Wait...who was the lucky one?

I was thinking the other day about something that people say to adoptive parents that I've never heard them say to parents who've given birth.  Maybe they do say it, but no one said it to me when I gave birth to our daughter and I've never heard it so I'm operating on the principle that no one says it to parents by birth.  But when our son was a baby I heard it often.  Someone would know our story and look at our beautiful baby boy and say "he sure is lucky that you guys adopted him."  Or they would see him do something adorable and comment, "what a lucky baby."  And I'm going to be honest, that phrase still makes me seethe.


It's not that I don't want my son to feel blessed that we're his parents.  I do.  Just like I want our daughter to feel blessed that we're her parents.  Just like every parent wants their children to feel thankful for the sacrifices parents make to give their children a good life.  But this phrase cuts me because it somehow implies that we did our son a favor.  It implies that he was a stray that we took in because we have such good hearts.  It goes back to an issue that so many adoptees struggle with--the feeling that they were castoff, that somehow there was something so wrong with them that their birthparents rejected them at birth.  I know it's not true.  I know the love that went into the sacrifice my son's birthparents made when they decided not to parent him themselves.  But the truth is that there is a loss at the heart of every adoption that needs to be dealt with.  And I don't like how our society turns that loss of the adoptee's first relationship into something that makes him "lucky" because now he's with us.  


The reality is that if we hadn't adopted our son, someone else would have.  We didn't save him from an orphanage or death.  It's even possible that he could have been adopted by a family with way more money than we have.  In 1995, the year of our son's birth, there were 100,000 women in the US who had applied to adopt.  According to the 1988 National Survey of Family Growth there are an estimated 3.3 adoption seekers for every actual adoption.  We truly didn't rescue him.  


Truth be told, we felt like the lucky ones.  The day his birthparents selected our profile out of all the waiting families  at our agency was better than winning the lottery.  But there's more to it.  We knew then and have had it confirmed over and over that God put our family together.  Our family felt incomplete until we had our second child.  We prayed and prayed for a baby, prayed for a child who would be ours and that's exactly what we got.  He is as much my child as the daughter who shares my genetics and grew in my body.  He continually reminds me of members of my family in both looks and personality.  He also is unique and brings in a richness that wouldn't exist in our family if he wasn't here.  Even 16 years later, I marvel that I've been blessed to have this child in my life.  


I guess my point is, if you know someone who is adopting or has adopted, share their joy.  Rejoice with them and marvel at one of the wonderful ways that families are made.  But keep the "lucky" comments inside.  Thanks.  

Thanks for the laughter, Lord.

This is the 4th installment in Isaac's adoption story. You can find the first, second and third here.

What an amazing feeling it is to be chosen to parent a baby. We had been waiting so long. It had been 10 months since our homestudy was complete, about 18 months since we had started the process. That's short by a lot of adoption standards. It felt like a long time to us. Most of the couples that we had started out with already had adopted by this point. We were some of the last to have a baby placed with us.

We went straight from meeting our son's birthparents to my parents' house to pick our daughter up. Our daughter was the first person we saw and we told her she was going to have a baby brother. She ran in the house and told her grandparents. We went back to our house and got a call telling us that our son would be most likely coming home the next day. Wow! So we called my parents and asked them to come over and help us get ready. We hadn't bought diapers or soaps or any of those baby supplies. The crib was still in pieces in the basement. I didn't want all of that sitting there daily reminding me of what we didn't have but now it was time. My Mom and I washed clothes, my Dad went with Rick to buy a second car. My Mom always jokes that they actually came over just to help hold my feet on the ground. That's probably closest to the truth. I felt like I was floating, like I couldn't focus. I had so much to do to be ready for this little guy in such a short period of time and I didn't really want to do any of it, I just wanted to go pick him up and hold him in my arms and bring him home.

We met the adoption worker and our son's foster mother at DSHS the next day. The first thing they did was hand us his discharge papers from the NICU. There were 9 different diagnoses listed on it. Most of them were resolved but I was so overwhelmed. Then his foster mother started outlining his care; how his feedings had to happen, when his medications were due, how to work the monitor, what to do when he turned blue or the alarm sounded telling us that his heartrate was too low. Then she took the blanket off the carseat and there he was; so tiny--only 6 pounds and 6 ounces at that point--and so pale. He looked so fragile and I was so scared. For an instant I wondered if we really were the right parents for this little guy. And then she asked if I wanted to hold him. When she laid him in my arms all of the negatives just evaporated. There was such a feeling of rightness, this was our baby. Our son had finally arrived. Isaac David Jacob was now a part of our family.

I remember early on in our adoption journey hearing that every adoption begins with loss. The adoptive parents have (usually) lost the abilbity to have a biological child and need to mourn whatever brought them to that place. The child has lost his first family--his birth family and will mourn that over his lifetime. And of course the birthparents have lost the daily parenting of a child that they've given life. But out of that loss, something beautiful can grow. We didn't ignore the loss, we couldn't. We didn't deny it's existence, denial wouldn't have made it go away anyway. Instead we trusted that God is bigger than any of those things. He can redeem any situation. He's not limited by grief, he's not limited by feelings. He took those first losses and used those tattered threads to weave together a family. I am so, so thankful that he did.

Go!!

I don't know how much weight you put on dreams. I do know that I had been having dreams of a brown haired baby boy for about 4 years by the time 1995 rolled around. Then as we waited for our baby the dreams morphed into triplet dreams; I even had friends telling me they had dreamed we had adopted triplets. I would dream of holding my baby (or babies) and then wake up to a dresser full of baby clothes but no baby to put in them and an intense longing in my spirit. People would comfort us by telling us "at least you have a child" and I was so thankful for her. It wasn't about our daughter not being enough--she was amazing in every way; it was about this feeling that our family wasn't complete. It was about the desire to mother another child.

On a Thursday in May, Sherry, our adoption worker, called and asked if we wanted our profile shown the following Monday to the birthparents of a baby boy. He was 2 months old, but had been born 2 months early, had spent 6 weeks in the NICU and he had a whole list of health problems. He had been septic and had also recovered from a grade 2 intraventricular hemorrhage. He also had severe reflux that they called life threatening and he would need to wear a monitor because he had apnea of prematurity. They weren't sure what long term effects he would have from all of this. She asked me to talk with Rick and let her know. Just as we were hanging up I said "Sherry, wait, what does he look like." She said "just a cute little baby." I asked if he had any hair and she told me yes, dark brown hair. I called Rick and gave him the whole list of issues and then asked him for his gut reaction. He said, "I'm overwhelmed, what's yours?" I said, "this is our son."

I called our pediatrician and outlined everything we knew about this baby boy, he listened and said he was totally willing and able to handle his medical care. And then he said, "you know, some people adopt a baby hoping for the perfect infant and child. Others adopt a baby because they believe that God has called them to adopt a specific child. I think you'd fall in the second group." He had pegged it, all along we had felt like God was going to put our family together, so again we took this to him and told him we wanted his will most of all. Then we called Sherry back and told her to show our profile.

Even as I retell this 15 years later, my stomach knots up. I spent Friday shooting baskets and weighing options and exploring "what ifs" with my friend, Kristin. I was so afraid to hope; so reluctant to set up a crib or buy supplies. We tried to just act normal, like nothing unusual was going on.

On Tuesday I got another call telling us that the birthparents liked our profile and wanted to meet us. We met at a restaurant in their town, and we arrived first. We wondered, each time a couple approached the restaurant, if they were the ones we were there to meet. Imagine your worst blind date jitters and multiply it by about a gazillion. That's how we felt. We were under the impression that they wanted to meet us so that they could make a decision. They actually had made the decision and just wanted to meet us. We talked about families and I shared about my brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews. The birthfather said, "so Jake will have a lot of cousins." I smiled and said "oh" while I wondered to myself who Jake was. He obviously caught on and said "you don't know what we named the baby do you? We named him Jacob David, but we call hm Jake." I told him I hadn't known that and said something about how neat it is for a kid to grow up with cousins--thinking he meant people in his family. Again he smiled and said "Jake will have a lot of cousins from your family." And that's when it finally sunk in. We had been chosen. They liked us, they wanted us to be their baby's parents. We had a son. Our prayers had been answered. My brown haired, dream baby was finally going to come home!

Get set....

After we finished our adoption classes the next steps in our journey toward baby number 2 would be interviews with the social workers, a home-study, creating a video for birthparents that told about our home, and creating a profile. All in all, we felt scrutinized. Our adoption workers repeatedly assured our group of hopeful parents that we really weren't being scrutinized, that we really didn't need to be nervous. Every hope and every dream we had about having a 2nd baby seemed to rest on the approval of these two adoption workers we had just met, how could we not be nervous? Our desire for another baby was so strong, however that we finished our paperwork and plunged in. Plunged in and waited, and waited, and waited. We had been through so many classes but no one had prepared me for the feelings of rejection; that each month as other couples were chosen by birthparents and we weren't felt like a personal rejection. We knew we were expecting a baby, but there was no baby bump, no stories of morning sickness or contractions, no birth plans, no expected date, no guarantee even that it would really happen. Through the years people have made comments about adoption being the "easy way." Trust me, I've done both, adoption was way harder.

About 9 months in, our adoption worker called about a child who was already 9 or 10 months old, Rick and I prayed and just heard "no" so I called her back and told her this wasn't the child for us. It felt horrible. I felt like I was passing up on the chance to have our child. We had to stand on faith that God would bring us the right baby at the right time but it was so hard. A couple of weeks later our adoption worker called again and said there was a young birth mom who was deciding between us and another couple in our group. She wanted to meet us and the other couple. The other couple were friends from our class so we talked with them and both asserted that either way she chose it would be win/win. We would be happy for each other and no hard feelings. We met her at the CCS office and after our meeting our friends had theirs with her. I talked to my friend later and just from her description of the meeting they had I knew a big connection had been made. It wasn't a huge surprise when our adoption worker let us know a few days later that the birthmom had chosen our friends. We cried and prayed and cried some more. And then we waited again.

The one thing I could do that made me feel like we were having a baby was sew baby clothes. So I made the whole crib set, bumpers, blanket, bed skirt, and I made sleepers, rompers, layette gowns, overalls. I filled drawers with baby clothes. And still we waited.

There have been many times in my life when I feel like God has forgotten me in this "waiting room." I feel like I'm sitting alone waiting for something I've prayed for but I'm not entirely sure he will provide. I usually am sure when I first pray but the longer I wait the more I doubt. What I've learned is that I'm not alone, God is there with me to comfort me and provide my strength as I wait. I don't understand why he doesn't just answer prayers right away. I understand that he sometimes says "yes" and he sometimes says "no." I get that. I have a harder time with the "not yet." I want to know why he's making me wait and letting me know that doesn't seem high on his priority list. I've also learned that he's okay with all of my emotions as I wait. His desire is relationship with me, and with you. And sometimes the biggest relationship growth happens as you sit together in the waiting room.

On your mark...

When our daughter was about 2 years old I started thinking that maybe our family wasn't complete. But my cardiac issues remained and now that we had a child there was just too much at stake to think about taking the risk with another pregnancy. So we made a call to Catholic Community Services to ask about adoption. They sent us a packet of information and I put it away after looking through it. Adoption was overwhelming! It remained an option for someday in the back of my mind but I wasn't ready to go there yet.

Whenever I would roll the idea around in my mind I thought about the facts they had shared in the pamphlet; we were looking at a waiting period of at least 1-2 years, the cost was high, newborns were in high demand--and the birthparents had to pick you! About a year after my first call I called CCS again and they sent me the same packet as before and again I read it and we decided to wait until our daughter was 3 to start the process.

About 3 months before our daughter's third birthday I really started feeling like we were supposed to submit our application. Our one stumbling block was we didn't have the money to pay for the home-studies, social workers, attorney fees etc. But the feeling wouldn't go away so we submitted the application with the small application fee. Our literature said that the usual wait from the time of submitting the application until you actually could start the process was 6 months to 2 years. They only allowed a certain number of potential parents in to the program at a time so you had to wait. We decided that this time period would be when we would save money so we could actually afford to do this.

We were shocked when we were contacted less than a month later to begin adoption prep classes, the process was beginning! The classes were wonderful, we met weekly to learn the facts about adoption; what the process is like, closed vs open, what it's like to grow up adopted, what birthparents feel and think. We had panels with adult adoptees, birthmothers, adoptive parents and medical specialists who work with special needs and drug affected kids. It was a wealth of information and helped us know what we were entering into, and what our child would face as his reality. During this time we learned that our total costs would be around $7000. No problem because we ...um...ok, big problem--we had around $100 in savings. So we started asking friends and relatives to pray. We believed that God would provide the money if this was something he wanted us to do right then. When they asked for a specific amount we needed we told them $7000. And we went forward with the process believing that he would provide somehow if this was his will. About 4 months later we received a settlement for an auto accident that had happened about a year beforehand. The amount of the combined settlement that Rick and I received was, you guessed it, exactly $7000.

I'm not sure why God chose to bless us with the amount of money we needed in that way, but I know that it strengthened my faith. God could have provided the money through a second job, he could have provided the money through a long waiting time while we saved up. But he gave it to us in a lump sum that was exactly the amount that we had asked for. We still had a long wait and lots of emotional stress ahead of us. But now I knew concretely that we weren't in this process alone. God was there, he was in control and he would build our family.

I Want to be a Mommy When I Grow Up.

My favorite friend's house when I was in early elementary school was my friend Tina's house. She had the most amazing room upstairs that was entirely devoted to playing house. It was, in essence, a miniature house with a wooden stove, refrigerator, a small table and chairs. But the best part was all of the dolls and accessories. Tina had a million baby dolls. And she had cradles and cribs, blankets, clothes, bottles, strollers. It was heaven for a little girl like me. We would play up there in our pretend world at being mommies, having babies who begged to go with us when we needed to go to the store. Ahhh...bliss.

I am the youngest of 7 kids and whenever anyone asked how many kids I wanted to have when I grew up, I always gave a big number. As I grew, I went through lots of career choices..."I want to be a hairdresser, I want to be a secretary, I want to be a marine biologist, I want to be a pediatrician, I want to be a nurse"....it changed often, but combined with all of those was the desire to be a mom. The mom part was a given, no matter what I did I would be a mom too. When my cousins Janelle and Sandi and I played house, one of us always had a pillow under our shirt and gave birth to a doll at some point during the day, no matter what other careers we had as we played.

As Rick and I got serious we talked about the number of kids we would have. I wanted 6 and he thought that was a little extreme. After we were engaged we settled on 4 as a good number. At my first appointment with the cardiologist after being diagnosed with Marfan Syndrome, that was one of my first questions, "can I have kids?" My cardiologist told me yes, but that I needed to have them in my 20's.

A year before our wedding, just after graduating from college and accepting a job in labor and delivery at St. Clare Hospital in Lakewood, I went in for my cardiology appointment. My cardiologist did the exam and told me things were unchanged. Then he told me that he had reviewed my case with the cardiology team and he had some bad news. They felt the risk of pregnancy was just too high. Not only did I have the 50% chance of passing Marfans on to my kids, but the increased blood volume of pregnancy was just too dangerous for me. My aorta could dissect and rupture; pregnancy was life threatening and they didn't feel it was a good option for me.

To say I was devastated would be an understatement. I told Rick what the doctor had said and then I told him that I couldn't marry him. He needed to marry someone who could have babies with him. He needed to marry someone healthy. He told me I was crazy, that he needed to marry me--he loved me and he wanted me, even if we never had children. He refused to walk away.

I wasn't sure I could take my new job now. How could I spend 40 hours a week with pregnant women? How could I be faced every day with what I would never experience? But after praying about it, I felt like it was still a field that I loved and that God would be with me and help me in the process.

So I went to work and loved everything about pregnancy. I loved the way pregnant bellies looked. I loved the process of labor and the miracle of birth. I loved being there to hear that first cry and see the wonder on the faces of the parents and the relatives. I loved the tears of joy that filled my eyes and sometimes even slipped down my cheeks each time a baby entered the world.

And I also grieved. I grieved that I would never watch my body grow with another life inside. I grieved that I would never waddle, or have ligament pains, or stretch marks on my belly. I grieved that we would never have that delivery room experience of watching the new life we created emerge into the world. I grieved that no one would ever look at Rick and shout "it's a boy!" or "it's a girl".

I knew we could still have a family. I knew adoption was a beautiful option and that I would love my kids fiercely no matter how they came into my life. I knew that my niece and nephew who had entered our family by adoption were just as much my niece and nephew as the ones born into my family. I knew adoption wasn't the lesser alternative. But my heart ached that my pillow under the shirt play would never become reality.

As hard as working labor and delivery was in the midst of that, I never regretted it. And the added bonus was I met my friend Martha there. In my next post I'll share how God used Martha to bless us more than we could have ever imagined.