In honor of National Adoption Month, I am telling my adoption story for the first time in public (the raw, unedited, non-anonymous version…eep!). For part 1, go HERE.
Despite my newfound Zen, I was nervous.
Like, really nervous.
Weirdly, all of the emotions that are triggered with infertility reared their ugly heads if only for brief moments. The ol’ What IF thoughts. You know the ones.
What if we are rejected from every agency?
What if we shell out all of this money and we fail miserably?
What if we tell everyone we’re adopting, and it doesn’t work out?
What if…
What if…
What IF!
Gaaaahhhh!
Fortunately, those thoughts wouldn’t last long before I’d calmly redirect myself and focus on the things I could control in that moment. I gave myself permission to think, “Of COURSE nervous feelings came up, man! We’ve been through hell for all of these years trying to build our family!”
I was able to accept the feelings as they were, without berating myself, and without falling deeper down the rabbit hole.
I just allowed and moved on. Then…we announced to all of our family and friends that we were adopting. I still remember the shaking hands and emotional angst of hitting “send” on that email with this video attached.
Whew. I still get teary watching it.
It was about this time that I really got into looking for signs. I looked for signs everywhere to help guide us.
We had ruled out domestic adoption; there were many reasons for that.
But mostly, we knew that there was always the possibility of the birth parents retaining their right to parent after we had already fallen in love. We knew we couldn’t handle that kind of heartbreak. This wasn’t the only reason, but it was definitely in the top three. Bottom line, we were definitely going with international adoption.
Far beyond my penchant for Chinese fried rice, fortune cookies, and sushi, I was really interested in Asian culture. The belief systems, the history, the architecture, the way of life…just everything.
My husband’s only stipulation for a baby was that he or she be human. Then he told me about waiting in line at a store and noticing an Asian girl standing by herself. A man walked into the shop and she ran to him saying, “Daddy!” The man was Caucasian, and my husband remarked he couldn’t stop thinking about that being himself.
It was a sign.
There were more signs. Like my utter amazement that the numbers 3, 1, and 7 kept showing up (or some combination of those numbers). They were prominent to me, because 3/17 is my husband’s birthday, and I just noticed it everywhere. I’m not a numerologist or even in to numbers, but damn if they didn’t just keep flying in my face. Gas prices, football scores, license plates, repeatedly waking up at 3:17am, and the list goes on.
So, of course, I got all oh-em-gee-this-is-a-HUGE-sign when I saw those numbers emerge out of my Chinese fortune cookie.
“Obviously we have to play the lottery and adopt from an Asian country!” we (half) joked, even though the numbers weren’t in order.
Eh-hem. We began looking at Asian countries and their programs.
We had to heed the fortune cookie.
Incidentally, I jokingly played the lottery via a Christmas party game where I chose the lottery tickets.
I won $5,000.
We had to heed the fortune cookie.
For some reason, the Korean program really struck a chord with me. My left-brained self likes to say, “Oh it’s because they have such a wonderful foster care system with plenty of medical records.” But my right-brained, hippie self likes to say my soul pulled me in that direction.
Perhaps it’s both.
Remember, my husband just wanted a human, so we were good to go with Korea. I remember setting a clear intention that we would be adopting from Korea. And, just like trying to make a baby via IUI and IVF and PIO and blood draws and invasive “wands” checking you out every other day and no baby to show for it, we faced a ton of road blocks. Oh the emotional roller coaster!
We began with an adoption information session in New York City for the express purpose of finding out more about their Korean program and to obviously be invited to apply right then and there. We were psyched!
Even though we knew we would be scrutinized, we felt sure we were fantastic candidates.
We both held wonderful jobs, we owned a home, we had decent assets, our credit was great, we didn’t have the white picket fence, but we had the dog. Two dogs, actually. And two cats! Hmmmm…perhaps we’d leave that off the application.
Anyway….we were pumped.
Then during the seminar, we learned that Korea doesn’t accept applicants who had been in therapy the previous two years. (?????) I was floored. Um, WHAT? I’m a therapist! I love therapy! And I was only in therapy, because of stupid infertility, which is the reason I’m here in the first place, Korea! Are you kidding me?
We left that seminar completely bummed (<—understatement). NYC pizza made it slightly better.
And so it was for several months. I lost track of how many agencies we inquired about. All with similar results. If it wasn’t one “blemish” it was another that didn’t meet certain agencies’ guidelines.
We were beginning to feel totally unworthy of being parents.
And it hurt.
But, as the other side of fortune cookie said, we didn’t give up.
Finally, one summer day in August, I was out at a doctor appointment when I received a phone call from Holt International. I had sent them an email weeks prior and never heard back, so I was confused as to why they’d be reaching out to me. I took the call in my car, and a flood of relief came over me when the director explained that she didn’t believe the therapy was an issue at all. I explained our other supposed blemishes, and she poo-pooed those as well.
Okay, so… Remember the sign thing?
Right. Well. As the director and I were talking, the weirdest thing happened the likes of which I had only experienced in California along the San Andreas fault. Uh, yeah. The director paused in the middle of her sentence to say, “I’m sorry, this is so unprofessional, but my building is shaking.” Then my car began to shake in the parking lot.
That’s right kids, a friggin’ EARTHQUAKE! In New Jersey!
The last time an earthquake of this magnitude happened in NJ was 1884. O. M. G. Now. I felt this was a sign. But was it good or bad? Remember, I was in a Zen state, so I went with good. As I always say, all things being equally possible, why focus on the bad? Right? I mean, why torture ourselves?
So, it was a good 5.9-on-the-Richter-Scale sign. I would’ve shit my pants if it was a 3.17.
Finally we could move forward, and we happily did That’s when they lowered the boom on us. Boom = Application Paperwork. Holy crap, what a ton of work! Everything from medical records to housing history to income and credit and wow. I’m shocked they didn’t require DNA samples! And this was only the application.
But shoot, I handled infertility. I’m practically Superwoman now.
Once the application was in, we waited anxiously for our clearance for homestudy. You know what a homestudy is, right? It’s the thing where the social worker comes to your house and basically scrutinizes all of the ways in which you will fail BIG TIME in parenthood.
Just kidding.
People like to make the homestudy some big nerve-wracking thing.
I mean, don’t get me wrong. You don’t want your social worker to sit in dog hair or cat puke, and it would be nice to offer them a glass of water. But, this isn’t as big of a deal as one would think.
Just be you. Which means being awesome. Right?
November came, and we were cleared for homestudy! A monumental milestone to us after all of the work locating an agency in the first place. The social worker was wonderful, and said we should expect an answer back come January. So we went about our holiday business shopping, decorating, parties, eating Korean food in NYC. You know…the usual.
Then we got a lovely early Christmas present.
APPROVED!
We went on vacation that Christmas to Lake Tahoe and celebrated our new approved status with our family. It was the best Christmas in the longest time!
And by this time, I actually felt Korean. No really.
I was cooking Korean food, I picked up Rosetta Stone, I was watching Korean dramas, oh! And I watched this video over and OVER again about the Seoul subway system. Still cracks me up.
Seriously, ya gotta love that little jingle.
I just KNEW my baby was in Korea. Have you ever had that feeling? The one where you just know? Sometimes you have to quiet down your thoughts long enough to feel it, but it’s there.
The new year came, and we were plugging along with the Mount Everest of paperwork. I personally think Adoption Paperwork should be classified as an Olympic sport. It requires some serious Herculean effort and endurance. Meanwhile, I was becoming more Korean as the days passed.
Then one day in April, we got a phone call that brought me to my knees.
Korea had changed their program, and we would no longer qualify. We needed to either consider switching programs or be in a holding pattern for at least a year.
At least a year.
I heard those words as if in a huge amphitheater, where the pounding sound waves echoed back and forth repeatedly in my over-sensitive ears.
And I crumbled. Literally and figuratively. For a solid couple of hours, I was IF Maria. The one where the crushing pain of loss and infertility is overwhelming, and relief must be gotten by any desperate means.
So my psyche decided to alternate between numb and desperate until I found relief in the form of problem solving. “Okay,” I said to my husband, “Let’s figure out what it would take to switch programs. I’m not waiting a year.”
He agreed, and we were off looking at the China program, talking to various people who had adopted from there. We talked to one couple in particular who had switched programs themselves, and they are still our friends — bonus! Frankly, I was just going through the motions of problem solving.
Inside, I simply felt my baby was in Korea. Some part of me couldn’t let it go.
Shortly thereafter, I was driving to work when I came across a Korean Church. Weirdly, I hadn’t really noticed it before. I mean I knew there was a church on that corner, but I didn’t know it was Korean. Something made me pay attention that day. In particular, I noticed the mailbox.
The address? Yeah. You know.
317.
What happened next will blow your mind. It still blows our minds, and we lived it.
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