One Month in and ???? to Go?

We have officially been a waiting family for four weeks now. Anyone who has gone through this process understands that the time you are waiting really doesn't matter. The longest couple on the list only has one advantage, when a birth mother, or expected birth mother, has no want or desire to pick the family to partner with to raise their child. There are stories of people waiting four days to get matched and placed and there are stories of people waiting multiple years. It really comes down to being the right people for the right person at the right time. So how have I been making it through the last four weeks and how do I intend on continuing.

Excitement and buy stuff. Over the past four weeks, we have bought a bassinet, a stroller travel system, an innumerable amount of books, and I am sure many more purchases are yet to come. I cannot say I am enjoying the wait but I do have the blessing of having a wife by my side who is going through the same wait and is handling it in much of the same way I am. While it could be a couple more days or a couple more years I want to keep my excitement about the process and future family we are working towards. I expect there to be disappointments on the way, I expect there to be frustration, but I also have faith in the end result.

To get practical here just in case there is someone reading this, I have a couple suggestions if you are entering this journey.

1. No matter what someone says, even your adoption agency, DO NOT go back to life as normal from an attitude perspective. By this I mean, of course you will want to maintain your job and pay your bills and be a good partner to your significant other. What you do want to change though is your routine, your attitude, your emotions. You are doing all this to grow your family, this is the biggest decision of your life and it should be treated as such from an emotional, financial, and social perspective.

2. Have grace and then some more grace for all the people in your life. Your friends and family likely mean well when they say your wait will be short. Your significant other may badger you to email your agency for status. All these people have good intentions and are likely doing these things out of excitement as well. When it comes to everyone but your significant other, they are likely just ignorant of the process and do love you and want to see your dreams come true just like you do.

3. Read, research, watch movies, write, etc. I have found dedicating the times to read, research online, and watch adoption-related movies has been a Godsend for the process. It helps not only pass the time during the wait but also gives hope and joy to my heart that I will be one of those overjoyed dads one of these days. Writing also will give you the ability to get out onto paper what you may not even understand you are feeling, I write on this blog for that exact reason whether someone reads it or not. 

4. Pray. I pray for myself and my wife. I pray for expectant birth mothers. I pray for unborn babies. I pray for the other people who are going through the same adoption process. The latter is the most transforming as it makes people out of what we have jokingly called our competition. As I pray for them more and more, the more I want to know their stories and the more I want to see them have the joy of a child that I also and wanting so deeply. 

Almost There - Adoption from Application to Waiting Family!

As I write this we are two days from joining the adoption pool with our agency. Our best friends we started this process with entered the pool a couple weeks ago and it is awesome that we get to share in this entire experience together, and just a little bit of competition. I want to take this time to run through our journey and I hope this gives people a good idea of how easy it really is, relatively speaking, and considering they are making sure you can take care of a defenseless human that cannot even support their own head.

1. Introduction meeting (March 2019)

2. Application Start (January 10, 2020) - delayed by 5 months as we had removed ourselves from the list

3. Application Finished (February 22, 2020)

4. Home Study Visit 1 (March 3, 2020)

5. Home Study Visit 2 (March 30, 2020) - delayed a month due to Covid

6. Home Study Visit 3 (April 6, 2020)

7. Home Study Finalized (May 4, 2020)

8. Class 1 (June 5, 2020) - delayed 30 days due to Covid

9. Class 2 (June 12, 2020)

10. Officially a Waiting Family!!!! (June 12, 2020)

There was a total delay of about 30 days due to Covid meaning that in a normal situation from the moment you are able to apply you can get through the process and become a waiting family within 5-6 months. In our case, it was still completed within 6 months. This is, of course, based on our specific agency and some are faster and some are slower. Some do not have an initial waitlist, like ours of about 6 months, and others have even longer waitlists.  

It has been a very positive experience throughout, with moments of stress completely overshadowed by moments of absolute joy and hope. Our next step is the dreaded wait, which we hope to make the most out of. If you are out there reading this and considering adoption, just know the work is worth the outcome. 

COVID-19 the Ultimate Delayer

Thanks COVID, I am writing this from my kitchen counter instead of from a beach in Mexico, having not started the adoption classes that we were originally meant to be halfway through. While I am very thankful for many things in my life, i.e. still having a job, being able to even pursue adoption, etc, I still want to vent a bit. This past year has shown me that no matter how well you plan, those plans can very easily be tossed in the trash. The plan as of a couple months ago was to complete our home study, classes, and be an official waiting family as of May 8th. Then Covid came along and those plans went right down the crapper, as follows:

1. Background checks still not completed 6 weeks later because of government delays
2. Class rescheduled twice, the current timeframe is completion by the second week of June
3. Entering the pool????????

Ok, that felt good now in the words of Monty Python "GET ON WITH IT". I could dwell on the negative here and kind of want to but what good does that do anyone so let us look at some of the positive aspects. Anyone who has researched or gone down this road knows that it is very expensive and can take quite a while. Below are the major great things I want to touch on:

1. We have secured all the funding needed to complete the adoption!!!!!!
2. Our home study will be completed as of TODAY!!!!!!!
3. Due to the delays, we are able to do in-person classes, which is awesome!!!!

This whole part of the process has humbled me quite a bit and in a very good way. It is making me realize that there is power in planning but ultimately we have very little control over most things. If we don't have control then we have to have faith and trust. Who do I have faith and trust in? God is building something beautiful for my current and future family. 

The Start of a New Journey

A new journey may not be the most honest of titles for this post. I believe in one of my first post I mentioned that we had started down the adoption path last March but pulled out because of our pregnancy. This January we decided we were going to start traveling back down that path full steam, and it has been absolutely amazing. We essentially got bumped to the top of a nine-month wait list and now are only a couple steps away from being in the pool of waiting families.

Since January, we have put together document after document, completed three home visits, forked out a bunch of money, and dug through pictures to build a beautiful book about us. What should have been about year to complete, including the waiting list, has been a fast and furious three months. Our final pieces are waiting on background checks from the state of Maryland and completing a three day training class that starts in May. If all goes as currently planned we will be able to be viewed and picked by an expecting mother or family by the middle of May.

This marks a moment of triumph and lost as there is duality to saying goodbye to how we wanted to build our family originally and saying yes to this new opportunity. Through all the pain and darkness that the past seven years, and in particular the past year, has brought, I can see the light in this darkness. I can see that something beautiful is being built out of the pain and the heartache and the uncertainty. I know that the child we are meant to have will be the child that is placed in our arms whether that be in 3 months or three years.

Graduation!!!!

For anyone who has seen this blog, which I am pretty sure is no one but me at this point, you will notice I changed the title. This is a big change because I believe it truly reflects a monumental shift in where I was and where I am. My wife and I recently "graduated" from our post-pregnancy loss counseling. We had been going to her since about a month after the loss and she has been absolutely phenomenal. Jill, we can't thank you enough for all you did for us. We realized we had "graduated" when we spent about half of our last session talking about Casa Bonita, yes the crazy restaurant for South Park, we live in Denver so it is and always will be a talking point. I tell you, there is nothing like spending $60 to talk to a trained professional about a campy Mexican restaurant with cliff divers to really drive home, "your good".

Now what "your good" means is not that I have forgotten the loss or don't pain over it, it is merely that I now know it is something I can live with throughout my days. There is not a day that I don't think about our little Ellie or what our life would look like if she were born into this world a happy and healthy little girl. But I do have faith in God that this pain and the loss of her is helping to build something more beautiful than we could even fathom. In short terms, Gods got this and I trust in that.

I have a lot more I want to share but I am going to hold off for now so I can have some material for future posts.

Let get going!!!

It was a huge jump to even start this page and it kind of happened by accident as I needed the web address to something I was working on. I figured once I had it though let's do something with it. As promised a couple months ago when I first launched this page I wanted to share my story. It is long so I will paraphrase at this time and likely come back to more detailed pieces as this progresses. Also, I am a huge Star Wars nerd so if there are some references that seem out of place, please know they are probably from one of the eleven Star Wars movies that now exist.

My wife and I were married back in 2012 shortly after graduating from college. We both knew we wanted to have a family so she went off birth control immediately as we knew from some preexisting conditions it would likely take a little while to get our bodies in sync to actually make things happen. After about three years of nothing happening, we saw our first fertility specialist, then after about another year we saw another, and by the middle of 2018, we had been through three fertility specialists at two different clinics. It took us all these visits to finally decide to start doing fertility treatments and that story has been fast, hard, and painful. So since October of 2018, we have had.......

1. Three failed IUIs, all consecutive
2. One late-term miscarriage (14+ weeks)
3. A second miscarriage (6 weeks)
4. Just this week a chemical pregnancy (very early term miscarriage)

As you can see, we have been busy not making a lot of progress for the last 15 months.

For anyone going through a journey with all or any of these experiences, I am so sorry you have to feel the pain that comes with it. If you are a person of faith I pray that you find some comfort in your community, the Word, and in prayer. For those of you that are not a follower of Jesus, I hope my experience and word can help you to know you are not alone in this journey and there are always people to share with, to love, to mourn with, and to comfort or vent.

I want to keep a running list of resources that I have found helpful in my journey. Below will hopefully be an ever-growing list of books, articles, videos, other blogs, and anything that can help me and anyone else through this journey.

Books:

·       It's not supposed to be this way by Lysa TerKeurst

Articles:

·       Miscarriage Grief: Fathers Struggle Through Loss Too https://undefiningmotherhood.com/partners-and-miscarriage/

·       How Miscarriage Affects Men, One Husband's Story https://www.parents.com/pregnancy/complications/miscarriage/how-miscarriage-affects-men/