Friday is the day.

I have been closely watching the MOJ website all weekend to see if it was updated with the new waiting children list. Mid-morning, it finally came out. 😀

The 2 girls I’m interested in are listed there 😀 😀

According to the website the file distribution will take place this coming Friday at 11:00 AM Bulgaria time (4 AM here). 😀 😀 😀

For “Z***” who has been waiting for 6 months on that list and for “A***” who has been waiting 4 months (wether or not fate chooses me to be their Mum), I hope that Friday is the day that their waiting ends.

Obviously I hope that Friday is the day my waiting ends too.

1 week down, 1 (maybe) to go

It’s been a week since I inquired on the 2 profiles I saw. Their files were returned to the Bulgarian Ministry of Justice on Monday, so now I wait for the next file distribution out to the agencies. I’m told this will likely happen late next week.

What will need to happen (which didn’t happen the last time I inquired) is that my NGO will need to be the first (or one of the first) to be allowed to pull files. They were 8th last time, and weren’t able to get the files I had inquired on.

I’m still trying not to stress about it. I am actually doing pretty well so far. It is just that it feels as though time has slowed way down. Luckily I have loads of pictures of these 2 sweet girls and even though there is certainly no guarantee that I will be able to adopt them, I am employing some positive thinking and visualization and hoping that it will somehow magically help.

So sometime this weekend or early next week the new waiting child list should be posted on the MOJ website and I will be able to confirm that their files are there. Then with any luck at all by this time next week I’ll have some awesome news to report.

Fingers crossed!!!

I’m not sure what happened at 4:45

I had a WONDERFUL day yesterday. I got up, the sun was shining. Sometime on Friday the individuals intalling the gas lines in my street decided to go down the opposite side of the street instead, so my front lawn will remain intact. And my 15-month old nephew and I were going to the Common Ground Fair in Unity, Maine

The baby did excellent on the long car ride. We sang along to the oldies station for a while and he napped for the last 45 minutes before we got there.

We had a great day at the fair. Saw all the animals. I got to look around at the craft stuff. We bought some homemade wooden toys. My nephew was entraced watching the Penobscot Indian singers drumming and dancing (for about 45 minutes). We ate fabulous organic fair food including fried seafood, apple cider, cheesecake and indian pudding. My nephew participated in making Tibetain Prayer flags. And did not once at the fair (despite entering the terrible 2 stage) did he whine, fuss, or pitch a fit. We got into the car just as it started to cloud over mid-afternoon and the baby drifted off instantly into a 2nd nap (which he never does anymore).

I thought I was in the twilight zone…my days NEVER are perfect like this.

Then 4:45 happened.

Some sort of cosmic force must have had an effect on the world at 4:45 yesterday, cause everything that happened after was a hot mess.

Baby woke up at that time about 20 minutes shy of home…SHRIEKING. Absolutely screaming bloody murder. Scared me to death and I nearly drove off the road. He proceeded to be quite weepy and generally freaked out for the rest of the night. I never did figure out what was up. Remembered about that time that I had forgotten to put dinner out to thaw, so ended up having to get take out. Baby didn’t want his dinner…he wanted mine. The haddock gave him indigestion, and I couldn’t find the gripe water. I started putting him to bed at his usual time (6:30) but instead of the 15 minutes it usually takes He finally fell asleep after 8:00. Around this time it occured to me that while I had put suncreen on the baby, I forgot to do myself. Hello 1st Sunburn of the year (on the last day of summer). Also realized that my phone hadn’t checked my email all day (it is set to check it every 15 minutes) and lo and behold was an email from the Adoption Agency…they cannot locate the files I inquiried on based on the information I had (and the files are going to be returned like any minute now). E-mail time: 4:45. Sent out random frantic messages and thanks to a fellow adoptive parent was able to get some needed additional information. Time now: almost 9:00. And I end up with one of the worst headaches of my life (made me nauseated)…probably the haddock and the sunburn. Lie down to shut my eyes to try and rid myself of the headache and fell asleep 2.5 hours early and in my clothes, upside down in my bed. Woke at 3 (3 hours early) and could never get back to sleep, but was too lazy to get up and take out my earrings which after sleeping on them for 6 hours had probably left permanet marks on my skull. Went downstairs after about an hour of trying to get myself to nap until the baby woke up to get something to eat and…guess who forgot to buy more cereal?

Still hoping to be able to track down these files. Not sure if we will be able to do it. Which is sort of sad as 1 of these kids had been on the waiting child list for 6 months and the other has been there for 4. That’s a long time for such little kids to wait. And once again it kinda sucks that they are waiting and I’m waiting, but for some reason we just can’t match up.

I did it again…

Once again I am leaping and have inquiried on 2 children.

This time things are a bit different. Their files aren’t listed on the MOJ website but have been with another agency for nearly 2 months. I saw their files when they were newly listed with that agency, but never would I have imagined that this amount of time would have passed without someone moving mountains to be their Mum.

But it has.

So despite the fact that all odds are stacked against it I made the move. I inquiried.

Here is just how big the mountain is: A. Their files are with another NGO. B. Their files go back for redistribution in a few days C. The distribution works kind of like a lottery system, if the NGO I am working with gets first (or near to first pick) at next go-around there may be a chance, last time we inquiried they were 8th, it was a no-go. D. My homestudy needs to change (I am working on that) E. The USCIS I-800A approval would need to change (working on that too).

And that would only get us to the referral.

But I hope…

In other news, I took my long-planned for trip down to Ikea last weekend and the playroom is really starting to come together. Next up is some painting and some clearing out of some renovation material I have stored in there and it will be…Done. So excitied and I will definitely post some pictures here once it is complete.

The hill by which I was completely defeated this year is getting it’s come-uppance. My city has elected to install some underground natural gas pipes and the path down which these pipes runs through the neighborhood goes right under the bottom quarter of aforementioned hill. The construction has been slowly creeping down the street all week and I have been warned that I can expect orange cones on my property before the end of the month. Take That! HA!

… And Hope

The patience thing is working out…not.

I asked around (even after I said I didn’t want to know) about wait times based on our soon to be updated dossier. It was all good news. It is hard to get specifics but it appears that we will not wait for a match for too much longer after the update is complete (sometime in November).

I am so ready.

It has been over 6 months since our dossier was registered.
It has been nearly 14 months since we formally started the international adoption process.
It has been about 38 months since we made the decision to build this family exclusively with adoption
It has been over 4 1/2 years on this journey to motherhood.

So. So. Ready.

The worst part about the wait is that my wait hasn’t even been the worst part. Somewhere in Bulgaria my children wait. And it is likely that they have waited all their lives.

Disappointment

Learned the news this evening that my agency was not able to obtain the files of the children I had inquiried on a couple of weeks ago. While I was prepared for this, it is still disappointing.

But I will stand up, brush myself off, and try again. Just like I always do.

After all…there is paperwork to do. My Mum is working on the FBI fingerprinting and clearance process this week. We are coming along in the homestudy update. We will be scheduling the visit for sometime in the next few weeks, then once the updated document itself is completed we will be updating our I-800a form.

The I-800a update is fairly comprehensive for us this time around. Step 1 is to change our adoption agency on the form. (Remember back in Feburary when I was glad it didn’t need to be done at that time…well the time has come). Also have to add Mum to the approval as she is living here now. And I figured since I was doing A & B (and with adding Mum we have to pay the $360 fee anyway). I figured we would update our special needs form.

While the orginal draft of the form probably had us firmly in the Mild Special needs category, the new updated list puts us in the Moderate Special Needs category, without question, with some Severe special needs listed there too. We are also upping the age limit (to age 6) and removing the notation that mentions “1 child or a sibling set” and requesting 2 siblings or unrelated children.

Why the dramatic change? Well, in regards to the special needs list I realized how much I had got it wrong after reading some of the profiles of children listed with my agency. Then someone pointed out to me a small child on the list with the Bulgarian Ministry of Justice that had extremely similar diagnoses to ones I had at that age. That child had been awaiting adoption for over a year. Yes, I learned that if I too was a child awaiting adoption in Bulgaria I would have been labelled with the term “Severe Special Needs” and life would have been undoubtedly much different for me. However my life turned out wonderfully, and I function as a normal adult. I decided that even before my dossier was registered that we would be updating the special needs list when this Homestudy Update came around. To me it seems utterly sensless to deprive a child born with similar challenges in life the same opportunities and advantages that I have been blessed with. I would happily parent any (and if I had the means…all) of these children if I was given the opportunity.

I don’t know if changing this list will change our projected wait time at all. Back in May we were given an estimate of 12-24 Months from dossier registration for the types of children we requested. Meaning under that estimate we may expect a match 6-18 months from now. I would think (although this week logic and I are not really on speaking terms) that I could expect a shorter wait time than that quote once the dossier update is complete. But I don’t know, and frankly don’t want to know. What would be stupendous is to just get the information on a match of 2 kiddos one day, out of the blue, faster than I ever anticipated and (if my friend has her way) when I’m at work sitting next to her so she can see the reaction on my face. But until that time I really need to learn to be patient (which I’m not very good at now) and Trust that everything happens in it’s own time. Or as a good friend told me recently, go with the flow and don’t try to control or fight it. Just let things happen as they were meant to.

Sickened

This morning a series of investigation articles done by the Reuters news service (http://www.reuters.com/investigates/adoption/ ) came to my attention. I spent a good chunk of my pre-work prep time reading this.

I was so nauseated afterwards that I ended up skipping Breakfast.

I have always tried to reserve judgment of others until I have “walked in their shoes” so to speak. But this is so awful and so revolting that I simply cannot hold my tongue. If anyone in the US did this to their biological child they would be charged with child abandonment, child endangerment, child trafficking, and who knows what else. Instead, if caught, the adopted child returns to these parents. What. The. Hell?

As the child of an adoptee whose adoption was of questionable legality and nearly disrupted (but ultimately not, thank Goodness) I can report on what merely the threat or potential of such an occurance an do to the adopted child or that family’s entire dynamic. The psychological damage is so deep that it is NEVER forgotten. Never Ever.

It was in that spirit that I started on my international adoption process trying to do things “the right way,” I do not want my future children to be victims of child trafficking or worse. I have done everything I know how to conduct this adoption in the most ethical way that I know of. I think, at least so far, we have succeeded. I have seen actions by other potential adoptive parents that while I withhold judgment, I would be disappointed in myself if I ever did.

But THIS takes the cake.

I hearby promise that I will never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever (to infinity) be involved in something as dastardly as what these articles describe. I cannot even fathom how anyone after going through a similar struggle that I am currently embroiled in could ever just hand their child over to some random people that they met on the internet.

I can understand how well-meaning people might find themselves in a situation where the possibility of adoption disruption must be considered as an option for the family but the situations described in these articles are just plaing WRONG.

6 months waiting

We have been registered with the Ministry of justice for 6 months now. I still have had no news on the 2 children we inquired on a week ago…I was hoping to hear something by yesterday afternoon, but alas…silence.

In order to distract myself from obsessively checking my email tomorrow I am going to start a weekly yoga class. The physical activity will hopefully help me shed some of the weight I gained during the great paperwork chase and help build my strength up for the physical rigors of mommyhood, but I am also hoping the spiritual/mental aspect of the practice will get me through the rest of this adoption. I first started with yoga classes in nursing school and continued practicing well into my first year as a nurse. It was wonderfully helpful for stress. I tried starting back up this time last year, but I find that whenever I’m home, I tend to just spend my free time cleaning or in renovation projects. Both of which tend to stress me out more.If all else fails with this…well, at least the yoga teacher is also a practicing psychologist.

The Dark Side of the Moon

There is a dark scary side to adoption. You read about it in places where they mention the adoption or emotional “rollercoaster.” But there are never any details. I know why. Here, there be monsters.

I’ve been here before. Many times before. Now that I count I’ve been here 18 times before. I hate it here. But the only way to tell somebody about this place is to tell them while you’re here. When you leave (and I firmly believe that someday I will never come back to this place) you get this pseudo-amnesia. You remember you were here, you remember it was bad, but specifics are hard to recall.

I call this place the Dark Side of the Moon.

No, this is not where you end up when you have adoption paperwork problems. That is Hell. It sort of looks sterile and official…like the waiting area of the DMV. This is also not where you are when you are waiting…that kind of looks like Luke Skywalker’s front yard on Tatooine.

This is the Dark Side of the Moon. This is where you end up when you loose a child. Loosing a child in adoption is sadly very easy. Some of us (i.e. Me) cannot help but get extremely attached to every file we inquire on, every motherless (or fatherless) child that we create an imaginary life for, every unborn soul we carry within our bodies for too short a time, or every foster child we watch walk away…forever. It is cold here, there is no atmosphere to breathe, there is no light. There is almost nothing…only tears and anguish.

You can see it coming, sometimes. There is a whole heck of work involved in not landing in this desolate place, but when you think you might be in for a visit there is a lot of sleepless nights and hoping and praying and general celestial bargaining.

I think I am (unfortunately) coming in for a landing here, again. Let me explain why: Last week I inquired on 2 waiting children on the waiting child list. I knew I was in for a rough time from the instant I read the files. Like the 18 little people who have sent me to The Dark Side of The Moon in the past I fell in love instantly. I was in the clouds (don’t you love it there…you can find it all over the internet too, in the faces of parents when they meet their children, the photos of gotcha day…awww) until this afternoon when I got an e-mail comparing getting their files to getting the star quarterback in the first round draft pick of the NFL. Now, I’m not a football person at all, but I understood the point of the metaphor. (We are commencing our decent to The Dark Side of the Moon, please make sure your seat back and tray tables are in their upright and locked positions…)

And it sucks. It sucked the first time. It sucks the 19th/20th times. Sometimes it sucks worse (in my experience returning foster children and miscarriages get top ranking) sometimes it sucks only a little. And sometimes the fact that you have been here so often just adds suck to an already sucky situation.

In the multitude of adoption books I have read quite a bit on Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD). This doesn’t scare me because I an totally understand exactly what a child with this diagnosis might be going through. I know, because I involutarily pull out a similar coping mechanism every time I’m in for a landing on The Dark Side of the Moon. Everytime you jump in head first but at the first sign of trouble you try and slam on brakes or distance yourself or prepare yourself for the emotional impact that you are sure is going to happen (because it happened before). If you can prepare maybe when the landing happens it will be less catastrophic (it isn’t). It starts with the announcment…something that clues you in that life in the clouds is not reality. It might be something small (like an odd stomach pain) or something fairly obvious (like today’s e-mail). When I become cognizant of the announcement there is a physical reaction…my face get hot and tingly and I feel panic (like fight or flight). Then comes the aforementioned pleading and hoping (this can go on for a while and happens just before actual landing…you hope that the unseen pilot will abort landing and you can go back to the clouds). Then what you most fear would happen…does happen. You land on The Dark Side of the Moon.

I really thought (and the romantic person in me still thinks) that I wouldn’t end up here this time around. After all… prospective adoptive mother all approved for 2 children with a dossier registered with the MOJ and 2 orphan children on MOJ list waiting for a mother seems like a pretty perfect fit. But unless the NGO I am registered with gets first round draft pick then these files…their files…will go where I cannot follow and they will still be searching for their parents and I will still be searching for my children. And I will once again be firmly on The Dark Side of the Moon searching for a way out of here.

Please pilot…pull up. Pull Up. PULL UP!!!

Adoption Ark

I have written pretty extensively about what went down with this adoption agency, so I won’t rehash it. I did get a check today for 9.8% of the money that was owed to us. I was informed that it would be the first and only check. I wonder what happened to the rest (over $1800)? Pretty sure I’ll never know. Was happy to see some of it returned as frankly I had resigned myself to the loss of the entire $2,000 deposit, but it would be lying to say that they aren’t the main reason why this adoption will likely be the only international adoption I ever attempt. The whole experience with this agency’s demise has turned me into a nervous wreck and I definitely don’t handle uncertainty and surprise as well as I used to ( not to mention the fleeting moments of PTSD I experience everytime I check my email).