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.

I felt strangely calm and detached at first.  I of course had some questions and concerns, but initially I approached the matter as if it were a math problem that needed solving.  Then I remembered that I suck at math, and I started to get a little numb.  And then we started to scramble.  The first thing we wanted to know was what possible problems could arise as a result of in utero cocaine exposure.  So we did what any responsible parents-to-be would do – we consulted the internet.

And sure enough, cocaine exposure can be bad.  Like real bad.  And the problems that can arise from it may not even appear for a few years.  So right there we had a huge red flag.  Like one of those giant flags you see at a car dealership.

And then there was the biracial thing.  We’ve already had discussions around race, and had concluded that we only felt capable of so much in terms of raising a child with a mixed heritage.  And Caucasian/AA was one of the scenarios we didn’t think we were ready to take on.  But was that still true?  I have to say it was tempting, for just a moment, to disregard our prior decisions when faced with a real situation.

While all this stuff is swirling around, we’re trying desperately to get in touch with somebody, anybody who can give us an objective point of view.  We called another couple who we know had been involved with our counseling center and got the cell number of one of the social workers, but we got thrown into the purgatory of voice mail.  So essentially, we were left to make this decision all by ourselves.

Oh yeah, and it also occurred to us that we have no idea how to use a car seat.  We have one, and we know that it’s still well before its expiration date (apparently they have expiration dates…who knew?), but we have never actually tried to hook it up to one of our cars to see if we can work the damn thing.  Probably should get around to that soon.

An hour later, our case worker calls back and has a few more details for us.  The baby appears to be healthy, in that she wasn’t in the NICU or anything.  But there’s been no drug testing yet so who knows.  Also, it turns out that the birth mother is married but the birth father is not her husband.  But in the meantime, she had reconciled with her husband and I guess part of that reconciliation was her making the adoption plan.  She had been in touch with the agency over the summer but never committed to anything.

Now I’m wondering – how the hell do you convince a child who may already be dealing with rejection issues that the circumstances of their birth and adoption were anything but a huge clusterf***?  So add that to the list of things I wasn’t sure I could handle as an adoptive parent.

Anyway, with that extra information, we were given 10 more minutes to come to a final decision.

While we’re talking out the scenario and debating the pros and cons (no, we did not make a list), I started to realize something.  In the midst of all the concerns and fears, there were no positive feelings at all about the situation.  I’ve been in other stressful situations where, mingled with doubt and/or fear, I felt like things were right.  That wasn’t happening here.  I know that there are usually no guarantees with adoption, but I couldn’t point to one thing about the situation that made me feel like this was worth pursuing any further.  And I certainly didn’t want to be swayed by the possibility that we may not get another chance for a long time.

When we talked to the case worker for the last time, we let her know that we would have to pass.  She understood and we thanked her for giving us the chance to even consider this.  It just wasn’t the one for us, and as disappointed as we were that this wasn’t going forward we knew that we had made the right choice for us.

So now we move on and resume normalcy.  But for awhile at least, part of me will be thinking about that little girl and how close our lives came to intertwining.  And it was only one hour from happening.  Very surreal to say the least.