Walking a couple of miles in other people's shoes
In particular, I'm referring to a)people with disabilities, and b)preadoptive parents who have to wait and wait until they can be sure they can have a specific child placed and/or keep him/her (I got a slight taste of this during the 3 1/2 months we had Bubla in preadoptive care - the ever-so-tiny chance that someone higher up would find the very real problems in our paperwork and stick him back in the orphanage was enough to stop my breath sometimes, since a former magistrate worker had said she wouldn't put it past the ministry bosses to ruin several lives that way).
I was going to write all about my efforts at preparing for adoptive breastfeeding (I realize most people have never heard of this, but it's very real and very possible, though less so for an older, institutionalized baby like Inka), and then yesterday I was going to write about the sense of panic that enveloped me after the social worker(s) never responded to my e-mail from Friday. It turns out I wasn't completely crazy to panic. I had sent an e-mail saying that we were about to buy all our plane tickets, and could they please let us know if they thought the plan might not go quite as we'd discussed (April 13th pickup). At this point, I wasn't even asking "are we definitely going to be able to parent her?" because this was answered to my satisfaction two days earlier. The SW had said that since they couldn't find her another family - or if they could, the placement wouldn't be soon enough to warrant looking - they wouldn't even try (I guess I'm not 100% sure she actually said that, but why would they try if they were sure it's pointless and that she's going to us?). I remember saying, "so we can count on it?" and she answered yes. I believe that should have made things quite unambigious. So I added a request to Friday's e-mail - could I have her surname [I do have that now, and a lot of good it's doing me] so that I can send a package for the caretakers to put in her crib, and would it be okay for me to call the orphanage... In retrospect, knowing what I know about the other SW in the office, not to mention the orphanage director and the whole system, I should have just backed off (I also maybe should have waited longer for an answer or called before we went ahead and bought a ticket each for me and Bubla, and three separate trips for Ignac, costing thousands of dollars because of current airfares and our no longer being students under 25). Because when I called today after it became clear my e-mail wouldn't be answered, the story had suddenly changed.
The SW said "well, so far it looks good..." So far?!!!! Suddenly, not only are they choosing to send Inka's papers around to the other regions (which they initially said they wouldn't do until April or May, if I remember correctly), she claimed they are obligated to do so. "Then I must have misunderstood something," I stammered, "...but we've already bought all our plane tickets." (Well, it's not like she hadn't had enough time to respond to my e-mail by saying "hold off on the trip purchases," even though I had told her on the phone that this would involve multiple trips for Ignac.) Then she made the adoption sound definite by saying, "But like I said, I really don't think we'll find anyone. And even if we did, we'd tell them no, because we're giving preference to our Prague parents [i.e., us]."
So IS IT "GOING WELL SO FAR" (never mind how crappy all of this is for Inka, since what she truly deserves is for there to be a family that can take her now, especially since I think she may already be legally free for a month or more now), or IS THERE REALLY NO WAY THEY WILL PLACE HER SOMEWHERE ELSE??!!
As I write this, it seems all but unthinkable that these communications could translate to anything but a 100% chance that she's ours. But then why are they sending her file around? Since when do they do that in time for kids to be placed ASAP, Romany kids especially???? I've always seen the law and policies hinder the nationwide searches for parents, and now suddenly they're speeding it up? The only thing MV and I could come up with when I called her, shaking and nauseous, after hanging up with the SW, is that it really was my e-mail that messed things up. The SW made sure to tell me that the orphanage director knows we should be getting Inka, but "not officially." And that's where MV's experience suggests that even the slightest hint of prospective parents doing something unofficially (God forbid I should send her some crib toys or ask how she's doing when I have no piece of paper with which to claim my daughter!) can send one or more of these power-tripping people into legal mode. She's not legally yours, so butt out. Sick as that is in many cases, I have to admit that from where I'm sitting, that's still a far better option than the alternative - that they somehow really mean "don't count on it" even though last week they said "count on it." (See below for a less selfish reason, too.)
I would just like to say that what's going on now is what I was asking for in the first place - not surprisingly, I was willing to wait before becoming attached to her and changing all our plans if it meant the possibility of an earlier family placement for Inka. But, even less surprisingly, when I was essentially told that there's no point in waiting any longer before everyone commits, I committed. That's what adoption is about. I have a daughter now, even though I've never touched her. Perhaps this isn't how other people see it, but if I weren't that kind of adoptive parent, I'd probably be pregnant or nursing an infant right now...
There is one "good" aspect of today's "news" in terms of my guilt-ridden, imbalanced, disoriented psyche: not only is the system's timeline such that if by some chance another family were found, they couldn't take Inka home much sooner than we can, it also works out to mean that I couldn't go get her right now even if I did decide to disregard Bubla's needs. I realize this because the SW said that after the next aktiv (child placement meeting, usually once a month, sometimes after a longer interval),* they "can" (not will, but can [?]) prepare a piece of paper, the sending of which to our Prague address will make our pre-adoption official. I asked her when the next aktiv will be or if she could estimate the date. The fact that she couldn't (or refused?), combined with some other clues, makes me think they just had one last week (if it is in fact true that the next meeting hasn't been scheduled), which would mean that it will be another three weeks, a month or maybe more before ANYONE could take Inka home, myself included. It's hard at this point not to be (even more) selfish - I really, really want to hold my daughter, and feeling like the sole reason she has to wait is on our side (solid as the reason may be) has been really, really awful. So now I may not have a daughter, but I've also cut down my period of leaving her abandoned to one month or possibly less, according to my best count.
Greeeat. The joys of the Czech state care system are neverending.
*If it weren't for the aktiv factor, which for Bubla didn't line up very well with his date of becoming legally free, he could have been out of the "luxury hotel" a full four weeks before I was allowed to go get him. Of course, if the courts had worked on time in the first place, which they seldom do, he could have been legally free a number of months earlier - granted, the chances of an adoptive placement were minimal (we, for one thing, were neither present nor cleared as parents until a couple of months before his homecoming, but maybe he could have gone into foster care (of course now I want to say "thank God he didn't, because we were meant to be a family," but a competent foster parent or two could have done wonders for him if he hadn't had to wait for us).
And now for my self-reflection about how I and/or others may come off to people with disabilities, despite the best of intentions. Eager to feel more committed to adoptive breastfeeding, to get more information and to stimulate the let-down reflex as recommended in the literature, I put Ignac in charge of bedtime and took two buses to a meeting of La Leche League. I suppose I had given a thought to how my presence might confuse some people, but it wasn't much of a concern, especially since I'd had a longish phone conversation with one of the leaders, who was very knowledgeable about adoptive breastfeeding and said their groups regularly include such parents (though these usually involve nursing newborns). What hadn't occurred to me is that the sight of three recently born, nursing sausagelings and one 3 1/2 month old (just about Inka's age and size) would be less likely to help my milk let-down and more likely to make me crave the miniscule body of a baby - if not a newborn, then certainly Inka at four months old. There was a toddler present as well and I have to admit I found him much more interesting to watch, although it's possible this had something to do with an infant-avoidance on my part. Ironically, everyone present must have assumed, as most people do, that I can't have biological children, which I'm convinced would actually make such encounters easier for me personally. In any case, I didn't feel out of place - there were pregnant women and - other than the leaders - I have the oldest child, so I felt called upon to give advice about slings/wraps, strollers on the bus, etc. as questions came up. But I could tell my attendance at the meeting made things difficult for the main leader, for example when she said "there's nothing like a newborn baby" and then, soon enough, backtracked for my sake into a rather prolonged and decidedly awkward speech about how the age of a baby doesn't matter, they're all the same. Which they aren't, obviously - but I hadn't let on any reaction whatsoever. There was the dilemma - while what made me most uncomfortable was the feeling of being a burden on the group dynamics and the meeting's content, I'd be lying if I said the ethos of "it's all about the beauty of the latched-on newborn" didn't bother me at all. Not, of course, because I would ever fault anyone for expressing the full extent of her wonder over the miracle of the newborn, but precisely because I share people's fascination with pregnancy, childbirth, and the breastfeeding I'm not at all likely to experience despite my best efforts. My "handicap" is that I've chosen to forgo these things, not (as I've recently come to realize) because I don't want them but because I want to adopt my little girl MORE. I make it abundantly clear to people who know me that this is what I feel is best for me and our family, but random strangers tend to come from the completely opposite direction - seeing adoption as second best. In the end, I wonder...at what point do people with "public" disabilities become as comfortable with themselves as they're going to get, and at what point do they figure out these weird interpersonal issues (ever?). (Not that adopting should ever be seen as a disability!) The fact that my being "different" and quite possibly pitied at the LLL meeting made more than one person in the room squirm makes me want to reevaluate once again my relationship to human difference and to work on how I interact with people who have to deal with this - and much more - day in and day out.
Well, wasn't that all philosophical and stuff.
I'm useless. I have to go make phone calls now to other more or less useless people.
I was going to write all about my efforts at preparing for adoptive breastfeeding (I realize most people have never heard of this, but it's very real and very possible, though less so for an older, institutionalized baby like Inka), and then yesterday I was going to write about the sense of panic that enveloped me after the social worker(s) never responded to my e-mail from Friday. It turns out I wasn't completely crazy to panic. I had sent an e-mail saying that we were about to buy all our plane tickets, and could they please let us know if they thought the plan might not go quite as we'd discussed (April 13th pickup). At this point, I wasn't even asking "are we definitely going to be able to parent her?" because this was answered to my satisfaction two days earlier. The SW had said that since they couldn't find her another family - or if they could, the placement wouldn't be soon enough to warrant looking - they wouldn't even try (I guess I'm not 100% sure she actually said that, but why would they try if they were sure it's pointless and that she's going to us?). I remember saying, "so we can count on it?" and she answered yes. I believe that should have made things quite unambigious. So I added a request to Friday's e-mail - could I have her surname [I do have that now, and a lot of good it's doing me] so that I can send a package for the caretakers to put in her crib, and would it be okay for me to call the orphanage... In retrospect, knowing what I know about the other SW in the office, not to mention the orphanage director and the whole system, I should have just backed off (I also maybe should have waited longer for an answer or called before we went ahead and bought a ticket each for me and Bubla, and three separate trips for Ignac, costing thousands of dollars because of current airfares and our no longer being students under 25). Because when I called today after it became clear my e-mail wouldn't be answered, the story had suddenly changed.
The SW said "well, so far it looks good..." So far?!!!! Suddenly, not only are they choosing to send Inka's papers around to the other regions (which they initially said they wouldn't do until April or May, if I remember correctly), she claimed they are obligated to do so. "Then I must have misunderstood something," I stammered, "...but we've already bought all our plane tickets." (Well, it's not like she hadn't had enough time to respond to my e-mail by saying "hold off on the trip purchases," even though I had told her on the phone that this would involve multiple trips for Ignac.) Then she made the adoption sound definite by saying, "But like I said, I really don't think we'll find anyone. And even if we did, we'd tell them no, because we're giving preference to our Prague parents [i.e., us]."
So IS IT "GOING WELL SO FAR" (never mind how crappy all of this is for Inka, since what she truly deserves is for there to be a family that can take her now, especially since I think she may already be legally free for a month or more now), or IS THERE REALLY NO WAY THEY WILL PLACE HER SOMEWHERE ELSE??!!
As I write this, it seems all but unthinkable that these communications could translate to anything but a 100% chance that she's ours. But then why are they sending her file around? Since when do they do that in time for kids to be placed ASAP, Romany kids especially???? I've always seen the law and policies hinder the nationwide searches for parents, and now suddenly they're speeding it up? The only thing MV and I could come up with when I called her, shaking and nauseous, after hanging up with the SW, is that it really was my e-mail that messed things up. The SW made sure to tell me that the orphanage director knows we should be getting Inka, but "not officially." And that's where MV's experience suggests that even the slightest hint of prospective parents doing something unofficially (God forbid I should send her some crib toys or ask how she's doing when I have no piece of paper with which to claim my daughter!) can send one or more of these power-tripping people into legal mode. She's not legally yours, so butt out. Sick as that is in many cases, I have to admit that from where I'm sitting, that's still a far better option than the alternative - that they somehow really mean "don't count on it" even though last week they said "count on it." (See below for a less selfish reason, too.)
I would just like to say that what's going on now is what I was asking for in the first place - not surprisingly, I was willing to wait before becoming attached to her and changing all our plans if it meant the possibility of an earlier family placement for Inka. But, even less surprisingly, when I was essentially told that there's no point in waiting any longer before everyone commits, I committed. That's what adoption is about. I have a daughter now, even though I've never touched her. Perhaps this isn't how other people see it, but if I weren't that kind of adoptive parent, I'd probably be pregnant or nursing an infant right now...
There is one "good" aspect of today's "news" in terms of my guilt-ridden, imbalanced, disoriented psyche: not only is the system's timeline such that if by some chance another family were found, they couldn't take Inka home much sooner than we can, it also works out to mean that I couldn't go get her right now even if I did decide to disregard Bubla's needs. I realize this because the SW said that after the next aktiv (child placement meeting, usually once a month, sometimes after a longer interval),* they "can" (not will, but can [?]) prepare a piece of paper, the sending of which to our Prague address will make our pre-adoption official. I asked her when the next aktiv will be or if she could estimate the date. The fact that she couldn't (or refused?), combined with some other clues, makes me think they just had one last week (if it is in fact true that the next meeting hasn't been scheduled), which would mean that it will be another three weeks, a month or maybe more before ANYONE could take Inka home, myself included. It's hard at this point not to be (even more) selfish - I really, really want to hold my daughter, and feeling like the sole reason she has to wait is on our side (solid as the reason may be) has been really, really awful. So now I may not have a daughter, but I've also cut down my period of leaving her abandoned to one month or possibly less, according to my best count.
Greeeat. The joys of the Czech state care system are neverending.
*If it weren't for the aktiv factor, which for Bubla didn't line up very well with his date of becoming legally free, he could have been out of the "luxury hotel" a full four weeks before I was allowed to go get him. Of course, if the courts had worked on time in the first place, which they seldom do, he could have been legally free a number of months earlier - granted, the chances of an adoptive placement were minimal (we, for one thing, were neither present nor cleared as parents until a couple of months before his homecoming, but maybe he could have gone into foster care (of course now I want to say "thank God he didn't, because we were meant to be a family," but a competent foster parent or two could have done wonders for him if he hadn't had to wait for us).
And now for my self-reflection about how I and/or others may come off to people with disabilities, despite the best of intentions. Eager to feel more committed to adoptive breastfeeding, to get more information and to stimulate the let-down reflex as recommended in the literature, I put Ignac in charge of bedtime and took two buses to a meeting of La Leche League. I suppose I had given a thought to how my presence might confuse some people, but it wasn't much of a concern, especially since I'd had a longish phone conversation with one of the leaders, who was very knowledgeable about adoptive breastfeeding and said their groups regularly include such parents (though these usually involve nursing newborns). What hadn't occurred to me is that the sight of three recently born, nursing sausagelings and one 3 1/2 month old (just about Inka's age and size) would be less likely to help my milk let-down and more likely to make me crave the miniscule body of a baby - if not a newborn, then certainly Inka at four months old. There was a toddler present as well and I have to admit I found him much more interesting to watch, although it's possible this had something to do with an infant-avoidance on my part. Ironically, everyone present must have assumed, as most people do, that I can't have biological children, which I'm convinced would actually make such encounters easier for me personally. In any case, I didn't feel out of place - there were pregnant women and - other than the leaders - I have the oldest child, so I felt called upon to give advice about slings/wraps, strollers on the bus, etc. as questions came up. But I could tell my attendance at the meeting made things difficult for the main leader, for example when she said "there's nothing like a newborn baby" and then, soon enough, backtracked for my sake into a rather prolonged and decidedly awkward speech about how the age of a baby doesn't matter, they're all the same. Which they aren't, obviously - but I hadn't let on any reaction whatsoever. There was the dilemma - while what made me most uncomfortable was the feeling of being a burden on the group dynamics and the meeting's content, I'd be lying if I said the ethos of "it's all about the beauty of the latched-on newborn" didn't bother me at all. Not, of course, because I would ever fault anyone for expressing the full extent of her wonder over the miracle of the newborn, but precisely because I share people's fascination with pregnancy, childbirth, and the breastfeeding I'm not at all likely to experience despite my best efforts. My "handicap" is that I've chosen to forgo these things, not (as I've recently come to realize) because I don't want them but because I want to adopt my little girl MORE. I make it abundantly clear to people who know me that this is what I feel is best for me and our family, but random strangers tend to come from the completely opposite direction - seeing adoption as second best. In the end, I wonder...at what point do people with "public" disabilities become as comfortable with themselves as they're going to get, and at what point do they figure out these weird interpersonal issues (ever?). (Not that adopting should ever be seen as a disability!) The fact that my being "different" and quite possibly pitied at the LLL meeting made more than one person in the room squirm makes me want to reevaluate once again my relationship to human difference and to work on how I interact with people who have to deal with this - and much more - day in and day out.
Well, wasn't that all philosophical and stuff.
I'm useless. I have to go make phone calls now to other more or less useless people.