Not just any baby will do

One of the forms we had to fill out to help match us with a birthmother related to what we wanted and were willing to accept as far as the child goes.  Some questions were easy.  We said we'd accept either gender and any racial make up.  Beyond that it required a bit more soul searching. 

We had a list of diseases/possible birth defects/other things that we had to consider.  We talked to doctor friends and looked stuff up on the internet and talked about a lot of things we never thought we'd have to consider when having a child.  Ultimately we crossed several things off our list of what we would accept but we still left quite a bit that we'd consider.  At times this felt pretty crappy because it's hard to want a baby desperately but to have to admit that we don't want just ANY baby.  But, whether it's a rationalization or legitimate reasoning, we were ok with our choices because we gave up a whole lot of control by choosing this route and this was one way that we could reassert some control over the situation.  All of the information we got from birth mothers was self reported so we knew we'd never be 100% sure that the information we had would be accurate anyway. 

At one point we were given the chance to be considered by a pregnant woman who had an STD.  I got the information about the birthmother while I was at work and I remember looking up the disease and saying rather loudly in my very open work environment, "well, if you're going to have an STD, that's the one you want."  Fortunately my co workers all knew what we were going through and they assumed my comment was related to an adoption rather than marital problems at home. 

After all this was done and our wait officially began we tried to distract ourselves as best as we could.  One of my favorite distractions was a trip we made to NYC just after Thanksgiving in 2013.  We met up with some old friends and had a great time playing for a few days.  One of our friends is very tall and this is me wearing his coat and hat before we headed out for the day.   

 And a more serious picture of the two of us. We saw a couple of plays and  went to some museums and went to mass at St. Patrick's and walked all the way back to our hotel one night while Stewart and Dan sang loudly in the street and ate great steaks and pizza and laughed and just had a great time. 

Little did we know on that trip to NYC that our birth mother was there too, pregnant with our Gavin and trying to decide what to do. 

*side story...last night after we put Gavin to bed he didn't fall asleep.  He wasn't fussy but he wasn't falling asleep so I went up to cuddle him a bit.  Usually when I have to do this he pushes away from me after a minute and asks to be put down and then he falls asleep.  But this time he put his head on my shoulder and we just snuggled.  Then he asked for his beanbag so we laid down there.  He asked for a blanket and had brought his stuffed lynx.  Then we smiled at each other and had kisses and talked for a few minutes and then he fell asleep blowing me kisses.  It was maybe the greatest thing ever.  I think I promised him a pony but fortunately he forgot about it this morning. 

Paperwork and Meetings

Back to the story of Gavin...

Once we'd decided to move forward with adoption and chosen a local agency in Buffalo to do our homestudy we paid them a load of money for the pleasure of doing a bunch of paperwork.  We had to be fingerprinted, supply 20+ years of addresses (big thanks here to my dad who remembered the address we lived at for 6 months when I was 8 and to Stewart for keeping a record of his addresses while he was a missionary in France for 2 years), find people to write recommendation letters for us, and take classes on how to not be sucky parents. 

We chose my brother and his wife to write our family recommendation letter, and three couples who are long time family friends to write the non family letters.  We never saw the letters but from what our social worker said, they were all very positive. 

After all the paperwork was done and our background checks came back (clean, I might add!) we were assigned a social worker who was with us the rest of the way until we matched with our birth mother.  I met with individually one evening, Stewart met with her individually the next evening and she came to our home to meet with us together the following Saturday.  She said it was always interesting to meet couples alone and then to see how they interact together.  She said that it's especially interesting to see who was the alpha in a relationship, but that she could always tell.  At the end of our meeting I asked her who was the more strong one in our marriage and she thought for a minute and then admitted that she couldn't tell.  I take that as a compliment. 

Another high point to the meeting with the social worker was when she asked us about our hopes for our child.  I told her that I'm sure that everyone she meets with gave her an answer like wanting their child to go to a good college, have a career they love, and someday have a family of their own.  So instead I told her that I wanted my child, boy or girl, to throw a baseball well.  She said she had never gotten that answer before.  Before she came over, she told us not to stress out about the meeting.  She said she had a morning meeting once where the couple had baked a ham so their house smelled good.  She told us that was not necessary but I still thought about making cookies.  In the end I decided against it in favor or going for a run to reduce my stress.  And the meeting went really well. 

At this point all we had to do was to take the classes required by the agency.  We had class on Friday night for four hours or so and then all day on Saturday.  Some of it was kind of absurd but I left the first night feeling like our fertility issues were fairly small.  It's amazing how personal you can get when you know you're coming from a similar starting point.  With other women I met that night I discussed  miscarriages, missing ovaries, drugs, surgeries, etc.  Stewart and other husbands discussed almost losing their wives to these things.  It felt kind of like a sick support group.  One social worker started her presentation by asking how many of us had seen the movie Juno (all of us).  She then told us to throw that idea out of our minds because that never happens. 

At one point we did some role playing in groups of three or four couples.  One of the situations our group had was to show how we would deal with our parents treating our adopted child different from their other non-adopted grandchildren.  The other couples were very diplomatic and said that they would sit their parents down and explain how that hurts them.  For us that didn't really feel right.  Our families already knew that we expected them to treat our child just as well as they treat their other grandkids and if they ever didn't we would sever our relationship with the offending parent.  We wouldn't let our kid be around someone who would treat them poorly just because he's adopted.  Fortunately this isn't something that is an issue in our family at all.  I actually kind of feel like Gavin is especially special to all of his grandparents and I feel kind of bad for his cousins.  But they get to hang out with him so it's still a win for them. 

Anyway, after the classes and the paperwork and the meetings with the social worker we were set.  Stewart graduated from law school on May 18, 2013 and when I stopped at home between lunch and the ceremony I found a letter in our mailbox saying that we were approved by the state of New York to bring a baby home.  It made a great day even greater.  But then began the looking and the waiting.  More on that later. 

(I couldn't find a photo of me with Stewart at his graduation but this is him with four of his closest law school classmates.  I will forever love these guys and their families.  And now I miss them all over again) 

Coping

This is kind of an intermission in the story of how Gavin came to be ours but it's been on my mind a lot lately and I feel like I need to get it out. 

Throughout all of the infertility and adoption stuff we went through there were some really rough moments.  Most of those came after the second ectopic pregnancy though when the fertility procedures early on didn't work I hit some low moments as well.  I remember going to bed early after a failed IUI a time or two.  I was bummed after I had surgery to find and correct a problem because the doctor didn't find anything wrong. 

After the first ectopic pregnancy I actually felt pretty good, emotionally.  It gave me hope that I could get pregnant and maybe it was just  fluke that it was ectopic.  But the second one just about did me in.  I woke up in the night to some pretty bad pain, thinking this one had ruptured too.  I thought for a few minutes about just letting it kill me.  Like I said, just about did me in, literally.  Ultimately it was the thought of Stewart being widowed that got me out of bed and to the hospital.  It turned out to not have ruptured and to just have been the ectopic dissolving so it wouldn't have killed me, but I couldn't promise that I would make the same choice if I found myself in the same situation again.  Quite honestly, if we hadn't found Gavin I probably would have tried to get pregnant again and either it would have been a healthy pregnancy or I would have let it kill me.  Like I said, just about did me in, literally. 

So my downward spiral really got started toward the end of August 2012.  Maybe it was because the second miscarriage happened right when the first pregnancy would have been due.  Maybe it was because I was just worn down from all of it.  Maybe it was extra hard because Stewart was still in law school and I tried to not demand too much of his time.  Either way, this is pretty much when things go real for me.  I spent the next year and a half trying to keep myself going so as not to lose myself entirely.  Below are some of the things that helped me get through it until Gavin was born and placed in my arms. 

Do something to move the process forward.  Even though you may not be able or ready for in vitro or adoption, do something so that you don't feel helpless.  I researched adoption agencies and grants and ultimately pressured Stewart into starting the process sooner than he would have liked.  (I'm normally pretty high maintenance but I image that I took it to exponential levels at this time).  Once we were approved I worked on the blog we used for pr.  I took some solo trips to Palmyra and Niagara Falls and around town to put together a post here and there. 

Throw yourself into something, hopefully something healthy or otherwise productive.  This worked kind of as a diversion for me.  I turned to two things to take up my extra time and attentions.  The first was my job.  I was fortunate to have a job that could be very demanding and time consuming.  And I loved what I did and the people I worked with.  And it paid off in the form of raises and promotions and even more career satisfaction.  Things were especially stressful between the time our birth mother picked us and the day Gavin was born.  Which worked out well in that work got crazy busy about a week before we met her.  I worked late and weekends and found a lot of solace at Synacor.  My coworkers were some of my best sounding boards. 
The second thing I turned to was running and exercising.  I logged a lot of miles on the streets of Buffalo and watched a lot of netflix while lifting weights in the morning.  It was  great way to use up extra energy and it gave me something with real, tangible results.  I lost about 20 pounds in the nine months that Gavin gestated.  Not many women can say that about their baby. 

Give up things that make your life more difficult or cause undue pain.  This has probably had the longest lasting effects for me.  A few months after the second ectopic my little sister got pregnant.  I spoke to her in January when she told me she was pregnant.  After that I don't think I spoke to her until Gavin was born, 14 months later.  Stewart suggested a few times that I call her but I just couldn't bring myself to do it.  I couldn't ask her about her pregnancy without saying something awful.  In the midst of this my little brother got married and Stewart wasn't able to go to the wedding.  I seriously thought about not going and I still kind of wish I hadn't.  Even still, I only saw my family for the actual wedding and I got out of there as quickly as possible.  It was especially hard to have my mom make such a big deal about the baby.  I think my other sister seriously thought that I was in the process of divorcing myself from the family for good and for all I know I would have severed all ties by now if we were still childless. 
The other big thing I gave up was church and church related worship.  Mormon church can be very family oriented and members can be kind of tone deaf with questions or comments or lessons.  I don't know how many times I left a talk or a lesson because I couldn't take one more comment about how motherhood was the most wonderful thing ever (which it is, for me now!) or how our pain can be lessened by believing or worshiping or praying because it didn't work for me.  I came to the point where it only caused pain so I cut it out.  We still went to church some and to Stewart's credit he kept us reading scriptures (though we threw out the Old Testament) and praying though my participation waned.  But I had no heart in it.  I know that there are some who will disagree with this but it is my experience. 

And the final thing that saved me through all this was Stewart.  He is forever my rock and a great source of strength and reason.  He deserves far better than me but I hope he never realizes it.  In the end I decided that I needed to do what I had to in order to keep myself alive and (kind of) sane so that I could come out on the other side.  And I did.  And I have the greatest little guy because of it.  See, amazing.  And he climbs in  my lap with a book and runs to me at the end of the day.   

Why Adoption?

Like most couples, adoption was not our first choice of how we would have children, but over time it became what made the most sense to us, and what we felt gave us the best chance at a child.  After 10 years of infertility, which included all sorts of tests and treatments and surgery, we finally got pregnant...twice.  But each of those ended in early miscarriage.  I still can't really wrap my head around being pregnant.  At this point a positive pregnancy test only means a lot of worry, near daily blood tests, and loss so I'm not terribly interested in it.  

There's also the cost factor.  Because of the nature of my miscarriages (both ectopic and nearly life ending), if we ever want to get pregnant we will need to do in vitro.  Which is pretty expensive and at best only gives you a 30% chance of having a baby.  And then there's all the emotional baggage for me that results from a positive pregnancy test as well as the crazy that ensues when I'm on fertility meds. 

We had friends offer to surrogate for us, but that's a legally gray area, and that wouldn't be much different from in vitro, except it would use someone else's uterus.  As far as we know my uterus is fine and it never made sense to use a surrogate unless we knew that I couldn't do it for us. 

The biggest hurdle I had to overcome, was to change my focus and obsession from getting pregnant to having a child.  The miscarriages helped this a lot.  During my brief pregnancies, I had time to actually think about having a baby and being a mom.  And I still wanted it.  So much.  

So we started looking in to adoption.  We found a local agency and attended orientation and started the paperwork.  I probably pushed us faster on this than Stewart was comfortable with, because he was still in law school and was super busy with that, and his internship, and he still had to take the bar and find a permanent job after that.  And then I only added to his stress by freaking out about having a baby and needing to get going on it NOW.  For this and many other reasons, my husband is worthy of far better of a wife.  But that's another topic all on its own. 

Over the years people have told us that we could always "just adopt" but I assure you that it is not that simple.  It took a lot of soul searching before we were even ready to being the process.  Then we had to do all the paperwork and attend the classes before the state would even allow us to adopt a child.  And then we had to create profiles and print profile books and wait for an expectant mother to be interested in us and then we had to consider situations, all of which are less than perfect, and then we had to have contact with expectant mothers who were interested in us, and then we had to pull ourselves out of the abyss that comes after another couple was chosen instead of us and to not over-analyze everything we said in the phone conversation and psych ourselves us for doing it all again and again and again until we're maybe picked.  It's rough.  Really rough at times.  So we didn't "just adopt" but we did adopt. 

But it's what we needed to do and I'm forever grateful to our birth mother for selecting us.  Gavin is worth everything we did to bring him home, a million times over.  I honestly don't think my love for him would be any different if he had come out of my body, and I've even had a few moments where I forget that I didn't birth him or carry him for nine months. 

The Very Long Tale of How Gavin Became a Forbes

I recorded a brief version of this story on facebook but I want, and probably need, to get a more complete record of this somewhere and facebook is a little too public.  I don't necessarily want to keep anyone from reading this, I just want to know who's reading it.  Please feel free to share our story with anyone, especially if they're in the midst of infertility or adoption drama of their own. 

It was a long road and at times I felt like we would never have a baby and I wished that I just would be happy with what I had.  But I wasn't and we kept at it and and eventually we got our Gavin.  We have many friends who have taken different routes to parenthood and others who are still working toward it and others who had to give up their dreams of motherhood or fatherhood.  My heart aches for those who want children or more children and have to work a bit harder to get there.  I still remember the pain and tears and frustrations.  

My plan is to tell our story Reader's Digest style, in fits and starts based on how much time I have available and what I feel like sharing on any given day.  Parts may very well be tmi for some but, again, I feel like I need to get this out.  I apologize if any of it is too raw, or if I offend in any way.  I also have some thoughts about motherhood and working while mothering and insecurities and the struggles and rewards of being a mom.  But hopefully we can take comfort in the fact that our story has a happy ending in a perfect, beautiful little boy who is making my dreams come true every day.  

So, for now, enjoy a photo of Gavin.  It's old and I don't think it fully captures the level of awesome that he brings now, but it reflects his newborn awesome pretty well. 

Help?

Stewart graduated from law school on Saturday.  It was a pretty great day and a huge accomplishment.  But that wasn't the only milestone we reached on Saturday.  On my way out the door to commencement, I found in our mailbox, the official approval of our adoption home study.  We can now say that we are home study ready and can bring a baby home as soon as we find him/her.  So...

Help us find our child?  Please?

We're still putting the final touches on our profile with lds social services but we've met with them and are working with them so we can be matched there or through our local agency, or privately.  So while we wait for our profile to go up, we've started a new blog, http://carolynandstew.blogspot.com/, and email address, carolynandstew at gmail dot com, just for adoption purposes.   Feel free to share these however you can. 

Thanks! 

I guess I've got it easy

Sometimes something happens to give me a little perspective, to remind me that I have it so easy.  Sure, infertility has been rough and two ectopic pregnancies in one year is horrible and awful and terrible but I still have it easier than a lot of people out there. 

The happenings at an elementary school in Connecticut last week once again reminded me that I am not vulnerable to some degrees of pain right now.  And the thought of being that vulnerable scares the heck out of me.  Believe me, I am sooo sad about what happened and if I knew one of the kids who was killed I would be even more so, but I honestly can't imagine what those moms and dads are going through.  I can't imagine the pain they feel or the depths of their sorrows.  I feel sick to my stomach but I realize that it's not even close to the same thing. 

Throughout the years I've sometimes wished that I didn't have this desire to have a kid, that I could be fully happy with what I have.  I've wished that God would take this yearning from me if it's not ever to be fulfilled.  And then maybe I could be happy with what I have.  But I keep coming back to wanting to be a mom, even though it sounds crazy sometimes to want to give so much of myself. 

And sometimes I think that all this is so not fair, when I see people who have kids who I think are less deserving than we are (like I can really judge that).  But then, sometimes, I also realize that it's ok that it's not really fair because I sure don't deserve the good things I have in my life.  I don't deserve the husband I have who is spending his first night on break from school cleaning the bathroom, or the educational and professional opportunities I've had, or the amazing parents and siblings that I have, not to mention all the people that have done so much to help bear our burdens this year especially.

What I'm saying is that I'm incredibly blessed even though that doesn't always come through here, but I do know it at least on some level.  

In fact, here' s a photo to show just some of those things that are awesome about my life: 

1.the Husband is amazing.  2.my sister and her husband (not pictured here) came to visit.  3.we got to go to Toronto 4.we knocked another baseball park off our list 5.ballpark hotdogs  6.we had a beautiful walk from the ballpark to our hotel through Toronto. 7.I didn't die in January so I was able to enjoy all of these things in August.  I could go on but I won't.