i'm a hermit (duh) and adoption ... stuff
In news that is entirely not new and probably doesn't even merit the name "news" at this point, I'm still being a hermit. I have no words. I don't know why, I just don't. As this has been ongoing for a year or so, I don't know when to expect it to end. I've considered trying to make myself sit down and do a post a day sort of thing, even if it's just a grocery list. As I don't have the discipline to make myself take lifesaving asthma medicines or pregnancy-preventing birth control pills (back when that was a concern) every day, the likelihood of my sticking to a writing regimen is smaller than a nasty allergen-pooping dust-mite and quite possibly smaller than a sperm. Being a perfectionist, if I won't stick with it, I won't start it. Conundrum, you see?
Last week we took our first formal step toward the adoption process. We attended an orientation and picked up our paperwork. There is much latitude for the agencies in how they arrange the fees and what services they offer in return. I mean broader than Dallas and Fort Worth put together latitude. The research on which agency to pick has been as overwhelming as figuring out whether we wanted to adopt in the first place.
The agency we've chosen was recommended by friends, but research backs it up and my feeling about it is positive. More importantly, since I'm one of those stereotypical engineers who traded in what little intuition i had for the diploma, Rose has a positive feeling about them, too. There are a number of agencies, so i hear, that treat prospective adoptive parents like so many red-shirts on a starship. This agency is neither the cheapest nor the most expensive, but they seem to try to protect the financial and emotional interests of the adoptive parents as much as can be done given the great uncertainty under which they work.
Aside from their financial policies, the staff at the office did a thorough job making us all comfortable about the sometimes-sticky topic of expressing our preferences. How hard can it be to express your preferences? It's just some ticky boxes on a form, right? Nearly anonymous? Well, it IS hard. Most of the people who find themselves in the offices of an adoption agency have been through an infertility struggle already by the time they get there. Once you've spent the year or two or three that most people spend working through infertility, the mindset that you can't be too choosy and you're running out of time starts to really take hold. On the one hand, you want a "good" child, whatever that means to you, and on the other, you've spent so many nights in the dark making deals with your god and yourself and your hormonal clock that you're willing to take on any child, just to fill the hole in your arms. Traffic engineers have a word for this phenomenon: gap acceptance. It means that the longer you sit trying to merge into busy traffic passing you by, the smaller an open window in that traffic you think you need. Your insistence on margins of safety drops as your impatience rises.
The same thing happens with adoption. The longer you've been trying to make it happen, the less picky about HOW and WHEN and AT WHAT COST you become. One thing agencies make abundantly clear to you when you're asking them how long this might take is that the choosier you are, the longer it will be. The agency orientation lady had amusing stories to tell about couples waiting two years for a baby with blonde-haired, blue-eyed birth parents, and ending up with a dark-haired child even so.
We have no criteria for sex or race, our families are open and accepting and so are we. But then, what about maternal drug use? What if the mother fails a drug test? What if she admits to drinking? Smoking? turns up HIV+? Has Herpes? You have to quantify just how okay you are with all of these things and various handicaps and birth defects, too.
This shit is hard. And we haven't even gotten to the "how do I get them to sleep through the night" stage, let alone potty training or being a teenager.
Last week we took our first formal step toward the adoption process. We attended an orientation and picked up our paperwork. There is much latitude for the agencies in how they arrange the fees and what services they offer in return. I mean broader than Dallas and Fort Worth put together latitude. The research on which agency to pick has been as overwhelming as figuring out whether we wanted to adopt in the first place.
The agency we've chosen was recommended by friends, but research backs it up and my feeling about it is positive. More importantly, since I'm one of those stereotypical engineers who traded in what little intuition i had for the diploma, Rose has a positive feeling about them, too. There are a number of agencies, so i hear, that treat prospective adoptive parents like so many red-shirts on a starship. This agency is neither the cheapest nor the most expensive, but they seem to try to protect the financial and emotional interests of the adoptive parents as much as can be done given the great uncertainty under which they work.
Aside from their financial policies, the staff at the office did a thorough job making us all comfortable about the sometimes-sticky topic of expressing our preferences. How hard can it be to express your preferences? It's just some ticky boxes on a form, right? Nearly anonymous? Well, it IS hard. Most of the people who find themselves in the offices of an adoption agency have been through an infertility struggle already by the time they get there. Once you've spent the year or two or three that most people spend working through infertility, the mindset that you can't be too choosy and you're running out of time starts to really take hold. On the one hand, you want a "good" child, whatever that means to you, and on the other, you've spent so many nights in the dark making deals with your god and yourself and your hormonal clock that you're willing to take on any child, just to fill the hole in your arms. Traffic engineers have a word for this phenomenon: gap acceptance. It means that the longer you sit trying to merge into busy traffic passing you by, the smaller an open window in that traffic you think you need. Your insistence on margins of safety drops as your impatience rises.
The same thing happens with adoption. The longer you've been trying to make it happen, the less picky about HOW and WHEN and AT WHAT COST you become. One thing agencies make abundantly clear to you when you're asking them how long this might take is that the choosier you are, the longer it will be. The agency orientation lady had amusing stories to tell about couples waiting two years for a baby with blonde-haired, blue-eyed birth parents, and ending up with a dark-haired child even so.
We have no criteria for sex or race, our families are open and accepting and so are we. But then, what about maternal drug use? What if the mother fails a drug test? What if she admits to drinking? Smoking? turns up HIV+? Has Herpes? You have to quantify just how okay you are with all of these things and various handicaps and birth defects, too.
This shit is hard. And we haven't even gotten to the "how do I get them to sleep through the night" stage, let alone potty training or being a teenager.