Our Adoption Story: lots of emails

Man, where has the time gone? Its been a few days since I posted and I feel like I am far behind here. I guess that's what happens when you are in the middle of moving across the country!

Anyway...

So as the new year approached, we began getting a lot of emails from our agency. It was SO very nice to see them working for us, working to make our dream of being a family come true.

We would get emails, sometimes multiple emails, weekly it seemed. We were getting emails asking if our profile could be shown to some birth mothers. We would review the medical and social history information the agency had on the mothers and make a decision from there. 

There was always a lot of research that went into being able to provide an answer as to if we wanted to be shown or not. Some of these birth mothers were taking medications, doctor prescribed, that I wanted to know the possible birth defects/complications involved with them. So Google and I became best buds. But OH the curse of Google. Some things are better left unsearched, not really...we needed to know. But these searches would often times leave me more confused than anything. So many conflicting results or confusing case study reports. I wanted a clear cut "this is what it does..." answer. Thanks Google, thanks for nothing but a severe headache!

I was also researching statistics on "if a mother has___, then the baby is ___ likely to have it as well". Things such as bipolar, schizophrenia, and other (to me) scary mental health disorders. Again, this was not a helpful search at all. But who do I ask these things to? I don't carry a pediatrician and/or psychologist in my back pocket so I didn't have anyone in the know to ask.  So to Google I would turn. Again, painstaking headaches were a result from these searches. I still felt like, even though it was mostly confusing, I was able to gather enough information to make a semi informed decision.

Rich and I would talk, in length, about each situation. Some of them that we were presented with I wanted to respond YES without even consulting Rich, but that isn't fair nor is that a healthy way to approach making a family with your spouse! Some of the birth mothers profiles we were presented with were a clear cut, this isn't the child for us, profile. We knew, based on the information given, that we were not prepared to handle the possible outcome and health issues the baby may have been born with. Others weren't so easy. It took a lot of soul searching, prayer and discussion to come up with what the right answer for us to give the agency was.

There were quite a few we said no to, but there were almost just as many we said that we would like our profile shown for as well. Once we said to show our profile, it was a waiting game. Some we would hear back that they had chosen another family and others we wouldn't hear anything from. Our agency explained that there are birth mothers who receive the profiles and take months to decide or pick a family and others who receive profiles and never contact the agency again. None the less, the waiting SUCKS!

We were presented with a birth mothers information on January 15. Everything about this situation looked like it was a good one, until we read how much this particular adoption would cost. It was WELL over our budget and well over anything we could afford. We had set our budget with our agency but Rich and I had some wiggle room and could do a little more than we had originally said, but not this much more. Sadly we had to tell the agency no. Everything else about this was a perfect match in what we were looking for in a birth mother. It was so hard to say no for the money alone, but what price do you put on a child? How much is too much? At what point do you say "we want this child but we cannot go into debt for them"? This was that time. Rich and I want a baby but we can not put ourselves in debt for them and not be able to provide the life for our children that we want to provide, because we spent everything we had to bring them home. It was sad and hard to do but in the end we had to walk away.

And still more emails came to my inbox, more discussions between Rich and I and more "yes" and "no" responses sent to the agency. But for the first time in a long time, I was feeling hopeful. I still felt we wouldn't bring home a little one until we moved, but I was hopeful and excited about this process again.