8 months

As of last week, we've been officially waiting for 8 months.  8 months.  It's long.  A couple that we've been starting to get to know through the agency, who finished their homestudy months after us, adopted a little boy 5 weeks ago.  When I heard that news, I so desperately wanted to feel happy and excited for them, but I was just sad and angry.  I had a "why us" moment.  Why couldn't that have been us?  What's wrong with us?  Why did they adopt so quickly, while we continue to wait and wait?  We so desperately want this to happen, and it feels impossible... like it never will happen.  I sound like a broken record inside my head, and possibly here as well.  I want us to become parents, and I want it now.  I feel like we'll be unbelievably excellent at it.  Why aren't the right people seeing that, too?  I've been questioning all that I wrote in our autobiography, as well as the "Hello" letter.  It doesn't sound genuine or sincere enough, it doesn't sound passionate enough, it didn't adequately describe the love we have in our family that will be shared with a baby, etc.  Making myself slightly crazy here, and nothing that I tell myself or anyone else tells me makes it any easier or makes it make sense any more.  I guess I've officially gotten to the "unbearably difficult" part of this process.  Maybe it's because I just spent a week with a group of exceptional kids, and with a pregnant co-worker.  Maybe it's because we've waited 8 months.  Maybe it's because we're a year past our miscarriage and approaching year since we officially started the adoption process, and we're still without a baby.  Maybe it's just because I'm human and life hurts a little bit sometimes.  I guess we just have to keep moving forward each day.  Some day, this painfully long wait will end.

Not our time

Tonight I'm in the soggy, chilly Poconos in a cabin with about 15 other women.  I'm at Ronald McDonald Camp, which is an oncology camp that I've been volunteering for for years.  In fact, this is my 10th year.   I missed two along the way, so not 10 consecutive years.  It's been pouring down rain all day and all night.  I hope and pray that things look up soon... can YOU imagine 6 days in the woods, in the rain, with 180-200 kids?  Yeah... that's what I thought.  I do love this camp, though.  After so much time here, it's sort of a home away from home for a week each summer.  It's a time when kids who carry the weight of the world on their shoulders can finally put their burdens down for a week and be a kid again.  It does not matter what kind of cancer they either have or did have.  It doesn't matter if they can walk without help or not.  It doesn't matter if they're bald, or short, or fat, or anything else.  Everyone here GETS it, and these kids know it.  They accomplish the most amazing things here.  Illness does not limit them, and the sky is the limit.  Friendships are created here that run deep and last a lifetime.  I love it.  I love witnessing that sort of perfection.  It's such an honor. 
Last year,  I was all set to come, and I ended up having a miscarriage.  Brian and I joked this year about how "the call" would come this week and interrupt my camp experience... baby stuff getting in the way of a week in the Mountains once again, only this time, the most welcomed interruption.  Well, I'm sitting on my cot in the damp cabin right now, so guess it's going to happen later in the week!  lol (wishful thinking).  Funniest part about this is that it COULD have happened this weekend.  There may have been 10 or more other times when it "could" have happened because someone looked at our profile, but we didn't know about it.  This time, we actually did know.  We got an email on Friday afternoon, telling us about a little baby girl born on Wednesday.  We were being asked if it was ok for our profile to be shown to the birth mother.  We were also told that several other families were being shown.  Usually, we aren't asked this question, but if there's a characteristic of the baby that matches something on what is called our "family characteristics form" that we said we would be willing to consider, depending on the circumstances (for instance, we said we were willing to consider alcohol exposure, because it can mean very different things in different circumstances.  One glass early on vs. every day exposure), they have to call us and ask us before showing our profile to that birth family.  This baby matched one of those characteristics that we were willing to consider, so we found out about her.  The bad news about knowing, is that we're then on edge as we wait to see if we've been chosen.  For those of you we saw this past weekend, we couldn't say anything because it was so iffy and we couldn't get our hopes up more than they were.  We've likely been in this position before (of being considered) but we just didn't know it.  Sadly, someone else was chosen for this little girl, but I guess she wasn't the baby for us.  That's what we have to believe, anyway.  It's sad.  I had some baby adoption dreams last night.  They were very odd (the hospital was calling the baby "Hedge" in my dream, and she was older... maybe 3-4 months old) but still, we'd adopted.  It'll happen when it's meant to happen.  Boy, am I getting sick of hearing, and saying, that phrase.  But, I supposed it'll feel that way to us some day.  Meanwhile, we're going about our business.  Keeping busy and staying optimistic.  I hope this week at camp will be super inspiring and a lot of fun, even if  Mother Nature continues to let us have it.  I can't wait to see how we all accomodate for her.  The staff at this place are really good at this stuff.  They feed us well, too.  We just had chicken wings, cream puffs, and cake for our late night "snack". 
Have a great week, and please, keep sending us positive energy so that we can keep getting through all that this crazy journey sends our way!

A year goes by

One year ago today, I was filled with hope and excitement for a little while.  We were headed to the hospital for another little glimpse of our baby, and for the sequential screening test that would tell us that everything was fine (what else could it possibly tell us?  We'd been through so much to get to that point, that there was no way that anything was wrong now.)  However, our dreams and our hearts were shattered when we heard those words that I'll never forget... "Guys, I can't find a heartbeat.  I'm so sorry.".  What??  What does she mean?  Get someone else in here to look.  She must be wrong.  She has to be wrong.  This can't be happening.  Those were the thoughts that then ran through my head as I started to shake.  I'll never forget that feeling.   It was such a living nightmare. 
I wish I could stop thinking of all of these significant dates as anniversaries, but I can't.  I guess every time we mark another anniversary, or pass by a date that should have been significant (the baby's due date, another month of waiting, etc.) I also mark another day of enduring it and finding a strength I didn't know we would need or that we had.  It reminds me that we can do anything we have to do.  What other choice is there?  The other choice is how we go about it, and how well we do it, not IF we can or will.  I've learned so much over the course of this year.  First of all, that even when bad things are happening, time flies by and you get through it.  Also, I never ever realized how painful and heartbreaking a miscarriage could be.  I never really appreciated how much of a loss you feel when you've never seen touched, or held that baby.
Looking back over this past year, I am amazed that we've come so far, moved on as well as we have, and embraced the experience of adoption.  It's been somewhat turbulent, of course, but mostly we're really ready to start our family in this way that feels incredibly special.  We've met wonderful people who've experienced the same exact things that we have... the hope of giving birth and the crushing realization that it's not going to happen like that, as well as the excitement and anxiety that comes from building a family through adoption.  We're so ready for this!  Anticipating this day, the day that one dream died and another began, was a bit worse (isn't anticipation always the worst?) than actually experiencing it.  Tonight, we're going to the movies with dear friends who have been so supportive all along the way, and I had the opportunity to work once again with a wonderful co-worker that I haven't worked with in a year or more.  Those are the things I'm focusing on today, and tomorrow there'll be something else.  We're ok.

Sometimes, tears flow

This has been an exhausting week at work.  And not because I'm busy, but because I'm not.  It's hard when there's a week like this where it's slow and I'm struggling to find my purpose.  It makes me think about how it'll feel to have our baby in daycare while I'm sitting around doing nothing in another building 5 miles away.  Argh!  I try NOT to think of that, but it's hard.  It's especially hard on a day when my co-workers are at their "finest".  Today was one such day.  Without going into all of the details, there's a ton of conflict between the radiology techs and nurses, and often other people are involved.  There seems to be a battle over who gets sedated and who doesn't.  If a child is scheduled for a sedated MRI and they're at an age where they might possibly be able to do it without sedation, it's in the patient and family's best interest if we work with them and try to help them get through it.  That's my main purpose at this center.  To assess whether or not they're capable and if it's in their best interest.  If it's determined that they're a good candidate, I work to prepare them for the procedure, develop a coping plan, and help them through it.  We don't just talk kids into trying it, and we use our best judgement.  For some reason, the techs hate this!  They'd like to see them all sedated.  I can sort of understand the stress they're under to get good images, and their fear of failure if a child is unable to sit still and the study is useless.  But, they never come meet the kids ahead of time or spend any quality time with them to determine if it's a good candidate or not.  They then get really angry at us when we do.  Today was a day in which a patient who tried and failed last year wanted to try again.  I think we can all agree that a year is a long time in the life of an 8 year old kid, and that second chances are worthwhile.  I hadn't even seen the techs today, but when I passed one (the patient was waiting for her turn... still in a room and not in the scanner),  I said hello pleasantly and she literally grunted at me.  She continued to ignore me and give me the cold shoulder all day long.  I am sick to death of being treated like a leaper for doing my job.  I felt today like I'd just had it.  I've been thinking a lot lately about what my options are in terms of my career, and what comes next, and this really sealed it for me.  I can't do this forever, and likely, not much longer.  I'll figure it out, but in the meantime, they're doing a great job of making the work experience pretty miserable for all of us who go there day in and day out.  I mind my own business, try to be a team player, and do my job to the best of my ability.  I cant imagine how it's going to change for me once that baby is here, but I don't want 40 hours of my life to be spent in misery, because it's bound to spill over into my life that is simply wonderful.  I don't want that work life to ruin a single moment of my personal life that I cherish so much.  Anyway, I didn't really mean to use this space as a venting space.  It sort of all ties in, though.  The other thing that happened today was that one of the nurses who is on maternity leave stopped by today for the first time with her son and her new baby daughter.  This is the same nurse who gave us the tree to plant in memory and honor of our baby (girl) that never was able to be born.  AND, it's close to the year mark since that miscarriage.  I was happy to see her and her gorgeous children, but there also was a twinge of pain thrown in there, too.  I was doing well with it, and then something amazing happened.  Kathy, one of our lab techs who's been so interested and so supportive of our situation from the get go came to me to check on me.  She was very thoughtful as she asked me about how we're doing with our wait, and as we talked about it, she said that she just wanted to check on me with Janet and her baby here.  She was wondering how I was and if it was hard to be around that little baby.  And then, she cried.  She was so concerned about me, about how it felt to me, and that nobody else was thinking about it, that it made her cry.  Of course, as soon as I see someone's tears, mine follow, so Kathy and I shared some today. Not many, just enough to know they were there.  I told her that I loved being able to hold Janet's baby, and that it did fill me with longing, but not too much envy or pain.  I told her that some days are harder than others and that I'm proud of how we've done with all of this stuff.  I told her that we've gone from excited, to sad, to discouraged, to feeling like it's not real or ever going to happen, and back again.  I'm sure we'll have so many moments along the way.  But we trust that it's going to happen when it's supposed to (though I'm not sure I believe that.  I know that people like to hear that and like the optimism, so sometimes we fake it), and some day it'll be me stopping by with the little love of our lives to show him or her off to the people who were there for us throughout the process.  Today, I do have longing.  Today, I'm dissatisfied with the wait and I want it to end.  Today, I want my baby more than I want anything else.  Today there were some tears and maybe tomorrow there will be more.  Or, maybe tomorrow will feel like a stronger, less intense day and it'll be fine.  Either way, I am thankful today for Kathy, her sensitivity and her caring, kind heart.