And now… the easy part…

Tags

Adoption, Family, Health, Infertility, Social work

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Waiting.

I am an “expert” at waiting.  I’ve been waiting for six years already to add to my family, so what’s another year or two?  It’s funny, I sat in one of the required adoption education classes last month, and one gentleman asked a question around “waiting”.   Specifically, how long is the wait?  The most loaded question in the realm of adoption.  I don’t like to make generalizations, but I find it interesting that the male species likes to have everything drilled down to a firm answer. No grey areas.

Take, Mr. X for instance.  Through every foray into infertility treatment, he was the guy who didn’t want the nuance of the situation, he wanted the facts.  Example:  our last cycle with donor eggs…  I was asking the RE how the quality of the eggs were, fertilization rate, and what were the ultimate ratings of the blasts.  Meanwhile, Mr. X wanted to know… “how many do we have.  HOW MANY???”

I couldn’t possibly talk him into the concept of quantity means nothing if they are of poor quality.  Had he heard NOTHING? in our dozens of consults prior when the RE said, “your own eggs, they are plentiful, but not the quality we desire.”  Really.

Anyway, this guy at the adoption class was drill-down guy with a twist.  The social worker indicated that there really is no hard and fast average (quite frankly, you could wait a few months or a few years depending on your wants), but she threw out a number anyway… 18 months.  His follow-up question, “Well, what about the ‘statistical mean average‘?”

Mr. X looked at me like he was talking Greek, and the social worker smiled, “We don’t get down to that level of data.”  The folks in the room giggled.

Last Monday, I received our approved homestudy. Mr. X and I’s entire lives, drilled down into a 9 page document, with the ending…

” X and X are approved as pre-adoptive parents”

Fini.

Today, Mr. X asks…

“how long is the wait again?”

Almost there

Tags

Family, Home, Personality, Psychology, Shopping, Social Sciences, Tests, Type A and Type B personality theory

Well, it took the whole summer, but we are 90% done our homestudy.  All that remains is the home visit (we already completed our interviews), and the dreaded profile.

Maybe “dreaded” is the wrong word.  The profile, for those not in the know, is the “Dear Birthparent” letter.  The document that the birthmom and/or birthdad view to choose the parents of their child.  The document that either stands out or gets passed by with nary a glance.  Quite a bit of stress presents itself in drafting a letter of that importance.  I’ve woken up in the middle of the night in cold sweats thinking of the right words… the right pictures.  It’s all very maddening.

It needs to accurately portray the essence of “us”.

It’s a tall order.

Mr. X says not to put too much thought into it, but then, he’s not the Type A personality in the house.  It’s the cross I bear, and I guess one of the reasons he and I fit so well together.  When one of us flies, the other gives a nudge to the sky…  and when one of us gets too high in the clouds the other bears weight to return us to earth.

Ironically, the home visit does not phase me.  We’ve grown very comfortable with our social worker.  She is a gem of gems.  This woman has a powerful and booming personality and a roaring sense of humor, all while being gentle as a feather.  I guess it helps to have those qualities in her line of work.  I see why I’ve heard so many good things about her through the grapevine.

Nope, I intend to straighten up the house without going nutzo.  No deep cleaning or obsessive behavior.  I may even leave our guest room a bit undone, to make it entirely too neat is like putting shoe polish over a scuff.  That is the room Turtle’s old crib is.  I noted in my interview that the room became storage since there was no baby in it.  I would be fooling myself to try to revert it back to a guestroom.   It will stay as is.

Waiting for an occupant.