One Year Ago This Weekend – Abridged

*Author’s note:  If this post seems familiar to you, know that I’m not doing reruns.  I am entering a contest sponsored by A Child’s Hope Adoption Services about adoption stories.  I started with this post, but needed to chop it down to 500 words.  Brevity is not always a strong suit, but I’m happy with how this turned out.

*   *   *

A  year ago, life sucked.

A lot.

My wife’s busy season at work means sixty hour weeks, and full-time daddy duty with our three year old Jamie.  Busy days.  Short nights.  Lots of stress.

We’re also two months removed from a failed adoption.  The pain is still raw.

Our agency says we could get a call any day, but my hopes aren’t up.  I’ve switched off the pain until Michelle’s work settles down.

Michelle isn’t so lucky.  She naturally wears her heart on her sleeve.  Sixty hour weeks plus guilt from being away from Jamie doesn’t help.

Michelle sends me two emails.  She said she was crying in the bathroom over a co-worker’s baby shower.

The second reads:

“Not getting better.  Can I cry?  Walk out?  Come back in a week?”

Today is Friday, March 9, 2012.

*   *   *

Jamie is at Grandma’s this weekend.  I need the break, and time with Michelle.  I know she’s struggling.

We take time to rest and recharge.  We sleep in and go out to eat.

Today is Saturday, March 10.

*  *  *

We pick up Jamie.  We missed her – our rock through the failed adoption.  She’s so ready to be a sister.

We head home towards another hectic week.

Meanwhile, a woman is admitted to an Orlando hospital.

Today is Sunday, March 11.

*  *  *

I head to work for another forgettable Monday.  Around 4:00, Michelle calls.  I hear excitement for the first time in weeks.

“How would you feel about a son?”

She explains:  a mom wants to place her newborn son.  Placement would be tomorrow.  In Orlando.

Dazed, I head home.  Michelle tells her boss she’s out for 12 weeks, starting tomorrow.

Over dinner, we discuss the situation.  It takes two minutes.  This is our son.

Today is Monday, March 12, 2012.

*  *  *

We spend the evening in controlled chaos.  Booking travel, finding non-pink items from our baby girl stuff.  Packing, packing, packing.

Michelle asks about a name.  We had a girl name, but nothing for a boy.

I reply, “What about Cameron?”

Michelle likes Cameron.  I like Cameron.  Our son has a name.

We just need to go get him.

*  *  *

Four hours of sleep, but I’m not looking for the snooze button.  We’re meeting our son today.

We get dressed and load the car.  Jamie doesn’t know what’s happening, but she loves an adventure.  She’s wearing the “Big Sister” shirt we bought to announce our last match.

In the car, Michelle calls our agency.  The birth mom can sign relinquishment papers today.  We won’t leave until they’re signed.

A big smile from Michelle, and we’re off to the airport.

*  *  *

After a long day of travel, we leave the airport and go to the hospital.

We meet our caseworker, and review a mountain of papers.  I know they serve a purpose, but I can only think of Cameron.  I’d sign anything to see him.

Finally, its time.

We meet our Cameron.

Today is Tuesday, March 13, 2012.

Life has improved greatly.

How about you tie the tubes in your mouth?

I need to step outside of my comfort zone for a minute.  I’m typically not one to cause friction or publicly call somebody out, but I’m feeling like it is warranted and necessary.  Consider this both a public service and a preemptive strike.

As you may recall, we are in the process of adopting a baby girl born two weeks ago.  This little girl is the biological half-sister of our adopted son.  In simpler terms, our two youngest have the same birth mom, but different birth dads.

Given this information, and the relatively small gap between their births (a little over 17 months), we have had to field some uncomfortable questions from friends, family, co-workers, and others.

You can probably guess some of the things we’re hearing.  Things like “She knows what causes that right?” or suggestions that we should take the birth mom a box of condoms.  When we shared that our daughter was born via C-section, more people than I care to think about have asked “Did they tie her tubes while they were in there?”.

My wife and I struggle to process how rude and insensitive these comments are.  It is disappointing, insulting (and rather infuriating) to hear them from people we care about.

I honestly believe that these things are said with good, honest intentions.  We simply do not have people in our lives who are intentionally rude and insulting to us.  It’s likely these things are said jokingly, or in reaction to the sudden nature of this placement, or any number of other reasons.

But trust me, we do not appreciate these comments.

First and foremost, you’re talking about the birth mother of two of our children.  I’m going to defend her like I would my own mom, my wife, or our children.  Mess with the birth mama and you’re messing with me.

It may be hard for non-adoptive parents to understand the protective loyalty I have for someone I’ve never met (as is the case with both of our birth moms), but you need to understand:  without these women, without the sacrifices they made, the pain they endured, and the other things you and I cannot fully appreciate, I have no children.  No family.  Nothing.  The gratitude – the eternal, never-ending thankfulness I have cannot be underestimated.

It is very easy for those on the outside to look at the choices birth moms make and judge.  Why did they get “knocked up”?  Why do they have babies they “cannot keep”?  How could they possibly “give up*” a child for adoption?  Again?

*Seriously, if you’re still saying “give up”, please stop.  Switch to “placed for adoption” or “chose to place for adoption”.  Yeah it’s a little more work for your brain, but those extra words don’t sting nearly as bad.

I look at this two ways:

1) Look at your life.  What choices have you made that others have judged?  How did that feel?  I know I’m not perfect.  My family and friends love me in spite of many of the things I’ve done and said.

2) Instead of focusing on the negative, celebrate these women.  Instead of choosing abortion, they chose to give life to these wonderful, beautiful children – all while enduring a difficult social stigma.  The greatest days of our lives – the days we took custody of our children – were the worst days in the lives of their birth moms.  We try to never forget that.

But mostly, I think about the birth mom of our son and baby girl.  She is a beautiful young woman (early 30s) with lots of life to live.  Who knows what her situation will be in six months or six years?  Quite simply, she has done absolutely nothing to warrant losing her ability to have children.

Nobody has the right to suggest that her ability to reproduce be taken away solely because she blessed us with two beautiful children.  Not me.  Not you.  Nobody.

I can’t tell you what to think or how to feel about the choices our birth moms have made.  But I am asking you – politely, yet very, very firmly – to keep those opinions to yourself.  My children will be raised to honor and celebrate their mom and birth mom, and they do not need to hear any rude or disparaging comments about them.

Thank you.

Surprise!

My wife and I are infertile.  I’ve long since come to grips with this, and as such, I understand there are some aspects of a fertile male’s life that I will never experience.  For example, I’ll never get to put my hand on my wife’s tummy and feel a kick.  I’ll never see a child that shares the same DNA as we do*.  I’ll never have the “delivery room” experience, or get cut an umbilical cord.**

*This is probably for the best as our collective family health risks would likely make any biological child one big, genetic time bomb.  Put it this way:  if there is a charity walk to support it, you can probably find it somewhere in our families.

**Also for the best as I’m irrationally weird about belly buttons.  Just typing this sentence makes me uncomfortable.

I am completely, perfectly, 100% fine with not experiencing these things.  Through the wonder of adoption, we have two healthy and happy children who are more beautiful than anything my flawed DNA could ever hope to be apart of.  We are blessed beyond reason.  We’ve talked about adopting again, but I’ve been firm in wanting to be done.

Or so I thought.

*  *   *

On a typical Tuesday morning (July 23, 2013), I’m sitting at my desk doing some work.  My wife calls and ask if I want to take an “early lunch”.  Looking at the clock on my PC, I see that it’s 10:29 am.

I am far from hungry, but I can tell that my wife wants to talk about something.

In person.

Now.

We agree to meet at home in 15 minutes and I head out the door.  I arrive home fully expecting to hear some job-related news.  Her department has been having some issues, and I’m wondering if she was fired.  Or if she got fed up and walked out.  Maybe she was offered a vacant management position.

We step in the house, and she tells me “_______________”.

Yeah, I have no idea what she said – either exactly or paraphrased.  It was something about a phone call from Florida.  But the message was this:

The birth mother of our son is pregnant and has chosen to place the baby for adoption.  Our adoption agency wants to know if we would accept the placement.

And just like that, I got to experience something I never thought would happen to me:  being told “You’re going to be a father” completely and totally out of the blue.

According to my wife, my initial response was “So you’re not fired?”

*   *   *

The next 20-30 minutes are a bit of a blur.  The baby is going to be a girl.  My wife always wanted to have two girls.  She’s a giddy, teary, excited mess.  She wants this.

I think of my son, picturing his beautiful face.  There is no way I could ever look into his deep, dark eyes and say “Well, buddy, Mommy and I had a chance to adopt a baby sister – your biological half-sister – but we said no.  Sorry, little dude.”  As much I was done – had you asked me 45 minutes earlier, I would have told you that I was more likely to grow a third arm than have a third child – this was a no-brainer for me.

When we called the agency’s case worker back to say “yes”, she said “Well, that was fast!”

Of course it was fast.  We’re talking about my daughter.

*   *   *

I’ll admit it:  I’m in shock.  As I type this, I still am in disbelief.

Oh yeah, there’s one other little tidbit from that first conversation with my wife that I haven’t shared yet:  this baby girl’s due date is August 19.  2013.  We don’t get nine months.  We don’t even get nine weeks.

This is a serious game changer for us.  With our previous two adoptions, we were able to plan and save.  I don’t know if you know this or not, but adoption is kind of expensive.  While my wife’s employer has some adoption benefits, it barely puts a dent in what we need.  Can I fit three car seats in my sedan?  We don’t have an open bedroom so somebody will have to double up.  There are a thousand other things that change.  The classic parenting joke of having to switch from a man-to-man to a zone defense.  Knowing that I may not sleep through the night again until 2014.  May not dine in a restaurant with my family until 2015.  May not be able to retire until 10 years after I die.

But it will all work out.  It will all be worth it.

This is my daughter.

*   *   *

As you are reading this, we’re sitting in a rented vacation home in Orlando, Florida – that’s where our daughter was born.  We’ve actually been here for a while.  We believed the birth mom would go into labor early, and since we were driving from our home in Nebraska*, we decided to take advantage of a weekend to get down here.

*Yeah, that drive was not exactly a breeze.  1,400 miles with kids that apparently are incapable of sleeping in a car – no matter the time of day.  All I know is the person who thought to put a DVD player in minivans will forever hold a fond place in my heart.  I’m sure the drive back with a newborn will be much better.

We took placement today (Saturday, August 24), and baby was discharged from the hospital into our custody. Now, we hang out here and wait for our ICPC clearance to leave Florida and reenter Nebraska.

Waiting for paperwork to process may sound like a real drag – especially to adoptive parents whose lives can feel like one giant form, but this is different.  This is relaxing, stress-free time.  This is bonding with a baby, and spending the quality family time that politicians preach about (before they go sleep with their mistress).  In short, this is heaven with take out food and a swimming pool.

*   *   *

I know most of my friends are probably reading this with their jaws dragging on the floor.

Trust me, I can relate to the disbelief you’re feeling.

I do want to apologize to you for not letting you know about this sooner.  But as you may remember, we got burned once by a failed adoption.  Even though we had absolutely no reason to believe it would happen this time, the simple truth is that until the relinquishment papers are signed, the birth mom has every right to parent this baby.  So we wanted to be guarded and protect ourselves.  Neither my wife nor I had any desire to go through the pain of having to tell everybody in our lives that we got our hearts broken.  Again.  Therefore, we decided to wait until she was born and her birth mom had signed the relinquishment papers.

I hope you can understand why we had to keep it a secret.

Besides, everybody loves a good surprise.

Baby Lexi

*   *   *

Alexandra Grace Paris Feit was born at 3:54 am on Thursday, August 22.  Lexi, as we will call her, weighed 7 pounds, 10 ounces and was 20 inches long.  She is a perfectly healthy little girl with a full head of silky black hair.  Her birth mama needed an emergency C-section*, but is recovering well.  We understand that she was released from the hospital today.

*Almost a week past her due date, little Lexi was in no hurry to be born.  We were told that she was hanging on to her birth mama as the doctor delivered her.

Her birth mom chose her first name (from the two finalists we had narrowed it down to).  Her first middle name (Grace) is the name of her great-grandma (my wife’s grandma) who is very dear to us.  Her second middle name (Paris) was given to her by her birth mom, and is the name of her grandpa (her birth mom’s daddy) who shared a birthday with Lexi.

Lexi’s big sister Jamie is over the moon, and wants nothing more than to hold her and kiss her.  Lexi’s big brother Cameron doesn’t quite grasp what is going on yet, but we’re sure that he will be a wonderful (and protective) big brother.

My beautiful family

I’ll Wait Forever

Author’s note:  This post is partially inspired by a writing prompt on openadoptionbloggers.com.  The prompt was simply to “Write about open adoption and time.” 

It also presents a good opportunity to share a song from one of my favorite bands.  Stick with me…hopefully it will all make sense in the end.

*   *   *

Whenever we have shared news with family, friends, and co-workers about being in an adoption process (i.e. somewhere between filling out that first form and when we see our child for the first time), the conversation inevitably turns to time*.

“When?”

“How long?”

This makes sense as adoption does not track time on the same clock as traditional pregnancy.  The path of the adoptive parent (foster, domestic, international, etc.) along with a plethora of other factors all play a role in speeding or slowing the adoption clock.  If you don’t know somebody who has been through adoption, it’s tough to understand why some adoptions take weeks and others take years.

*The cynical side of me thinks these conversations gravitate to time so easily because time questions are much safer than the questions people really want to ask:  “Why?”  and “How much?”  But I’m getting off track…

Time.

Ask most adoptive parents about time, and they’ll tell you about The Wait.  The Wait is the stretch of time between reaching the summit of Mount Paperwork and the tearful bliss of Gotcha Day.  The Wait can be a few days or multiple years.  The Wait is rarely in any hurry.

Nine months seem like a long time to wait for a baby, but with traditional pregnancy you have a date that you can point to.  A date you can circle on the calendar and count down to.  A date you (and your employer) can plan around.  People in The Wait do not have the luxury.  The Wait hates planners.

For most people, The Wait sucks.  Yes, there are lots of adoptions that take far less than nine months, but you usually have no idea of that going in.  The Wait loves to keep you guessing.  For both of our adoptions, we entered into The Wait with a vague timetable of “anywhere between six and twelve months” before we would be matched*

*Okay….before we go too much farther, I need to have full disclosure.  This is not going to be easy for some of you to read, but if I’m going to post this on an Open Adoption blog site, I need to be open.  Here goes:

Our “wait” between the time our agency sent out our profiles (i.e. when we were considered waiting) and the phone call letting us know about a potential match with our daughter can be easily measured in days.  That you could count on one hand.  Even if you only had four fingers on that hand.

Yep, our profiles went out on the Friday before Memorial Day (2009) and I received the call from our agency on the day after Memorial Day.  It’s okay if you want to hate us – I’m pretty sure I would be insanely jealous with hate if we had spent years living with The Wait.  If it helps, I had emergency back surgery before we could take placement…but that’s another story for another day.

There is no secret formula for surviving The Wait.  Our agency encouraged us to consider ourselves “paper pregnant” and go through the mental and physical processes (baby showers, nesting, preparing a nursery, etc.) to get ready for our child’s arrival.  For the most part, that is what we did throughout the process as my wife (correctly) assumed that we would be matched early.

But what if our long weekend of a wait had truly stretched into The Wait?  Do you try to put The Wait in your pocket and go on living your life?  I can see how detaching yourself from the stress and uncertainty of The Wait could be a viable survival tactic to avoid the anticipation and anxiety from consuming you.  Or is The Wait always there?  Some days it lurks in a corner, just barely visible, while other days it stands squarely on your chest?  I just don’t know.

I think we can all agree that The Wait sucks for most adoptive parents, but my opinion is that it is even worse for parents adopting internationally.  First, there is all of the bureaucratic red tape that exists between two countries.  Second comes the anxiety over the country itself – will it be free from war, disease, natural disaster, or governmental instability.

But the worst part would have to be accepting a match to a child and (depending on the country/program) receiving a picture or some video of your child.  Then you must wait another six months before you can hold him in your arms.  That is just The Wait being cruel.

So for those of you currently in the midst of The Wait, or for those who remember how fun it was, I’d like to share a song that I wish would have been around when we were going through the process.  It’s called “I’ll Wait Forever”.

The song is by The Nadas, a longtime indie band from Des Moines, IA, and appears on their new album Lovejoy Revival.  To the best of my knowledge, nobody in the band has an adoption tie, and judging by the other tracks on Lovejoy, the song was not intended with an adoption slant.  Yet, every time I listen to “I’ll Wait Forever”, I cannot help by think of our two waits, and how the end results were worth every agonizing second.

I’ll wait forever.
‘Til you come true.

I’ll wait forever.
For you.

One Year Ago This Weekend

One year ago this weekend, things sucked for us.

A lot.

The Super Bowl of Adoption

Author’s note:  I’m a little late to the party on this, but I wanted to share my two cents…

As part of the non-stop hype and build up to last week’s Super Bowl, media members from all over the country explore every conceivable story angle on the players – especially those in starring roles, such as San Fransisco 49’ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick.  Kaepernick is a pretty interesting story:  not widely recruited out of high school, becomes a star QB and helps boost Nevada football to respectability.  Gets drafted by the 49’ers and takes over the starting job midway through the season, helping to ignite the team, leading them to the Super Bowl.  Kaepernick was also adopted by white parents, adding another level to his already unique story.

Although progress is being made, adoption is still a rather mysterious subject for a lot of folks.  Add in the layers of open adoption (where the adoptee has some level of contact/relationship with their birth family) and transracial adoption (my wife and I are white; our children are not) and it definitely makes for an interesting angle for the hundreds of media members looking for something new to report/write/talk about*.

*As an aside, Kaepernick was not the only transracial adoptee playing in the Super Bowl.  Baltimore Ravens tackle Michael Oher was also adopted by a white family, but his story (or at least a Hollywood version of it) has already been told in the Sandra Bullock movie The Blind Side.

One of the questions Kaepernick was asked during the Super Bowl media day was if he was in contact with his birth parents.  Kaepernick was placed for adoption by a 19 year old woman, who knew that she would not be able to adequately provide for him.  He said that he had not been in recent contact with her (she had sent a letter for his 18th birthday), nor did he have a desire to do so.

This is where ESPN columnist Rick Reilly comes in.  Reilly adopted one of his daughters from Korea, and in a recent column he related a personal story of how his daughter reunited with her birth mom and biological siblings during trips to Korea.  According to Reilly, the experience has been very positive for his daughter.  Terrific.  I am a big believer in open adoption.  And hearing about positive and healthy relationships between adopted children and their biological family makes me happy.

But then Reilly expresses confusion over why Kaepernick refuses to meet with his birth mom.  He cannot understand why Kaepernick is not behaving like other adopted kids who are “crazy curious about their birth parents”.  Reilly offers a pet theory for why Kaepernick does not want contact:  Reilly thinks that a relationship between Kaepernick and his birth mom would be disrespectful to his adoptive parents.  Maybe he’s right.  Maybe he’s not.

*A side note – the other thing about Reilly’s piece that drove me up a wall was his use of “gave him up” to describe the birth mother’s decision to place her son for adoption.  I’ve never met Colin Kaepernick’s birth mom, but I can guarantee that she did not “give up” on him, and to imply that any birth mother “gives up” on their child is insulting to the birth mom and the child.  If you use a variation of “give up” when talking about somebody who was adopted, please stop.

But here’s the thing:  Colin Kaepernick gets to choose what level of contact, if any, he has with his birth family.  He gets to decide if he is “crazy curious” about the woman who carried him for nine months before making what was likely an impossibly hard decision.  He gets to decide how he processes and handles that loss.  And he definitely gets to decide if he discusses all of this in front of the national media before the biggest game of his career.

Look:  I hope that Kaepernick can have a strong relationship with his birth mom, just as I want my own adopted children to have good relationships with their birth families.  I’m very proud of the relationship we have built with my daughter’s birth grandma, great-grandma, and half-sister.  And we continue to make every effort to establish a better relationship with our son’s birth parents – when they are ready, we will be readily oblige.  While they are young, we will do everything in our power to establish those relationships, develop them, and always ensure they are positive and beneficial for our children.

But I acknowledge that a time will come where the decision to maintain or break contact will no longer be mine.  I’ll certainly encourage them to maintain some level of communication, but if they choose to break contact, I’ll listen to them, try to understand their reasoning, and respect their decision.  And I won’t have a lot of patience for outsiders like Reilly who tell my kids how to live their lives.