responses!

Reading this over at Heather's, it got me thinking about little A's name and how it came to be. I realized I wanted to write a post, instead of just a comment.

When we were going through the homestudy process our agency had us think about this. Rather than try to push us in any way (keep the name, change the name, etc....) they basically told us what choices other people have made, and asked us to think about what we would want. Mr. P and I had talked about a certain girl's name before we were even married. We had always wanted to name a daughter after his grandmother, and use my grandmother's name as a nickname. One isn't exactly a nickname for the other, but they are close enough that it works. The middle name we'd always thought of didn't have any history or significance for us - it was just a name we liked. We didn't have any sentimental/family boys names chosen, though we had names we liked.

So even though we had this name that we'd always wanted for a daughter, I felt very strongly that we needed to be open to keeping and/or incorporating our adopted child's given name. Mr. P felt strongly that - at least in the case of a daughter - she needed to have his grandmother's name.

When little A was born, K didn't want to see her, know whether she was a boy or girl, or name her. When she entered the hospital to give birth, she informed the nurses and doctors right away of her wish to make an adoption plan. As soon as K knew she was pregnant, she knew that she wouldn't be able to parent this child. While she didn't have access to prenatal care, I believe that she cared for little A as best she could under extremely unfavorable conditions. Given the circumstances, I get why she wouldn't want to see the baby, name her, etc...

Once K met with a social worker from the agency at the hospital, that social worker encouraged K to name the baby (and to see the baby, which she did, though not at the hospital - it was a few days later at the agency) and suggested that K think of someone in K's life that she'd like to name her after. So K gave little A her mother's name (little A's birth grandmother's name), who had passed away several years ago.

So we knew little A's name when we first met with K, and thus ensued our discussions around the name. What I wanted was to have a conversation with K about it - tell her about the name we wanted and the reasons, ask her how she felt about it, and go from there. Our social worker, knowing how important our family name was to us, suggested that maybe there was one of the names that K had chosen that was more special (the name her mother had gone by, for instance), and we could keep that. But Mr. P really didn't like one of the names. I have to say, I was a little thrown aback by this. I didn't expect him to have an aversion to any particular name. To be adamant about his grandmother's name, yes, but not to reject another name. I really liked both of the names, so I can't put myself in Mr. P's shoes.

When we met with K, we did discuss little A's name. K immediately said that we should name her anything we wanted. She said we were to be A's parents and so we should name her. I think back now and part of me wonders whether or not there should be more counseling around naming - for both adoptive parents and first parents. I mean, on the one hand (in our situation, anyways), things can happen fairly quickly, so how much counseling can really go into the name. On the other hand, I want any parent entering into an adoption plan to feel empowered to have these conversations openly and honestly. Looking back on our brief contact with K, I felt (and feel) that she was very, very secure in her decision, went into this feeling that we were little A's parents and should name her, and felt confident in our ability to parent her to the best of our ability (she said as much when we met). So K's decision to tell us that we could name little A as we pleased was very much in line with her attitude in general. It's not that I feel she may have felt pressure give us that option, but I just wonder if she had had more time to think about it, talk to someone about it, would she have preferred something else??

In the end we asked K how she felt about giving little A Mr. P's grandmother's name as her first name and keeping the middle name she'd given little A as her middle name. Oh, and did I mention that the English version of little A's middle name is the full version of what my grandmother's name was? In other words, the name that we call little A is a nickname for her middle name - her birth grandmother's name (if you turned the middle name into it's English version). Kind of amazing, right?

So little A has all of her grandmothers' names - my grandmother (the nickname we usually call her by), Mr. P's grandmother (first name), and K's mother (middle name).

As a somewhat side note....... People often ask about her name, and I always give them the rundown - the name we call her was my grandmother's name, her given first name was Mr. P's grandmother, and her middle name was her birth grandmother's. That final tidbit is always met with a blank stare. I think people a) don't expect me to talk about the first family at all; b) probably don't expect that I know anything about the first family; and c) I guess just don't know how to respond in general. I think a "Oh, how nice" would suffice.

OA Roundtable #5: How has open adoption changed me?

I've been enjoying reading everyone's responses to the most recent OA roundtable, which you can see here. The question this time around is how open adoption has changed me/how I am different because of the presence of open adoption in my life.

I've been mulling this one over for several days. It's hard to answer because I don't feel there are a set of concrete ways this has changed me. For me, open adoption has enhanced me, enriched me, tested me, made me both stronger and more vulnerable.

One thing that I've been mulling over is that open adoption has really put to test things that I consider myself to be. You know how a lot of people say, "oh, I'd love to adopt someday...". Yeah, I always have said that, even when I was just a teenager. But until it becomes real, you really have no idea what that means. So while I believed myself to be "someone who would adopt" (whatever that means), actually adopting has put me to the test. How vulnerable can I make myself? What am I truly open to - in terms of contact, in terms of how other people may respond to my family, in terms of the circumstances under which this baby came into the world. I have proven to myself that I am the person I have claimed to be and thought I was, but I've realized in the process that it ain't that easy, either.

In open adoption I've felt vulnerable. I felt vulnerable putting together our profile, and it took some adjusting for me to be comfortable with putting ourselves out there to be judged - or at least it felt like judgement to me. We live in a relatively poor neighborhood (infamous for being crime-ridden, even though it's not), in an apartment without any outdoor space. How could we be chosen over families with multiple bedroom houses, yards, swingsets in the back, and two cars? From where I stand now, none of this matters. But where I was then, it made me feel vulnerable.

From where I am now I feel vulnerable in terms of the contact we have. I feel the ball isn't in our court - that there isn't much else we can do to facilitate a relationship. And it really bums me out. It's especially hard for me because the expectation was there. Against what we'd prepared ourselves for, the expectation was there from K and from us that we'd have a very open relationship. And so far we haven't been able to build that relationship, and it hurts me. It's not that I take it personally, but I just really wish it was different.

At the same time I feel so much stronger and more confident - as a person and as a mother - as an adoptive mom in open adoption. I've grown as a person and Mr. P and I have grown as a couple so much since we started this process. I think that K would be proud of how we are parenting little A. I am.

show and tell: placement through the ages

To check out who else is showing and telling, you can go here.

The hubbs, baby and I recently went to Barcelona, Spain (where hubbs and I first met). While we were there we spent the afternoon catching up with an old friend of mine who I worked with while I spent a semester in Spain many years ago in graduate school. We were sitting in a plaza that we had already visited several times during our visit when she pointed out what used to be an orphanage. The sign for the orphanage was still painted above the door, but the building now houses some kind of social service organization. And she pointed this out:

This is the exterior wall of the building, which faces the plaza. It may be hard to visualize it from this picture, but that piece of wood on the wall is actually a cylinder and at one point in time would spin around. The inside of the cylinder is hollowed out and a woman could place her baby inside the cylinder and then spin it around so that the baby could be retrieved from inside the orphanage. The small slot to the left of the cylinder was for people to put "limoznas" - gifts of money for the orphanage.

As I stood in front of the wall and this cylinder I imagined the women who had come to this wall, and those who had placed their babies inside. Though I'm sure most if not all of them are long gone by now, my heart goes out to them.

reflections on a year

365 days ago I was sitting in the exact spot where I am now writing this and got the call from our agency telling us about little A. I've been thinking a lot lately about the transformations that have taken place in this year.

What little A has accomplished in this year is astonishing. It's astonishing the amount of development that happens over the course of one's first year of life. I feel so privileged to have been a witness to every last development of A's year.

Becoming parents has meant so much more to me than I could have ever imagined. I couldn't have imagined the change it has produced in my own parents - who became grandparents for the first time with little A's arrival. It's changed my relationship to them, I believe it's changed their relationship with each other, and it has most definitely affected them each as individuals in a very profound way. Before becoming a mother, I hadn't much thought about how that would affect my relationship to my parents.

I have transformed in ways I couldn't have imagined as well. Going through years of trying to get pregnant and coming to grips with infertility gave me an awareness of what others go through to become a family. Then going through the adoption process opened my eyes to other ways of becoming and being a family. Now as a mom I see motherhood in a new light as well. I guess it's obvious, but I am still struck by how this has changed me. All of these experiences have given me a new understanding of others and has helped me become less judgemental.

As a child and young adult, I took for granted that I would be a mother. Then for years I braced myself against the possibility of never becoming a mother. Still today, a year after becoming little A's mom, I have a hard time fully believing that this is the case - I am a mom. When little A crawls over to me to hug me and stroke my hair, there is still a part of me in disbelief that this little girls loves me. That's she's here to stay. That we are a family.

When we first brought little A home I can remember having conversations with folks about the future - whether it be when little A starts to walk or when she goes off to school. I had a hard time with those conversations because even then I struggled with believing that this had actually happened. I mean, yes, rationally I knew and know that this is not a temporary situation. But on a gut level I was (and still am) struggling with this new reality of being a mom. How can it be that I am finally a mother? - something that I had at some level I had resigned myself to never achieving. It was my coping mechanism in the years of infertility and then the adoption process.

I am one of those people that is grateful for the infertility we experienced because it's brought me to the wonderful place I am today. At the time, of course, we wanted to get pregnant but in no way do I now wish that had happened. Not only has the experience brought me here, but it's also made me a better I person I think. I truly believe that the struggles in life are what pave the path to bigger and better things. But this lack of security in my motherhood and my hesitation at embracing it wholly without that little voice inside telling me that it's too good to be true - I do wish that it would go away. I hate that our struggles to become parents have left me with this feeling. Don't get me wrong - it doesn't stop me from fully being a mom, from loving little A beyond words. But it's that damn little voice.

So becoming a mom is a lifelong process, just as anything else. I can't really express how happy this process makes me, how proud I am to be little A's mom.

one year

Little A's birthday is fast approaching. I know that every mother/father says this, but I really can't believe it's been a year already. She is becoming more and more of a toddler each day.

In the past few days I've been really thinking about where I was last year at this time and what I was doing. On the afternoon that little A was born, Mr. P and I went to a then-new restaurant nearby for an afternoon snack before heading to the grocery store. At the moment that little A was born we were probably walking home from our shopping trip. When she was two days old, I went to my last photography class and then went with a friend to that same restaurant for pizza and a glass of wine. Little A was one week old when we first knew of her existence.

I'm thinking about K as well, and how she was feeling exactly a year ago. I am wondering how she felt as she went to the hospital. I am wondering, as ever, how she is doing now, what she is feeling and thinking.

We have a party planned for little A's first birthday. Of course she won't know it as different than any other day, but my family is really rallying around this happy anniversary, and I'm happy that we'll be able to share the day with them. I've ordered her some gifts from this place and I'm happy with those.

Also coming up, of course, is the anniversary of little A's placement with us (we still don't have an "adoption day" since we haven't finalized the adoption yet). I am stumped with how to celebrate the placement day. I want to start a tradition - something that we'll do a version of each year. But I can't really think of what that should be. I've thought about maybe something that celebrates each of our cultures - Ecuadorian, Chilean, American - maybe a meal? I have also thought about a trip to a local zoo that we visited on the day that we decided to start the adoption process.

If people are still reading, how do you celebrate the day that your child was placed with you?

OA Roundtable #4: Small Moments

This week's roundtable topic from Heather is:

Our fourth assignment is to write about a small moment that open adoption made possible. It might be about something that happened during an interaction or conversation if you have face-to-face contact. Or a moment centered on a letter or picture, if you don't. Just a single, small moment that could not have happened if the adoption were not open.

I, like PNR's mom, am an elementary school teacher. I use the small moments strategy with my students, and often model it for them using my own small moments. I have definitely talked about and written about adoption with my class, but only to a certain degree. They know about the open adoption and they've even asked some questions about it. But I digress.....


When I first saw this week's OA Roundable topic, the first moments that came to my mind from this past almost-year (!!) as an adoptive mom didn't really have anything to do with being in an open adoption. If you've read here before, you know that we haven't heard from K since placement day. So I have very few moments of interaction or conversation. The moment that I chose to write about here is a moment when I was alone. I first wrote about the moment here.

I was listening to the CD that we made for K when we first met her. It was in those three days when we knew we were bringing little A home but we hadn't yet met her. I was alone in the house, which when I think back on it now is odd because those days were so frantic with me, Mr. P and my mom running around trying to get ready, and I don't recall being alone very often. In any case, I was cleaning while listening to the CD and I was overcome by grief and sadness for K. I was sad for a mom who loved her child. I was overwhelmed by K's decision in so many ways - what it meant for us, what it meant for her, what it would mean for little A. I burst into tears there in my living room. My heart ached for K. I was also so astounded by her steadfastness and strength. She had gone through so much just to bring this baby into the world and to this part of the world, far from the home she had known her whole life. I stood there and cried and cried - one of those noisy uncontrollable cries. It felt good to feel that sadness and let it out. I very much wish for K that she's been able to let out the emotions she had and has about little A and the adoption.

There have been many moments since then where I have felt this grief, although none that were this expressive. As we approach little A's first birthday (next week!) I have been thinking all the more about K and wondering how she's feeling about little A's birthday. Even now as I think about this anniversary - a happy occasion to be sure - I can't help but think back to that day and imagine how K was feeling.

As I said when I started this post, we haven't had any contact with K since placement day. I do feel though, that the moment I've written about wouldn't have happened were our adoption not open. Because it is open, we have met K, we know a fair amount about her past, we know some of the things she loves to do (like sing and listen to music - hence the CD), we know her reasons for choosing adoption for little A. I am sure that adoptive parents of all kinds feel and share grief around the adoption, but there is something, for me, about open adoption that makes it all the more real. I feel that grief is an important part of adoption and for me open adoption has helped me confront it.

OA Roundtable #3: Wish list!!

This third Open Adoption Roundtable is about our wish lists for the future of the open adoptions we are in. Here goes my list:

• I wish that K, little A's first mom, will establish contact with us and with little A at some point in the future
• I very much wish for ongoing contact with K
• I wish that K is able to do well in this country, that she have peace, and be able to support her family back in her own country as she wishes
• I wish that at some point K will decide to tell her family about little A, and that we could introduce little A to that part of her family as well
• I wish for the strength that I will need to deal with the really tough parts of our open adoption with little A - and I hope that we are able to process those together in the best way that we can
• I wish that Mr. P is able to deal with these tough parts of our open adoption, for himself as well as for little A
• I wish for a little brother or sister, also through an open adoption, for little A
• I wish that little A is able to cope with the many different prying questions and assumptions that people with make of her and us as a transracial family and as an adoptive family
• I wish that we will meet and come to know other families in open adoptions - both for me and for little A to grow up with other families that feel (at least in that way) like her own
• I wish that the people closest to me would magically be able to understand (even just some of) what adoption means to me, to my family, and subsequently they would know exactly the kind of support/advice/comments I do and do not need specifically as an adoptive parent

Aaaahhhhh, I wish........

Telling the (difficult) truth

I am following up on my latest post, to give the title of the book that I mentioned there. The two commenters asked for the name of it, but I thought others may want it as well so I'm putting it into a post.

It's called Telling the Truth to Your Adopted or Foster Child: Making Sense of the Past by Betsy Keefer and Jayne E. Schooler. It was recommended to us by our agency, and we bought it from our agency (they maintain a really good library), but I know that it's also available on amazon. So far I've only read through the parts of the book that are relevant to our situation, but I have found it helpful. It gives advice for different ages and various situations.

This is a big issue for us - telling our daughter her full story, which includes some not-so-easy truths. It is something that we discussed at length while we were in the adoption paperwork process, since our agency asked us to think about various situations. I feel very strongly about giving our child all of the information that we have, even when it's difficult to hear. Mr. P wasn't so convinced at first (this was when we were talking about things in a hypothetical way), and while he came around, I still fear that this divergence will appear again as little A gets older.

This is something that I spend so much time thinking about, yet I don't have anyone to talk to about it (other than Mr. P, and he doesn't want to talk about it as much as I do). I don't feel 100% comfortable discussing it here on this blog for privacy purposes. I've thought of going password-protected (at least for some posts) but I even feel a bit leary of that. No one in our lives, other than our agency, knows the full story that we do regarding our little A's birthfather, and so there isn't anyone in real life to talk to about it either. This is something I've been struglling with for a few months now.

In any case, I was very happy to have found this book, and I hope that others will find it useful as well.

OA Roundtable #2: dads in open adoptions

This week's roundtable topic is fathers - specifically fathers in our open adoption. Hmmmm. This is a tough one for me. The first part is easy - talking about little A's dad, aka Mr. P, aka my husband. Mr. P is just majorly and utterly amazing as a father. And little A is a MAJOR daddy's girl. She lights up every time she sees him. I always knew that I would love to see Mr. P as a father, but of course having it for real right in front of me can never compare to what I ever imagined. It's truly special.

Little A's biological father - we don't know anything about him. We don't know who he is. In fact, even little A's birth mom, K, doesn't know who he is. Little A was not conceived out of a loving relationship. Although we know nothing about him, I try to imagine this man often. Mostly I try to imagine him as a child, I think because I want to see the innocence and good in him. Mr. P says he never thinks about him at all. I wonder if little A resembles him at all. There are certainly moments that I can see K in her, more so when she was a tiny baby, but for the most part I don't see a strong resemblance to K. So I try imagine what A's birth dad looked/looks like.

Talking to little A about her birth dad in the future is something that I think about a lot, and worry about how to approach it. I recently bought a book that has helped me think through some things and give me concrete ideas for a place to start. (I don't know the title off hand, but if anyone is interested, I'm happy to find it and post it.)

I'm a bit late in getting my assignment done for this OA Roundtable, but in any case I wish a very, very happy father's day to all father's out there, and to all those who play a father-figure role in the lives of children.

First Assignment: Open Adoption Bloggers Roundtable!

I've been anticipating this assignment for a while, and I'm very excited it's here: The Open Adoption Bloggers Roundtable over at PNR.

The concept of open adoption entered my life long before I decided to start a family. It started the summer of 1999 when I was on a plane to Rome, Italy to visit my then fling/boyfriend (sexy, right?) and I was reading The Kid by Dan Savage. If you haven't read it (and you should) - it's about Dan Savage (the syndicated sex advice columnist who writes Savage Love) and his boyfriend adopting their son DJ through open adoption. I cried when I read the book there on the plane by myself. It's hilarious and touching. I hadn't thought a whole lot about adoption or even having kids at that point, but the idea of open adoption stayed with me all these years. When it came time, almost ten years later, for me to explore adoption, there wasn't a doubt in my mind that I wanted an open adoption. To me it just made sense.

Flash forward to 2007 and my husband and I had just gone through a whole bunch of tests to find that our infertility was unexplained. We did one IUI. I'd had enough of trying to get pregnant and feeling like my body was failing me and so before we even got the beta from that IUI, I signed us up for an information session at an adoption agency here in New York. I know that I looked online at various agencies that facilitated open domestic adoptions, and I requested information from one (though I don't recall that it ever arrived....), but since this agency was local, I figured we'd go straight to the info session. In the meantime, we got our negative betas from the IUI, and the information session was maybe a week after that.

At the session we heard from two families that had recently adopted through open adoption, and two of the agency's social workers also spoke to us about their programs and about open adoption, which they strongly advocate. I cried throughout much of the meeting. At the end I turned to my husband and said, "let's do it". He was shocked by that - thought we were moving too fast. He thought we should try more treatments, but I was really against it. So as we sat there and waited for all of the other folks at the information session to briefly meet with a social worker and get an application, we talked about it more, and as the line got shorter, he was pretty convinced that this was what we should do (convinced enough to grab an application). He wasn't as sure about the openness, however.

We got to the front of the line and got an application from the social worker who later turned out to be our fantabulous social worker throughout the process. She asked us about our feelings about open adoption and I told her about my experience reading The Kid, while Mr. P expressed more caution (which the agency fully expects and respects). Over the next few weeks we spoke a lot about it and Mr. P became more and more used to the idea and more and more comfortable with it. He had never even heard about open adoption until a few weeks before when we signed up for the session, so it was a lot to think about. A couple of weeks after the session we submitted our initial (13 page) application and the rest, as they say, is history.

As for what I'd tell my past self, or what I'd like to ask my future self about open adoption... that's a tough one. I never doubted the decision to enter into an open adoption, so I wouldn't really need to go back to reassure myself. I think my eyes were pretty open when I went into it. We struggled through some tough hypothetical questions during our waiting time, and we had to face some of those in our actual situation. Our daughter just turned 10 months last week and we still haven't had any contact from her first mother, which breaks my heart, even though it doesn't necessarily surprise me (and I still have hope that she'll reach out to us). I guess what I would tell my past/future self is that, whether or not we have any contact with K (our daughter's first mom) at all at some point, it will be okay. Our adoption is still open in that our daughter will know everything that we know about her first mom. She will know that she is loved by her, she will have pictures of the two of them together. We will continue to keep those lines of communication open from our end.

a warm blanket

It's hard to believe that I haven't posted anything here for almost 2 months...

I read lots of blogs - for the most part they are adoption-related blogs, teaching blogs, and general parenting blogs. I have a few that I check every day and sometimes I just bop around here and there. Today as I was reading a (non-adoptive) parent blog, I had a moment where I was just so thankful for this community - the adoption community - that I've found online. I don't have that community anywhere else in my life - not even close to it. And it means so much to me. A lot. I can't really imagine not having all of you folks to "go" to. It's pretty crazy, really, that I can find this much solace in a community of folks that I've never met and may very well never meet. It's incredible, and I'm very grateful for it. So, for all of those out there that write about and share their experiences in adoption, thanks.

Just needed to say that. :)

Intention: Joy

Today is the first day of my school's spring break. It couldn't not have come soon enough.

I started things off right with a guided meditation and massage at this place. Totally amazing. I was so overcome with emotion just stepping in to the place. I've really been craving that self-reflective, calming and peaceful place lately. The guided meditation was really, really nice. We were asked to set an intention, and I set mine as joy. After we set the intention the instructor told us that even as we set the intention, we should also aim to let it go insofar as expecting any specific outcome. We must, she said, have faith that things will unfold as they should and not get tied to any specific outcome. I love that. It made me think a lot about us being in the process of building our family - first through good ole-fashioned s.ex and then through adoption. I think it would have served me well to hear the instructor's words years ago. The meditation continued with three questions posed to us: who am I? what do I want? and what is my dharma (purpose in life)? I practice meditation on an irregular basis, and I'd never been led in a meditation in quite such a way. I really enjoyed it, and I hope I can go back again sometime soon.

In other news, work has been kicking my ass and Little A continues to fascinate and amaze me. She's just over 8 months now. I've been feeling very unsettled by the fact that there is only one day a week that the three of us (me, Little A and Mr. P) share together. Mr. P works Sunday - Thursday, and me M - F, so we only have Saturdays all together. It's got me wondering how long we can keep this up. We happen to both love our professions, though, so it's not like we are looking for a change in that sense. Hmm....

I am so looking forward to this next week where we will all be together. (Mr. P's company forced everyone to take two weeks off without pay, so he timed one of his weeks with my spring break.)

Happy Spring!

fragility

Lately the fragility of life has been on my mind. I often go back and look at choices I've made and think of how different my life would be had I made a different choice. What if I decided to go to grad school in Baltimore instead of New York? What if I'd decided to study abroad in Mexico instead of Spain? (I met Mr. P while spending a semester of grad school in Barcelona). Then of course there are decisions that weren't in my control which also had a profound impact on my life. I was a P.eac.e Co.rps Vol.unteer in Guatemala - though I didn't choose to go to Guatemala (you usually don't have much say in where you go when you sign up). That is where I learned Spanish and that fact has played a major role in my life ever since.

And of course there is our adoption. I can't remember where I left off telling of our adoption process, but there was a point where everything was complete, but then Mr. P's fingerprints were returned because they were illegible. We had to re-submit them and waiting just for that piece of information delayed the process by two months. You can imagine how that was making me feel at the time. But at the same time we kept thinking that the fact that we waited those extra two months to begin the REAL wait could have changed our lives forever. Who knows what might have happened if we'd gone into the pool earlier? Would K have still seen us? So yes, life is fragile. And random, and so not random, and beautiful. The most fragile of all of this, it seems to me, is that K chose us to parent little A. What other families did she consider? According to what we know from our social worker, there weren't any other families called about little A, but that doesn't mean she didn't consider other potential parents. What if the fingerprints hadn't come through for another two months?

I just finished watching a (in large ways disturbing) segment from 2004 on twenty / twenty about open adoption in which a young mom is deciding between five families to possibly place her child (she is pregnant at the time of deciding amongst the families). She meets with all families and then makes her decision. After the individual interviews, all of the families go in to the agency at the same time while she meets with them to tell them whether she chose them or not. While one family sits in the waiting area, they see one family after another come out of the conference room crying and think, "well, at least that means the chances are greater for us." Really? What the hell kind of agency sets something up like this? (this was just one of the disturbing parts of the show). She does choose a family. Her baby is born shortly after and then she struggles with her decision to place or not. In the end, she does decide to place. Their adoption is open and she sees her son several times a month. Why this is all related to this post, though, is that a few months later, all of the five families get together, now having all adopted children. I just thought... wow. These families must look at the little baby boy in the room and think, "He could have been our son." Or do they think that? Who knows? I certainly don't.

But it was a concrete reminder of how fragile it all is. And how amazing. And bizarre. And heart-wrenching. And beautiful. Adoption is oh so many things.

open adoption blogger

Heather has just set up a blogroll of open adoption bloggers. Thanks, Heather! I've added my name to the list, even though I haven't much felt like an open adoption blogger lately.

When I started this blog we were about a month out of submitting all of our paperwork to our agency and were "officially" waiting. Little A arrived much, much sooner than I had imagined (although not sooner than I had hoped!) and so what I thought would be a blog mostly about the wait has turned into an adoptive parent blog. Lately I have been feeling like RPFM (reservado para futura mama) has had an identity crisis. In part because I wasn't expecting this to be a parent blog (But, hello? I was in the process of adopting a baby which would make me, uh, a parent, right? duh! This just shows how much hope I had lost at becoming a actual, real-live parent). And also because I expected to have the entire focus be on adoption and now it feels more like the focus is on parenthood more generally.

And then there is my ...... I don't know how to name the feeling exactly (sadness? frustration? worry? anxiousness?).... but my feelings about our lack of contact with K (little A's first mom) since placement. I so desperately want to have some kind of contact with her. That desire of mine feels selfish and I think that's part of the reason I haven't yet written much about it here. Because, ya know, if I don't write about it or talk about it, that means I'm not having these selfish feelings, right?

When we were going through the process with our agency we talked a lot about the kind of openness we envisioned as well as the kind of openness that we were ... open ... to. Ideally we wanted a very open relationship but we also understood (understand) that every situation is unique and not all situations lend themselves to openness, and we were okay with proceeding with a possible placement even if the kind of openness we wanted wasn't an option.

As things turned out, K's situation was one that would have led us to believe that she would not want openness. But, lo and behold, she did want an open and on-going relationship! This thrilled us. When we met with K, we talked about all kinds of things, including openness, and from my perspective we were all on the same page. We talked about having several meetings throughout the year that we would set up directly with each other, sending photos, letters, calling, etc... However, because no one in K's family knows about the pregnancy or the adoption, we gave her our contact information but understood that we would not be able to contact her directly until she could get her own personal phone number.

K did call us once in between when we met and placement day (though not really to talk about anything to do with the adoption), but she hasn't called us since. We've continued to send letters and pictures to her through the agency.

I think of her all the time and I wonder how she is doing. I worry about her because she has so much on her shoulders right now - so much more than just the adoption. I really want to know how she is doing. I also of course want her to see little A and how she is flourishing, how she has K's eyes, how happy and healthy she is, and how happy we are to be her parents. But, as I said, this all feels selfish to me, and I am shamed a bit for feeling this way. For even in my meager attempts to understand what K must be going through at this time in her life (it truly is something that I can't come close to understanding), there are many, many reasons I can imagine for K to not want/need/be able to have contact with us right now.

Ultimately, the reason that I want to have an open relationship is so that little A can grow up knowing about K from K herself, and not just through what we tell her, and so that they can decide on the relationship they want for themselves. This of course doesn't necessarily depend on having contact when little A is a baby, but I just worry about not building the relationship now so that their relationship can grow as little A grows up.

With each week that passes I wonder whether it is another week closer to when we will hear from her or a simply another week when we haven't heard from her. I fear that we may never hear from her. (Mr. P does not share my view). In the end, of course, there isn't a whole lot more we can do.

So this is where I stand as an open adoption blogger - an incredibly lucky and happy adoptive mom that feels like her family's adoption isn't so open, and hoping that it one day will be.

But, oh, K, we do think of you all the time. You are in our thoughts and prayers daily. I wish the very best for you and your family.

the kindness of strangers

For those that have read a few posts on this blog, you probably know that we live in a big city (New York). You may also know that we don't have a car and rely exclusively on public transportation. In our case, that means a subway most of the time. We also have little A in daycare that isn't walking distance from our apartment, so we take her to and from the daycare on the subway. For anyone who has ever visited New York City, you may have noticed that most subway stations don't have elevators. The station near our house does not have an elevator, and we need to take a total of three flights of stairs in order to get onto the train. The second-closest station to little A's babysitter's apartment has an elevator all the way from the subway platform up to street level.

We are lucky in many ways that each of us (Mr. P and me) has only one leg of the trip to or from daycare. Mr. P takes little A in the mornings since he goes into work much later, and I pick up little A after work. The babysitter's apartment is just a few blocks away from the school where I work. Even though there is a much closer subway station, I walk the extra blocks to the station that has the elevator so that I don't have to carry little A in the stroller plus the two bags (her diaper bag and my school bag) down the stairs.

And then we get to the station where we live. No elevator. Three flights of stairs. About 40 pounds to carry up.

I would say more times than not people do not offer to help me with the stroller up the stairs, and even less do they offer Mr. P help with the stroller. When people do offer help, I always accept, though I never ask for anyone to help me. I would say it's about even the number of women and men that offer me help. But whenever a woman has offered me help, she ALWAYS has said something to the effect of "I know how it is/I've been there". Several times people have really gone out of their way to help me carry the stroller up the stairs. For instance, a couple of weeks ago there were some teenagers in the station doing a public service announcement thing about pickpockets. One of the boys offered to help me up the last two flights of stairs, even though he obviously wasn't going up himself. People are super friendly whenever they've helped me and I enjoy the small exchanges we have (and of course I enjoy getting the help with the 40 lbs!!)

I am really fascinated by the whole thing. It always strikes me when people will walk right by without offering help. I mean, I don't think people ride the trains in order to help me with my kid, but to me it's the same kind of courtesy as holding a door open. I ALWAYS offer to help a person (usually a woman) with her stroller when I can (that is, when I don't have a stroller myself.) Our theory about people not helping Mr. P as much with the stroller is that maybe people think that offering help will somehow be emasculating. Or people could just figure that men are stronger and therefore it's not as big a deal to carry the 40 lbs. But who would actually want to do that alone if help was being offered?

The other morning on my way to work when I got on the train there was a woman on the train with three kids: one very small baby in a front baby carrier, another school-age (maybe 5 or 6) kid sitting next to her and another toddler asleep in a stroller. She got off the train before my stop at a station that I know doesn't have an elevator. I can't imagine how she got up those stairs by herself! I almost wanted to hop off the train with her just to help her up the stairs and then catch the next train. I can only hope that someone going her way gave her a lift with the stroller.

Anyway, here's a salute to the kindness of strangers, in big ways and small.

paperwork shmaperwork

Believe it or not, I just got around to truly organizing all of our adoption paperwork last night (tsk, tsk.) Up until now I just had our things in various folders, all kept in the same drawer. We at Chez M de P are no strangers to mounds of paperwork - I filed all of the paper for Mr. P's immigration stuff (work visas, parole to leave the country, SSN, greencard, fiance visa, etc.) on my own without the help of a lawyer. It was a three year process and there was a TON of paperwork. For that, I organized everything in an accordion file.

For the adoption paperwork, I decided to put everything into a binder. I put documents into those clear plastic sleeves that have the three holes to place into a binder. I used tabs to separate different sections. I chose to organize this way mostly because I decided to do this at about 10pm last night and had to go with the organizing materials I had in the apartment. I used the following sections: application process; receipts/taxes; placement; health info; and finalization. We are in the process of finalization, so perhaps there are still other categories that I'm not thinking of... Basically everything in the binder has to do directly with the adoption and our agency, though I also put things in there such as her tax ID number that we applied for (under the tax/receipt section), and I've also put in health information that we've received from our family doc.*

I like the binder approach, with the exception that you can't really see the tabs so well because the plastic sheets are as wide as the tabs and cover them up. The binder I chose is already full (though I'm sure I have larger ones around here somewhere - I am both a pack rat and a teacher, so you can imagine the kind of supplies I have around here....), and I really don't know what to expect in the future in terms of paperwork for the finalization.

I'm curious how other folks have organized/are organizing their adoption paperwork. If you'd like to share your master organization skills, please leave a comment.

*This includes our negative HIV and Hep C results that we received on Friday. Hurray for a continuously healthy little A!!

testing, testing

First of all, thanks to all who stopped by yesterday even after I blundered my way through the show and tell. And also thanks for noticing that what my profile said was impossible, since I am not a time traveler. I think I've got it all worked out, now! (But if you notice anything else - let me know!)

So today Mr. P took little A to get her blood drawn for an H.IV test. Even though she was tested at birth, our doctor recommended testing again at 6 months because of the circumstances of K's journey to the United States. When Mr. P arrived at the lab, he said the woman saw the test that our doctor had ordered and looked at him with what he described as a suspicious look. Like she thought he had HIV? Is it suspicious to have HI.V? We of course don't really know what she meant by her look, but it's been bothering me all afternoon to think that she was judging him because of this. Then he went back with little A to where the nurse was going to draw the blood and the nurse said, "Poor thing! Why are you having blood drawn from such a healthy little baby? Allergies?" Mr. P just nodded.

This brings up several things for me. First, it really, really, really bothers me when people with H.IV are treated as anything other than the regular folks they are - as in suspicious. (Just to be clear - neither my husband nor I are H.IV positive, but it seems to Mr. P that he was being judged based on the assumption that he was.) There is such a taboo around HIV in this country (and I'm sure others) and it bugs me, to put it lightly. Second, why would a nurse question why we are having blood drawn from our daughter? And third, I've been thinking up alternative responses to Mr. P's nod all afternoon. Here are some of them:

a) No, our daughter is having an HIV test because her first mom spent several weeks in a precarious situation on her way to this country and you just never know.

b) it's really none of your business.

c) we are having blood work done at the recommendation of our doctor.

d) our daughter is really into tattoos and don't have full confidence in the sterilization that they use at her favorite tattoo parlor, so we're having an HIV test done.

Any other suggestions?

Oh, and by the way, little A was fabulous getting her blood drawn. They couldn't find a vein in her first chubby little arm so they had to look in the other one. Mr. P reports that she cried while the blood was being taken, but then stopped as soon as they took the needle out and was laughing moments later. Love that girl!!

Show and Tell: Running into pre-A days

Lately I've been running into things in my everyday life that take me back to specific moments in the days just before we got THE CALL from our agency about little A. For instance, I recently defrosted some pesto I had made 3 days before getting the call, and just 4 days after A was born. I am so struck in these moments. I think back on whatever I was doing at the time - blending basil and pine nuts, for instance - and how clueless I was about how much my life was about to change.

Recently my mom was here to visit and care for A for the week and we went out to lunch with little A, my sister and my brother-in-law. We went to one of our favorite restaurants, which also happened to be a restaurant we had eaten in the weekend before we got THE CALL. And wouldn't you know that they happened to sit us in the exact spot where we had sat on that last Saturday night before I became a parent-to-be. [Incidentally, if you want to go back and re-live that weekend with me a bit, another of my Show and Tell posts is also from that weekend.]

A not so great picture from our August 2008 trip to the restaurant serves as my show and tell this week:

Like I said, it's not a great shot. I had paella. It wasn't very good, but I was quite excited when they brought it to the table. Excited enough to take a picture of it. Looking back at these pictures, I juxtapose them in my mind with the images of my January 2009 lunch at the same table. In my recent visit to that table, though, I spent most of my time trying to entertain my not-quite-6-month old daughter in a place that is clearly not meant for little babies to spend time in. And marveling at how marvelously amazing she is. I've been thinking a lot lately about these radical and sudden changes that have happened in my life. I love them. I crave them. I'm beginning to crave some kind of radical change in my life again - since it's been all of 6 months since my last one. But that's for another day's writing....

For others showing and telling this week, make sure to visit the class!

thoughts on the mini-me conversation

After posting about the mini-me conversation I had last weekend with several friends, I had a real-life discussion about it with a friend, also single and not a parent. She turned the argument on its head, actually, and asked whether it was actually those who decide to not become parents who are the selfish ones. I don't really think anyone needs to be labeled selfish in this debate. But my conversation with her did affirm my original feeling that becoming a parent for me was something that has always felt right and like something I want to do - for many reasons. I don't want to say it's the "natural" thing to do, because I do believe that not everyone wants to be or should be a parent, even though it is indeed what many people end up doing at some point in their life. My friend also pointed out that most parents probably don't think much about why they want to parent - it's just expected. True dat.

This made me think a lot about my sister, who has said for years that she doesn't want children. She is older than me (which, for some people, means that she should have had children before me - silly, I know), and has from a very young age said that she never wanted children. She's given various reasons over time: she doesn't think she'd be a good mother; she doesn't want to pass on all of her "issues" to children; the world is a terrible place so why bring more people into it?; the world is over-populated so why bring more people into it?; it's an act of narcissism that she doesn't want to take part in.

In a somewhat interesting twist, she has also always said that if she did have children (in those rare moments where she opens to the possibility), she would adopt. That approach addresses some of her reasons for not wanting to parent, but not all. When asked further about this, she has said that she definitely does not have the desire to be pregnant. While I very much wanted to be pregnant and had idyllic visions of that belly of mine and all that came along with it, I can surely understand not wanting to be pregnant. When we set out on our adoption, I was hopeful that maybe seeing us go through it would make her want to go down the same path herself. (I think she'd be a great parent, as would my brother-in-law, who very much wants children).

While little would make me happier than my sister becoming a parent, who am I to say what she should do? I certainly don't like to see anyone become a parent who is really opposed to the idea. And who am I to judge her for making this choice? Is it because she is selfish? Is the fact that she doesn't want to give up her current lifestyle to become a parent evidence of her selfishness? I don't think so. Is my desire for a child evidence of my desire to impose all of my will on that person? To have that person fulfill all the dreams I never fulfilled myself? I don't think so.

So basically I concluded that the mini-me conversation really didn't deserve any response. As my grandfather says, what is, is. If there is one thing that parenthood continues to teach me, it's that most of us are doing are best out there, in whatever role we are taking on, and it's counterproductive to pass judgement.

Mini-me?

Last night I had the pleasure of going to a friend's house for dinner - it was like a date with myself. Mr. P stayed home with little A. Over the past month or so I've had the chance to go out a couple of times without little A for a social outing - not just to go to work - and it's been nice. The three of us were invited to the dinner last night, but bringing little A out into the cold, cold night and interrupting her sleep didn't seem worth it. So I went alone.

The other invitees, as well as the host, are all single folks without children. Soon after arriving I was asked about little A and we started talking about how we plan to raise her to be bilingual/bi-literate. (On a somewhat sidenote - as soon as we started this conversation my friend stopped us all to note that even though I was "out-numbered" by single non-parents, we were STILL talking about kids, an annoyance that I can simpathize with.) From bilingualism the conversation turned to baby sign language and I was asked my thoughts on that, to which I offered that while I don't have strong views on baby sign language, I do believe that many baby/child products, trends, movements, etc... seem to be more for the adults than for the babies/children. So then the conversation turned to why people have kids in the first place. My friend and the other guests at the dinner felt pretty strongly that people who have chosen to have children do so for purely selfish reasons; to produce mini likenesses of themselves. Hmmm. The feeling I got was that perhaps I was being exempt from this selfish behavior becuase I am an adoptive mom. Hmmm.

I have to say that the conversation really shut me up. I don't believe that my reasons for wanting a child as an adoptive parent are so drastically different than any other parent's reasons for wanting a child. As an adoptive parent I was asked to spend much time explaining my reasons for wanting to parent a child through adoption, both in writing and in person. But when this conversation was happening in front of me last night I found myself unable to counter the arguments with anything intelligent. I don't feel like I want to produce little mini-M de P's as a parent, but at the same time I don't view having a child as a purely altruistic enterprise. And I certainly don't believe that choosing to be an adoptive parent somehow makes me a selfless parent (because I can parent a child who doesn't share my genes - Imagine!)

So I woke up this morning trying to find my own answer to this question - why I wanted children. I think I've wanted to parent a child for so long that in some ways I stopped asking myself why. I just feel it. I know it in my gut. Just as I felt I wanted to be a teacher. And felt I wanted to spend my life with Mr. P. But I do think it's a question worth asking and answering. I plan to do some writing about this to work it out, whether it's here or in my paper and pencil journal. What are your answers?

thought on my non-thoughts

I swear I've been trying to come up with juicy topics to write about here on the blog. Nothing is really coming. But at the same time I'm itching to write. I'm really in to lists, so I'll post one publicly here so that perhaps I'll hold myself more accountable to it. My list of not-so-juicy topics to write about here:

- my daughter's boggling sleep habits, along with pleas for suggestions
- the whole back-to-work stuff
- relationships with family members and how they've changed since little A arrived on the scene
- the intellectualization of parenthood
- more thoughts on the process of becoming a mother
- maybe finishing up our whole adoption process/story, which I never really did, did I?
- a lifebook - uh, I don't really know where to begin
- all the other things you've been dying for me to write about but have been too afraid to ask. Anyone? Bueller?