The Excitement is Building

The excitement is building. With each day that passes, I am more excited. In just two short weeks, we will be holding our son or daughter. I can't wait. I really believe this is going to work out. I continue to pray for R and the decision she is making. I know it is really difficult on her and I hope she will have some peace knowing that her baby is already loved by us. D has been carrying around his stuffed wolf (Jackson) saying that Jackson is the little brother and he is practicing to be a big brother. Its so darn cute. He has been pretending that he is Jackson's big brother for months now but now he is practicing because he knows it will be true soon. I know he is going to be a great big brother. I just hope all of the changes are not too much for him to handle.

I just removed the adoption ticker at the bottom of my blog that said 11 month 1 week and 1 day waiting for a match. Our total wait was exactly 11 months. It seems like a whole lot longer than that. We have some last minute hurdles we need to get accomplished. We need our homestudy updated to allow us to adopt an hispanic baby but that was supposedly in the works well before we matched with R. I talked to our social worker yesterday and he is going to move our update to the top of his pile. We need to have it pretty soon after birth so as to not delay our ICPC approval.

The interstate aspect of all of this is interesting. Being a lawyer, I am really into how all of this will work (although I know NOTHING about adoption law). Our two lawyers - one from Georgia and one from Texas - are talking to determine which state's law will apply with respect to relinquishment time, etc. The laws of Texas are much more favorable to the adoptive parents. We should know more on that soon.

I am meeting with my three bosses (my supervisor, his boss and the second person in charge of our department) today to discuss how my matters will be handled while I am on leave. I intend to take 12 weeks off (8 weeks paid adoption leave and 4 weeks vacation). I have been scrambling to get a lot of projects wrapped up before I am out and spent most of yesterday cleaning off my desk and deleting messages from my inbox. Hopefully that meeting will go well.

I promised an update

It is looking more and more like we will be meeting our baby soon. We were selected by a birthmom (R) in Georgia to parent her baby. Our best estimate is that she is due on August 14 but she just went to her first prenatal appointment this past Saturday and they did not do an ultrasound so I am not sure about that due date. We had our match call yesterday and it went really well. R said she was secure in her decision to place the child for adoption and was praying a lot for peace. There is a langauge issue as R only speaks Spanish so we had a translator from our agency on the call. She has another doctor's appointment this coming Friday and an ultrasound this coming Saturday. We currently have weekly calls scheduled every Monday to find out about her doctor's appointments and how she is progressing. C and I are very anxious to find out the gender of the baby so we can go shopping. We gave away a lot of our baby stuff to a family member so we need to buy a new car seat, bassinet, and a lot of other stuff. Obviously if its a girl we have to buy a whole new wardrobe. Once R goes into labor, C, D and I will hop in the car and drive 15 hours to Georgia. We have to stay in Georgia for about 2 weeks after the baby is born to deal with the inter-state issues. D's birthday party (he is turning 5!) is scheduled for August 9 so if we are already in Georgia at that time, C and D will probably fly home for his party.

This is getting long and wordy but as you can tell, we have a lot on our plates and are struggling to clean out our junk room so we can totally rearrange all of the bedrooms in our house. Good news is that the baby will be in our room for a few months so we have some time to get all of that done.

Although we are excited, we are not as excited as I thought we would be. I think we are too worried about R changing her mind or something else happening to mess this up to be super excited. We have guarded hearts. We are praying a lot for R and the baby and I know that things will work out the way they are supposed to.

We've been picked!

We have been picked by a mother in Georgia. Her due date is August 14. I am cautiously optimistic. More later!

Horoscope

I am not one to normally read horoscopes let alone believe in them but I picked up a free copy of OK! Magazine somewhere and read this horoscope for last week that is actually pretty accurate.

Cancer: From Wednesday on, be alert to opportunities and be prepared to move fast. Certainly you're discouraged by recent events, but all in takes is one piece of good fortune to change things for the better. Your task is to recognize that luck, and to vanquish your doubts. You'll be particularly successful if you involve the person closest to you. In this case, two heads are worth twice as much.

Seems appropriate given my week last week.

Birthday Flowers

Chris sent me the prettiest pink roses today for my birthday. I thought I would share a picture. Sorry the picture is crappy but I took it with my blac.k.ber.rry.

Thank you Chris!

Crazy Day

I was actually looking forward to writing a post to update you on the news we got today. We got picked by a birth mom in our state but about 5 hours after we got the call I got another call to tell us that she had already changed her mind. Once our case worker called her back and told her how excited we were she started having second thoughts and her parents agreed to help her out so she decided that she wants to parent the baby girl after all. I guess we are "lucky" it happened now instead of right before the baby was born, or worse yet, after the baby was born, but it still hurts a little. At least we finally got picked. I was looking just this morning at a new agency and considering giving them a try. I think I'll stick with ours a bit longer and see what happens.

Birthday and Other Thoughts

My 38th (yikes!) birthday is on Wednesday (7/16) and when I look back at my life its pretty good. I am obviously not exactly where I wanted to be given that we still only have one kid, but overall things are pretty good. I have a great job that I love and that gives me a lot of flexibility. I have a husband that I love dearly. I have the most precious son I could have ever hoped for. He is truly a gift from God that I treasure every day.

Happy birthday to me!

Three Strikes

I met with the surgeon yesterday and he said that although he loves to perform surgery and would love to look more closesly at my strange anatomy, he did not think that surgery would help at all. He said that I have three things going against me: my uterine anomoly, my poor ovarian reserve and the adhesions. He did not think the benefits would outweigh even the remotest risk of surgery. This officially ends our TTC. I am more focused than ever in making our profile more appealing (although for the life of me, I can't find a reason why it is not appealing as it is).

The girl that my dad knows (see prior entries about her) is still interested in adoption (although she has not submitted any of the paperwork to our agency). I actually spoke to her a week or so ago and she is a really sweet. I continue to hope and pray that it works out with her. My two biggest concerns are the birth father (they are no longer together and do not get along at all and she is not sure he will consent to the adoption) and her lack of prenatal care. Based on the math that I did, her due date would be around early October but she hasn't seen a doctor other than going to the hospital when she was about 9 weeks. I am hoping that if we get officially matched, that our agency can help her get signed up for state insurance so she can get the care that she and the baby deserve. If you are the praying kind, please say a prayer for her and the baby. Even if she decides to parent herself, she needs prayers.