So close

Apparently a 1 in 3 chance still isn’t good enough, as we have been passed over.  Sigh.

DEFCON 1 (take 2)

So it seems a new situation has arisen.  While I was out of the house attending a night class, the missus got a call from the agency.  There was a boy born today, and the birth mother has narrowed her choice of adoptive parents down to three couples.  Guess who one of those couples is (are?)?  Yeah, that would be us.  We thought there might be a decision tonight, but that’s not happening.  We should know tomorrow, and if she picks us we’ll be heading to the hospital to meet her.

We know next to nothing right now, other than the baby is Caucasian and the birth mother is looking for a semi-open adoption.  Oh, and the baby seems healthy and will be discharged on Thursday.

Updates to come…

Heart, Mind and Seoul: The Act of Giving Back: Should More Women Be Placing Their Children?

There’s not much I can add to this, other than to recommend it highly for reading.  Paula’s adoption blog is one of the few I make point of subscribing to, as hers is one of the more thoughtful ones out there.  She’s not afraid to tackle sensitive adoption issues like the one linked below, but does so in a non-confrontational way.  That’s a rare commodity out here on the internet.

Heart, Mind and Seoul: The Act of Giving Back: Should More Women Be Placing Their Children?.

Busy doin’ nothing (also, January ‘10 group time)

And so we have entered the adoption equivalent of the March sports season.  All the paperwork is done, we had our first close shave, and now we get to sit and…wait.  We had our January group session a few weeks ago, but nothing of major import was discussed.  We’re still tied for last place (yeah I know it’s not a competition, but it is in a tiny way), but that’s OK for now.

So really I’m just checking in so I don’t fall into the bad habit of not updating at all.  But as I said, nothing to see folks.  We’ll probably be planning some of our ‘10 vacations, so I’m sure that the second we book something out of state we’ll get the call.  At least there’s trip insurance.

Group time (December ‘09)

We had another cozy group last night – just one other couple and the father of an adoptee, but that’s cool since we’re all at a pretty comfortable point with each other.   Things are progressing nicely for everyone, and of course we shared our fun experience from last month.  The odd thing was that as I was recalling the events of that night, I was having some trouble with the details and sequence of events.  Now part of this can probably be chalked up to my somewhat questionable memory, but I found it funny that such a vivid and surreal experience was already fading away for me.

I suppose that’s a good thing, as it wouldn’t do to brood over it anyway.  I still feel that we made the right call for us, and to make things even better we did find out since that the baby was adopted by another couple.  So it worked out in the end.

Aside from that we didn’t have anything new to share because, well, not much has happened since then.  I expect the rest of the holidays to be pretty uneventful from an adoption standpoint, but those could be famous last words.

Another thing that struck me is how quickly time is passing for us and everyone in the group.  We’ve been going to this support group for just over a year, which hardly seems possible, and the couple in our group who have already adopted are quickly approaching their court finalization date!  Weird.  It seems like just yesterday they were bringing in their brand new baby for us to see.

I traced my dad… and discovered he is Charles Manson | The Sun |Features

We’ve all read stories about reunions between adoptees and their biological parents not going all that well, but this has to be up there with the worst of them.

 

I traced my dad… and discovered he is Charles Manson | The Sun |Features.

DEFCON 1 (take 1)

Last night figured to be a quiet and uneventful one.  I and the missus had some dinner, went to Staples for some stuff, and settled in to catch up on our DVR backlog.  Then around 9:30 the phone rang.  It was our agency case worker, and she had a situation for us.

And what a situation it turned out to be…

What we were presented with was this: there was a baby girl, who had been born the previous morning.  The birth mother was rather upset, and indicated that she not only didn’t want to meet the adoptive parents but she didn’t want any contact afterward.  The baby was biracial (Caucasian/African-American), and the mother had admitted to some cocaine use during the pregnancy.  That’s about all the info we had, but our case worker was on the way to the hospital to get more.  She told us to take an hour and think about it, then she would call us back for a decision.

One hour.  Just 60 minutes to make the biggest decision of our lives.  I think we were entitled to freak out a bit, so that’s just what we did.