bourbon to babies

I hope we’re able to raise our daughter in a way that minimizes the trauma of adoption. I understand that she’s already, at just 2 months old, experienced more loss than I ever have in my more than 30 years on this Earth. I can’t make that go away and I can’t fix that. I can do my best to mitigate how painful things are from here on out, but I know I am not going to be able to fill that void for her. 

Which is why it was so important to us to have an open adoption and a good relationship with her first mother. And we do (so far, we’re only three weeks into this thing.) I want her to always feel connected to where she came from and who she is, I want her to be able to get answers to whatever questions she has as quickly as possible. I don’t want her to have to wait until she’s 18 to unlock some magic portal to her own history. 

I won’t know if how we’re going about this is the right way or not for a very long time. But in the meantime I’m open to learning more about how adoptees feel and how I can go about honoring those feelings and helping our daughter work through them when they come up. 

Thanks for the message. 

I’m not entire sure. We would have to see if our agency is even licensed to handle an international adoption. Or what the legality and ethics of having an international birth parent come here to give birth for adoption. A brief internet search shows it’s incredibly rare for US citizens to adopt from Canada. Something like less than 2 children a year and they are usually a case of adopting from someone you know personally. 

My heart aches writing this because as this message came in (it popped up on my phone) I was literally just writing a post about how it feels like we’ll never be chosen to be parents, how it feels like we’ll never find a baby. I would love to say YES YES YES PLEASE GET IN TOUCH OFF ANON SO THAT WE CAN SORT THIS OUT I’M WALKING TO CANADA RIGHT NOW but honestly, I think the odds are stacked against us here. I wish it were as simple as flying you here to give birth, I would do that in a hot minute. But I’m not sure it’s legal OR ethical to do so. 

But I also want what is best for you and your son and I hope you’re able to find the right family for your baby. Is it possible for you to look to see if a private adoption would be possible in a neighboring province? I’m not sure which part of Canada you’re in but perhaps it’s possible to do an intercounty adoption WITHIN Canada somewhere? 

I’m sure you’re already looked and you’d be a far better expert on Canadian adoption than I am but I did find this resource that has some information about private adoption in each of the provinces. 

I do also know other hopeful adoptive families who are located in places a sight closer to Canada than we are. (Though being from Alaska originally I feel like I’m sort of closer to Canada in my heart? If that makes sense?) I’m not sure if you’re interested but some of them may be working with agencies who are able to facilitate international adoptions. If you are interested please just let me know and I can try to put you in touch with them. 

I have had enough. 

This shit isn’t funny. It’s just not. 

Extra not funny when Emmie is my husband’s high school girlfriend. Like on what planet is that an okay thing to say to your exboyfriend and his barren wife? Here take my kid?

Fuck you, Emmie. Fuck you. 

OOH! And she deleted her comment after I posted mine. No apology, nothing. Just deleted it like nothing happened. 

Putting this out there again. We’re super close to closing that last $4k gap to fully fund our adoption. Please help us reach our goal by sharing this link, maybe saying a new nice words about us if you think we’d be good parents and/or chipping in a bit if you can and want to. 

I’ve been staring at this for awhile and I’m not sure how to respond. 

I’m glad you find this amusing and tender. 

Same. 

But, and this is important too, I don’t think that people who try reproductive intervention view their adoptions as something less either. I think you move through whatever steps make sense to you. Conceiving without intervention is the “easiest” option in terms of who else you have to get involved. I think most of us would prefer to just do our business with as few people up in our lives as possible. 

For some fertility treatment is the next logical step. It’s getting more people involved but at least part of it is covered by insurance (the part where you’re actually pregnant) and no one is doing a background check and coming into your home at least. 

And then there’s adoption, where you have to lay your entire life bare to at least one other person but probably a whole host of people. You have to put together 20-50k all in one go and then, THEN, you have to try to be appealing enough to get chosen by an expectant parent. Some people are ready and willing to tackle that from the get go. That’s awesome. 

Some of us need time to put our houses in order first. Some of us would just like to be parents and don’t much care how it happens but the least amount of other people being involved is ideal. 

To me, that’s the ideal: it not needing to involve a shit ton of money and impressing other people. If it was possible to just have a stork drop off a baby on my doorstep without needing to go through a pregnancy OR IVF OR an adoption THAT would be the first option. 

But it’s not. So we do the best we can with the resources available to us and we hope and pray and beg the universe every day to just, please, let us be parents. 

I imagine if most people really felt that adopting was somehow inferior they would either keep trying to get pregnant however they could or just stop. I know people who couldn’t conceive and had no interest in adoption. There’s no shame in that either. 

For me parenthood was the desired outcome. For some it’s pregnancy. Nothing wrong with either of those, you just make the choices that make the most sense to you.

The adoption process is rigorous and expensive. I can’t imagine anyone going through this and not being anything less than committed. I’m sure it happens, but just by virtue of how hard and involved it is you have to assume that the majority of people who complete an adoption are doing so because they are super into the idea of being a parent, regardless of how it happens. 

There’s a post going around Tumblr right now that says: 

here is an idea: normalize the idea that adopting kids is a valid option even for parents who could conceive a child themselves, and not just an inferior backup option for parents who can’t

And while I totally agree that we should make adoption less stigmatized and something that is a reasonable option for ANYONE regardless of their fertility, I’m just real real tired of hearing that for infertile people adoption is somehow a second choice. 

It sets it up for this really toxic mentality that adopted children are consolation prizes. 

My infertility does not mean that my children will be a back up plan. My future children are so wanted, so loved and so important already to us. No matter how they come to us this would be true. 

I tried to get pregnant because that seemed like the most expedient route to parenthood at the time. It didn’t work out. I’m trying something else. I spent the last three years actively pushing us towards being in a more ideal place for attempting to adopt if/when that moment came. 

That does not mean that getting pregnant was the ideal and adopting is inferior. It means that I tried one thing and then tried another. It means we assessed our desired outcome (parenthood) and our available resources and made a determination about how best to proceed given our situation. 

I am tired of being told that my desire to adopt is less pure than someone who is able to have children biologically. Real tired of it. 

But I hear it so often that I’m hesitant to even include in some of our adoption information that we struggled with infertility because I don’t know how to combat this idea that adoption is a fall back plan. 

Maybe for some people it is. Maybe for some having children biologically IS the preferred and adoption is a second choice. But I know a fair amount of people who don’t feel this way and it’s seriously so damaging and hurtful every time I hear it. 

Not just to me. I’m an adult. I can deal with it, shrug it off. I know my story, I know why we’re here and what our intentions are. 

But I hate, HATE, that this idea is so pervasive that some day my child or children might think they were nothing more than plan B. That had we been able to have children biologically that they wouldn’t be wanted. 

I firmly believe that we will parent the child that was meant for us. I know they are out there waiting to find us and we are waiting to find them. I believed that when we were trying to get pregnant and I believe it even more so now that we’re adopting. 

Our adoption coordinator emailed about some possible leads on matches for us. She mentioned a baby girl, born last week and currently in NICU detoxing from cocaine and heroine in passing. Like she didn’t expect us to want her. 

But we do. 

We’re waiting on more information from the adoption coordinator about baby girl’s status: whether she’s on any kind of breathing/feed tube, what her prognosis is, etc. before we officially say yes but in my heart of hearts I know I’m ready. As long as this baby will get out of NICU I’m ready. 

But we still need about $5k to bring her or any baby home. 

It’s not a done deal but our adoption coordinator has several referrals from family services about drug exposed babies and we’re about the only people she’s working with right now who are willing to take them. If it’s not this baby girl (which I hope it is) then it’ll be a situation very like hers. 

I didn’t know until right this moment that this is what we were waiting for. We’ve done our research. We’re in a good position right now to offer a stable home to a baby who was born exposed to drugs. We have access to an actual team of pediatricians through my husbands job. I can work from home as long as need be. 

This is the right situation for us, I feel it in my bones. I don’t want this baby girl to go into foster care. We have the means and ability to offer her some of the best options moving forward.

We jut have to figure out the money and this is it. 

I’m seriously so emotional thinking about this. I know I’m getting ahead of myself. I know this could all fall through and it’s just the first nibble. I know all of that but this feels right. 

FUCK YEAH, DAD! 

I haven’t even adopted yet and we already get “not your real kid” too much. I’m trying to smile and nod through it right now because we’re in this very weird zone where we kind of need to be calm and reasonable even when we shouldn’t be in order to have people want to help us with the adoption. (Like refer us to friends/family who may be considering an adoption plan.) So I can’t really go around throat punching people yet. 

But I can tell you that when I hear my pregnant friends talk about how much they already love their unborn baby even though they don’t know them yet, that is the same way I feel about my not-yet-adopted child. That love is just as real for me. 

And I’m glad your dad told that fool what was up. Everyone deserves parents who would be willing to slap some ignorance out of someone for being rude to their kids. 

I mean, I’m certainly not in the habit of slapping people but I swear if I hear one more person refer to adoption as something that is “the easy way” or “at least you don’t have to deal with pregnancy” I will slap them in the mouth. 

There is no easy way. Pregnancy is hard (I think. I wouldn’t know. I’ve never been able to stay pregnant long enough to find out.) and adoption is hard and step parenting is hard and infertility is hard and IVF is hard and IT’S ALL FREAKING HARD. 

There is not one way to become a parent that is easier or better. They are different. They are all hard and have their own joys and sorrows and pitfalls and worries. 

And most importantly no one gets to pick but you. 

If someone says to you “IVF is unnatural you should consider adoption” you stomp on their big toe and spit in their eye. 

If someone says to you “an adopted or step child will never be your REAL child” you throat punch them and tell them that the pain they’re feeling in their throat right now isn’t real. 

If someone says to you “at least you could get pregnant without trying” you body slam them with your giant human incubating belly and fart in their mouth. 

If someone says to you “why would you even want kids, the world is overpopulated anyway” just, you know, throw luke warm lunch meats at them because they literally deserve to feel like the human embodiment of hot garbage. 

Should we title our adoption profiles “Tattooed Weirdos Seek Baby To Spoil” or nah? 

Does the length of time that it takes for the state of Nevada to approve our home study directly correlate to how likely we are to get a placement?

Is there a magic age where you’re too young or too old to be desirable to expectant parents?

I worry that if I disclose our infertility struggle that it could be perceived that adoption was/is our second choice. Which isn’t really the case but I can see how it might look that way. How can I reassure expectant parents that although we tried to have a child biologically that it doesn’t mean we view adopting as a runner up prize? 

Should we erase all evidence of alcohol in our profile photos or Instagram accounts? I know we’re not alcoholics but will everyone know that? I’d like to teach our kid(s) to have a healthy relationship with alcohol and I think that’s best accomplished by showing how it’s used responsibly, but could that be misconstrued as promoting drinking? (I don’t think so but this is a thing I’ve been thinking about a lot.) 

Should we play up or down our involvement in the Unitarian Universalist church? Does it do us any favors or will it be misunderstood? 

How bad is it that we don’t consider ourselves Christian? How undesirable does it make us? 

How much money is reasonable to put side for birth parent assistance? I don’t want to seem cheap but I’m also uncomfortable with how much some people spend on this because it feels an awful lot like buying a baby. Or paying off a parent. I don’t want someone to feel either unsupported OR obligated to continue with an adoption plan because we’ve spent so much money on them. Where is that fine line between supportive and obligation? 

When is it socially acceptable to throw ourselves an adoption shower? Everyone says after the baby comes but I feel like I’m missing out on some of those pregnant perks and experiences and I want to do it sooner. Like now. I don’t want to jinx ourselves. 

I haven’t been updating this blog as much because there is literally NO NEWS about the adoption. 

We are trapped in homestudy hell. Our homestudy has been approved by our agency but because my husband shop lifted some DVDs in 2001 and got caught before he even got off the property, we have to have our homestudy vetted by the state. 

Our adoption coordinator assures us that we will be approved. That my husband’s perfect record since his one slight indiscretion at 18, for which he fulfilled his community service duties and paid for the DVDs, make us a slam dunk and it’s just a matter of getting eyeballs on our case so they can go “yup, he’s fine, obviously not a danger to a child.” and stamp it. 

But here’s the rub: any time a homestudy that has a child identified - meaning, they’re adopting through foster care and the kiddo already lives in the home or it’s a kinship adoption from a family member or even that they found a match and the baby is due soon - we move to the bottom of the pile. 

Which I totally get. It’s important for those homestudy’s that have kids already identified to get processed first. Sometimes it means the difference between a child having insurance and not. Obviously I am 100% in favor of kids being safe and covered by insurance. So I’m all about them jumping the line. I really am. 

I get it, I understand it, I even agree with it. It all makes total sense. 

However, we were told initially that it would take the state 4-6 weeks to approve our homestudy. 

It’s been almost 12. 

With no end in sight. Our adoption coordinator has no idea when we’ll get approved. She keeps calling the state to check in and she keeps getting told the same thing: we’ll get to it when we get to it. 

Frustrated doesn’t even cover the collection of emotions I’m feeling anymore. 

So we’re stuck. We can’t sign up for matching sites until we’re homestudy approved. We can’t apply for grants to bridge the last 5k gap that we need to fully fund this bad boy. Our agency can’t show our profile until we’re approved. I mean the good news is that the longer this process takes the more money we’re able to put away and the smaller that number gets that we still need to raise. (In fact, if we find our own match and can skip the placement fee to our agency, we’re fully funded now.) 

Right now the only thing we can do is keep trying the word of mouth thing. Try to find our own match. 

We have everything we need: our nursery is done. We have clothes and bottles and a play pen and we just bought our carseat/stroller travel system. If we got a call tomorrow that there was a baby for us we would have to make a quick stop at Target to buy some formula and diapers and we’re good to go. 

We have maternity/paternity leave worked out, we have parenting books read and memorized. 

We are ready. As ready as we can possibly be at least. 

I feel like somehow there is this secret cache of pregnant people that are looking for a family just like us but they can’t find us because we’re waiting on the State of Nevada to look at a piece of paper from 15 years ago to determine that we’re not a danger to children.