I couldn't make up this story even if I tried...

Today we spoke to the Texas adoption agency. It was a call I had been dreading. But it was ok. While we won't get back any of the money that went towards the birth mother's living expenses, we will receive a partial refund on the agency's fee. The social worker asked us to consider staying on with them to find another match and we said we would definitely think about it. We feel the agency did a very good job and I would recommend them to anyone looking for an agency in Texas.

So we decided to have lunch together and we talked about how it all went. We also talked about what to do when our home study expires in May. We have mixed feelings about our agency in Virginia and we discussed our options. So many decisions and it is so hard to know what to do.

Later in the afternoon, my cell phone rang. It was a call from our Virginia adoption agency. I quickly answered it, thinking "what on earth is this all about?" It  was the child placing supervisor and she wanted to know if I had a few minutes to talk. Well, of course.

She told me she had been working with a birth mother for a couple of weeks and this young woman wants to meet us! My exact response was, "you gotta be kidding me, right?" But no, she was not kidding. We will be meeting her in Richmond next Monday. I was shaking like I don't know what. I called Hunter to tell him. I couldn't get the words out. My voice was so high I think only dogs could understand me. But I finally got the words out. "A BIRTH MOTHER WANTS TO MEET US!"

And then, after I settled back down to work, my phone rang again and it was from the Texas agency! She wanted to know if we would like to be considered for a birth mother she was going to meet this afternoon. UNREAL.

Somebody at the office said I should buy a lottery ticket tonight. *Sighs* If only I was the gambling kind.

More news later, hopefully...

Breathing Easy Again

Declining the birth mother match in June left me with a lot of mixed emotions, obviously. Afterwards I still felt sadness for the couple involved and anger towards the agency. But then came this overwhelming feeling of, "Oh God, we're never going to find a match ever again!". Sure enough, some leads came in through our lawyer. They sounded like some pretty good adoption placements. But always there would be one thing or another that would disqualify us. One placement sounded so wonderful, I thought of asking Hunter if he would convert to Judaism. No, no - I'm only joking. But it did sound that good.

At least my sense of humor is coming back.

Anyway, last night I woke suddenly at 2am. Not being able to go back to sleep, I started up the old laptop. There wasn't much going on at Facebook that time of night. So I caught up on my blogging buddies recent entries. Then something made me check my email. Something caught my eye...

Could that be a message from the lawyer? Yes, it was indeed. I held my breath as I opened and read it. Birth mother description sounded good. I continued to read, there had to be a catch. I read the part stating what kind of couple the birth mother was interested in. Sounded really good. I read it again. Surely I was missing something, the one thing that would knock us out of the running. But no, we fit every category. I didn't waste any time and didn't even bother to wake Hunter. I fired off an email to the lawyer telling her we were interested.

Big sigh of relief. I know it's a long shot. But reading that email brought back my faith that another match was possible. Fingers crossed. Here we go!

The Year of Learning (about open adoption)

It was this time last year we started our home study process. I remember setting up the first appointment with our social worker. She said there would be a lot of paperwork to go through for the first meeting. So I didn't stress about the meeting too much.

However once we got there, the "interview" began. She hit us with questions about our infertility struggle on the very first meeting. I wasn't expecting this. It was probably a good thing. I didn't have time to over think it. There were tears. It had been about 2 years since had finished our last Invitro fertilization round(IVF). But, we got through the initial interview and set up our next appointment in which we would be interviewed separately.

That was the one that gave me a headache. The questions delved deeply into our marriage, into our individual upbringings and our relationships with our families. Our social worker was always kind. But it was a very long session and I had to have an aspirin afterwards. We got in the car and I told Hunter how the session had given me a headache. He confessed to the same.

We went on to have the home visit. I swear, by that time I was happy to just clean the house. I thought the meeting would be free of questions. Wrong! But they were mostly about how we would react to certain scenarios concerning an open adoption. I, like most people, was wary of the contact with the birth mother. Then all these situations were presented to us like contact with grandparents or contact with siblings. These were situations I never even contemplated and the thought of it all definitely overwhelmed me. We answered very conservatively about such contacts. After our home study was approved our social worker suggested I start blogging and sent me two examples of adoption blogs.

So I started reading and reading and reading. I was glad to be exposed to people writing about their experiences with adoption. I try to regularly read blogs by people on all sides of the adoption equation. Through reading these experiences, I have learned so much and am now firmly a believer of open adoptions.

What a difference a year makes!