Our Family Beginnings

Yesterday I turned 33, and it was a pretty nice day.

Thanksgiving went well, though the turkey cooked faster than Mr. Badger had expected.  Ignore the fact that this happens every year and should no longer be a surprise…

I’m really lucky that my brother married such an awesome woman.  She’s truly so sweet and helpful, making sure that I took time outs to rest every now and then both on Thanksgiving and my birthday.  She’s hilarious, a great aunt to V, and easy to get along with.  She loves football, music, food, and karaoke, and played Beatles Rock Band with me for hours this morning.

Mr. Badger and I get along so well with my brother and his wife that we are making a few plans to go away with them in 2010 for some vacation days.

On Wednesday I wrote a letter to our elected officials to see if they can speed the paperwork along for finalization.  It can’t hurt, right?

V is walking pretty regularly now, which isn’t freaking me out.  When he goes vertical, that’s when I’m gonna be in big trouble.

Me, Mr. Badger, my brother and his wife all went to a few bars throughout DC for my birthday, leaving my folks and Mr. Badgers to watch V.  It made us laugh that all four of them were still there when we got home around 11pm, though V went to bed hours earlier. It was like neither pair wanted to cede grandparenting to the other, and so they all stayed.  My folks said that it was a good time and everyone got along well.  Not a bad birthday gift…

Mr. Badger got me a photography class for my birthday, which I’m pretty stoked about. Maybe I’ll even get good at it!!!

I leave for Florida on Tuesday with V, and Mr. Badger joins us on Thursday along with my folks.  It’s gonna be a royal PITA to fly down there on my own with V with his big boy carseat.

More in a little bit since I have to make up for not posting yesterday.

We do a lot of waiting here in the ALI blogosphere.  We wait for a diagnosis. We wait to start treatment and then, of course, the 2 week wait. For those of us involved in adoption, we wait for a first parent to choose us, we wait (sometimes) for that child to be born.  There’s another wait, one that actually doesn’t really impact us on a daily basis, though at times it can be stressful – the legal wait.

We’re almost there.  ALMOST. It’s taken a long time, and it’s because of the states that we live in.  Had V been born in, say, Arkansas, we’d probably have finalized the adoption months ago. Best I can figure, the welfare rolls in a lot of southern states are sizeable, and they have adoption-friendly laws that expedite getting children into the homes of those who can provide medical coverage.  That’s just one of my theories at least.  Pennsylvania and Maryland take a bit longer.

Here are the steps we’ve taken and what still is yet to come,  in a nutshell:

1. Little man is born, and the ICPC is filed with Pennsylvania. They took a few days to review and overnighted it to Maryland. Maryland approved it the day they got it.  From there we were allowed to leave the state.
2. Three days after his birth, his first mother was able to sign consent to terminate her parental rights.
3. At 6 months, a hearing was requested to terminate both parental rights. The court date was held when V was 8 1/2 months old.
4. Now we’ve filed petition in our state to adopt V.
5. A person will review all of the paperwork, including all of the PA proceedings and our homestudy documents.
6. We’ve been told that we should get a finalization date with the judge in 2-4 months.
7. Once we have our adoption decree in Maryland, that information is sent to Pennsylvania, where they seal his old birth certificate, and a new one is issued with Mr. Badger and I listed as parents, as well as his formal name.

I think a lot of people worry on our behalf that something could go wrong somewhere in this process.  While certainly, that’s possible, it is beyond unlikely, and isn’t something we worry about. It’s more a mental annoyance than anything.  We can’t get his permanent #SSN or a passport without the final decree.  We’re not planning on going abroad anytime soon, but it’d be nice to be able to apply for the tax credit this year.  That’s money that would start the fund for a brother or sister for V.

I did email our Maryland attorney, and while he was the one that gave us the 2-4 month quote, he did say that he thought it was reasonable to expect finalization in 2009.  I may shoot an email to our local government representative to see if he or she can speed things along a bit.  It’s just a piece of paper, but there’s just that little bit of me that wants it all done and final so that we can celebrate.

Then again, if I were on Grey’s Anatomy, I could just write the adoption decree on a post-it, and that would make it so. Have I mentioned that I hate that storyline? No? I’ll go into it another day.

Tequila makes things better sometimes.

Last night, I picked Mr. Badger up from the metro.  We went to the supermarket and picked up some things for dinner and then came home.  He went downstairs as I started to prep some stuff and when I came up he had set something wonderful on the coffee table.  A plate.  Slices of lime.  Salt. Shot Glasses.  Herradura tequila.  He thought it could be appropriate to do a shot or two.  He encouraged my inner Meredith.  This is why I love this man so very much.  I don’t even know the last time I did a shot, much less two.   We toasted to a happy life for Miss Queen, and then we let her go.

After dinner, I got into bed and slept for 10.5 hours.  It was the best sleep I have had in two weeks.  And now?  I feel okay again.

Let me back up for a moment and tell you about yesterday.

First thing, pretty much, I got a call from the agency.  I was the first on the list for them to call.  We went over details of them getting the homestudy from our local agency and what not, and then she told me Miss Queen was off the table.  Since it’s not my daughter’s story anymore, I can tell you what went on.

Miss Queen was adopted by a couple in PA at birth.  When their first post-placement visit happened, however, there was another (possibly two) infant in the home for adoption.  The State of PA originally said that they could not, therefore, keep Miss Queen.  In the end however, they are allowing her to stay there with a shitload of supervision.  So on the bright side, it wasn’t like we weren’t chosen.  Miss Queen simply was already home.

It broke my heart, and I went downtown to have lunch with Mr. Badger.  We just were crestfallen. We thought once, just once, life was throwing us a gimme.  A nod to all we’ve been through to say “you’ve had enough, we’re gonna let you have the easy one this time.”  With all the prayers people have had for us, and all of the karma that supposedly was on our side – it was easy to have a crisis of faith.

It’s deeper than that even.  We were supposed to have a decent chance with IUI until we didn’t. IVF was supposed to be a formality, until it wasn’t.  Adoption…to put in the words of Joe Biden, at least yesterday became this… “That’s not change!  That’s more of the same!”  Something that has us looking like a shoe-in on paper, but is just not as simple as it should be.

We know our baby is out there.  We know that Miss Queen just wasn’t the one.  Enough people told us that yesterday, and frankly, we’re a little sick of it.  We understand all of that.  This isn’t news to us.  Logically, we get all of it.  Clearly logic is not at hand here.  Not when people who scam the system get multiple kids while we sit and wait.  Clearly faith is not the sole factor when we had a Christmas transfer, and then an Easter transfer, and then all of you AMAZING people praying for all of us, and still nothing.  Either that or we are the most karmically fucked people on the planet who ran a dogfighting ring in a former life.

But I don’t believe any of it.  I think really, it’s just a bit of chaos theory at work.  It’ll happen when it happens, and there’s nothing else we can do to speed it along.  It sucks, but it’s okay.  Today, it’s okay.

I slept about 10.5 hours last night, and today, with the sun shining, I know it’ll work out.  But if I still get any kind of say in this…I’d hope it is soonish.

The agency hasn’t emailed me back, so I have nothing there for you.  Still the same.  Yesterday, Miss Queen turned 7 weeks – I wonder if anyone is celebrating and capturing photos of her.

Distractions:

1.  More than half done with a blanket I am knitting.  It’s super easy and I started it Sunday.  At this rate, we’ll have a whole layette by the time we get a baby.

2. Downloaded the new iTunes.  Prior to that I had some network issues, so I only got 2 of the songs off the new Joshua Radin album.  Itunes thinks I downloaded all of them, and so I am waiting for tech support to email me back so I can get the rest.  So that distraction hasn’t done me as much good.

3.  I think, perhaps I should find a new design for the Daily Dose – I didn’t really know what I was doing when I made it, and I can make it much prettier.

4. Ponder my navel some more!  That sounds like fun.

Do you all remember that episode of Friends?  I bet D does.

Basically I emailed the agency this morning and said that I knew they’d tell me if they had heard and so was just checking in to soothe my own nerves.  They’re at a conference though, so who knows when they’ll get the email.  At least I put it out there that I’d love to hear something…

For my grey’s girls – here’s a puzzler from EW’s Ausiello:

Q: Can you tell me if Derek gets hurt in the Grey’s Anatomy season premiere?

A: Judging by that infamous promo, ABC certainly wants you to think that, right? Well, allow me to clear things up for you – by way of a multiple-choice quiz! I can confirm that two of the following take place in the season premiere – one for real and the other in Meredith’s imagination (the other two are outright foilers):

1. Rose stabs Derek.
2. Derek suffers a heart attack and is visited by the ghost of Denny.
3. Dr. Burke returns to Seattle Grace and shoots Derek in the face before turning the gun on himself.
4. In a flashback, we learn that Derek got into a car accident shortly after leaving Meredith in the candle field.

So – my thoughts are:

1.  Plausible, but not in a psycho way, but in a more jabbing at him with her finger or a pen.  I hope they don’t have her go mental, that’s so ER circa whassername from Life Goes On

2. Okay, but why?  I mean, Derek didn’t know Denny – at all.  He didn’t work on him, Burke did.  So why would Derek see him?  The heart attack bit I could buy, but there’s no indication he’s even MET Denny.

3. Wow, that’s a Hell to the N.O. for me on that one.  A) Burke wouldn’t come back.  B) He wouldn’t shoot Derek if he did.

4. Shonda said Derek wouldn’t be in a car crash, so I totally see this happening as the Meredith’s fear/dream scenario.

Play along at home and help distract me!

I want to email our agency and just be all casual and say hi.   Except I won’t, because if there were any news, we’d have heard – either direction.  But I want to.  Like a girl desperate for a date, I want to call up and see how that cute boy in my class is doing with homework.  I don’t really care about the homework, I just want him to ask me on a date.

So I am blogging so that I don’t email my agency.  It’s been a week since we found out about this baby.  A week that the family has had our profile.  No news is no news.

They know we’re just sitting here waiting right?  They know how devastatingly hard this is, right?!

For those of you who have adopted, how long did it take for you to find out you had been chosen or not chosen?  Am Ijust being super needy annoying?

But what is the sound of no sound?  Oh that’s right, it’s the voices of doubt in my head.

I know, I know.  I said that we wouldn’t be hearing anything until this week, but each day that passess with this quiet makes me more and more nervous.

I give you a chat that Mr. Badger and I are having on IM right now:

LJ: i am not a fan of not having heard anything since friday
Mr. Badger: agreed.  i feel like we’re back in a cycle
LJ: yeah, and not in the hopeful part
Mr. Badger: uh huh
LJ: in the, oh well, let’s try again part
Mr. Badger: yeah

Yes, it’s better odds than we’ve ever had, and yes, if it’s not meant to be, then it’s not meant to be.  I get that. I know that someday we will be parents.  But every time we are in today, it seems like someday will never be today.  And I get that it just isn’t so, I get that someday that day will be now, but right now, it isn’t.  Not yet.  And thus, my brain only can equate someday with no.

But there is another couple.  Another couple who I am sure is lovely and would be amazing parents as well.  One of us will not be chosen.  For every time I hear that someone has a good feeling about this, I feel like it won’t be us.

The agency folks are at a conference the next few days, so this isn’t going to get any easier.  I should just take the rest of the week off now, who am I kidding about getting anything done?

Let me tell you, since ending fertility treatment, sleeping has been a breeze.  I go to bed around 11, get up around 7…sometimes a little later on both ends.  It’s marvelous.  I wake up feeling relatively rested.

The last few weeks, going to the gym has messed with me a little bit, and so I find myself getting up early just because I know I need to get up early.

The last few days?  Fuggedaboutit.  I was up at 4:30 this morning.  Just could not sleep anymore.  And my right leg, when I’m sitting? Bouncing like it is motorized…nice little nervous twitch.   It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know why or anything, but I would give anything for some distraction right now.

This is when it sucks to work from home.  I sit at my computer checking my email incessantly, and then periodically checking my cell phone to make sure it hasn’t randomly shut off (as it tends to do these days).  I have nothing in my google reader – and for me, that’s quite a feat.  Read it all.  Not even Grey’s is really helping because I’m so eager for the new season that the old episodes aren’t doing it for me at the moment.

Yesterday I got an email from our agency.  The birth family was looking at our profile and noticed that we brought up my being Jewish and Mr. Badger’s Catholicism.  They weren’t interested in one religion or the other, but more how we planned to incorporate religion into our child’s life.  I wrote a pretty nice response, I think, and then proceeded to go absolute batshit in my mind.

They’re considering us.  Not just looking, but actually READ our profile and were interested enough to ask for MORE information. Mr. Badger likened it to a job interview.  “Mr. & Mrs. Badger, we enjoyed speaking with you today, and just wanted a piece of clarification on your TPS reports.  Thank you, and we’ll get back to you after consulting with upper management.”

I am probably annoying the fuck out of my agency with questions and reading into things, but the director was kind enough to at least let us know that because of the other legal issue, we likely wouldn’t hear anything this week, and maybe not even next week either.  So it’s radio silence unless there are more questions or a decision for a while.  And when you sit at home all day in complete silence…it’s tedious, believe you me.  At least we’re still in it, but damn…getting closer means there is so much further to fall.

Thanks, Mr. Petty.  You’re correct.  The waiting is the hardest part.

First off, Congrats to Leah on the birth of her son!!

But, it’s all about me here, so I am gonna whine away.

We met with the RE on Friday to go over the results and plan our next steps.  She’s not convinced that we need to do donor yet, and also understands our general feeling that we’d go to adoption and skip donor entirely.

Her thoughts:

• Check my genes (which I wish we had done when we ran Fred’s but hindsight is 20/20)
• Check my uterus via endometrial biopsy
• Do an immunological workup to see if there’s a cause there
• If everything is normal, do PGD to check the embryo’s genes

The endometrial biopsy is tricky for me, because you are supposed to do it at a certain point in the cycle, but my cycles are clearly not normal.  Tomorrow will mark 7 weeks since my last period, and before you get excited, they did bloodwork, and I am not pregnant.  I am just fucking sick and tired of no one having any clue why I don’t cycle, and I don’t know who I see to fix it.  So the doctor will have to figure out a way to manipulate my cycle to mimic a real cycle without affecting my “natural” cycle.  Fucking A.

The immunology is another weird one.  It’s apparently not been around long, and so the lab they use is over in California.  I am sure there are real tests to be run here, but it’s still a little weird.  Go see their site, here.  Of course this and the genetic stuff take months to do, and I am just so tired of it all.  I am sick of being a human lab rat.  I just want a family, and I don’t want to keep waiting.  But, wait we must.  And the immuno-stuff, most likely thousands of $$ and not covered.  Good times.

It’s getting harder too.  I live my life with this overhanging cloud that it isn’t the life I was supposed to be leading now.  I should be the one with a baby, trying to figure out how to balance it all.   Everything reminds me of it.  Going out with friends for example.  If we had a kid, we wouldn’t go out the same way we do now.  And I can feel my hostility being taken out on people around me, and that’s not fair to them or me.

There’s no satisfying escape for me right now, you know?  And we still know no more than we did at the start of all this.  Nothing’s ruled in or out really.  I’m just angry all the time, and I don’t want to be.  It makes me want to not see or talk to people, cause with you ladies, you get it.  And my friends are wonderful, but I don’t want to wear out my welcome, cause this is literally the only thing I can think about right now.  Sigh.

Listen to the track at: http://www.ilike.com/artist/The+Weepies

Yesterday, when you were young,
Everything you needed done was done for you.
Now you do it on your own
But you find you’re all alone,
What can you do?

You and me walk on
Cause you can’t go back now.

You know there will be days when you’re so tired that you can’t take another step,
The night will have no stars and you’ll think you’ve gone as far as you will ever get

But you and me walk on
Cause you can’t go back now
And yeah, yeah, go where you want to go
Be what you want to be,
If you ever turn around, you’ll see me.

I can’t really say why everybody wishes they were somewhere else
But in the end, the only steps that matter are the ones you take all by yourself

And you and me walk on
Yeah you and me walk on
Cause you can’t go back now
Walk on, walk on, walk on
You can’t go back now

I’m a bad blogger these days, I get it.  I just…it’s awful waiting.  I haven’t even been reading or commenting either.  It isn’t that I don’t love you all, I do.  I used to be that girl, that one who could read the pregnancy blogs and be positive and hopeful.  I’d also read the IF blogs in lockstep hope that you would get your BFP that you so want.  But now, in this interminable wait, I can’t do it.  If you are pregnant, I am jealous as hell.  I may be able to talk to you on the phone or IM, or share a meal with you, but in a group (ie, blogroll) it’s too much.  If you’re trying, well, I live in fear that you’re gonna lap me.

I mean, how fucked up is this?  It’s bad enough to have those friends who are onto their second kids in the time I have been trying.  But other infertiles who are trying for #2 since I started?  How screwed am I that INFERTILES are lapping me?  I am sorry if it sounds harsh and cruel, but it’s also why I haven’t been writing.  I have all these evil dark thoughts that I don’t really want the world having to see, you know?