In Which I Make A Happy And Sad Announcement

So you may have noticed that my posts have been rather devoid of actual content for the last few days.

I mean, I wrote about my laundry room, for Pete's sake.

That's because for the past week, we've been keeping a secret that I was waiting to share with you all.  Now that things have come to a conclusion, I think it's time to tell.

Up until this morning, we were bringing a newborn home in the next couple of weeks.

One week ago, on the day after I wrote the blog post about letting Sylvie go, we received an e-mail about a possible placement in the United States.  I'm not going to go into too much detail about the circumstances of the family because that's not my story to tell.  Suffice it to say that the child was a few days old and had been born with unexpected physical special needs that would require extensive medical care.  Though the child was an American citizen, the parents were of a different nationality and would be returning to their home country soon, where it would be very difficult for the child to receive the medical support he needed.  The family was making the extremely hard decision of choosing an adoption plan because they wanted to make sure their child had access to all of the medical support and services he would need as he grew up.  However, they wanted to remain very much a part of his life.  They needed to find a family quickly because of the limited time they could remain in the country.

It didn't take Jeremy and I very long after hearing about this little guy to make the decision that we wanted to try and become part of his family.  The baby boy fit almost perfectly the description of what we were looking for; he had treatable, physical special needs but probably would not have any cognitive or developmental delay.  His medical needs would be completely covered by our insurance and we already knew a lot about most aspects of the care he would require.  We would have a very open adoption with as much contact as the family was comfortable with, which we felt would be extremely beneficial for the baby.  Our family also already had strong connections with the heritage and nationality of this child.

While we wouldn't have been comfortable with the idea of switching over if we had already been matched with a child, right now we didn't have a placement in Thailand.  So we spoke with our adoption agency, who very graciously put our Thailand process on hold so that we could see whether or not we might be an acceptable family for this baby boy and told us that we could update our home study to reflect a domestic adoption and if it didn't work out, switch back without trouble.  We submitted our profile to the family's adoption agency, and they expressed an interest in us right away.

Over the next few days we exchanged e-mails and talked on the phone with the family about a wide range of topics dealing with adoption and parenting.  Yesterday afternoon we received an e-mail from them saying that they had chosen us as a family and were ready to relinquish their parental rights.  Everything seemed to be falling perfectly into place for us.

We spent the rest of yesterday caught up in a whirlwind of planning, making preliminary travel preparations as the baby was not in our state and trying to figure out exactly what we would need, as we'd been planning on bringing home a school-aged child next summer and were suddenly bringing home an infant next week.  We began calling our family and friends to give them the news.  We were extremely happy and excited, but that was tempered by the knowledge that the parents whose child we were preparing to welcome into our lives were probably experiencing the exact opposite emotions. 

Those of you with medically fragile children who didn't know that your child would be born with special needs probably remember all too vividly the nightmare of the first few days after your child's birth.  Now add the gut-wrenching grief of having to make an adoption plan for a much-wanted child on top of that and you have some idea of what this family was probably going through at the time.  While Jeremy and I cannot imagine what that possibly felt like, we were very aware of the fact that our happiness and joy was directly tied to someone else's pain.  That's a very sobering thought, and one of those unpleasant truths about adoption that I don't think any of us like to examine very closely.  But all the same we couldn't help but be joyful about the thought of getting the chance to be a part of this child's life.  So I guess you could say my feelings were mixed; I was happy for me, and I was sad for them.

This morning we got another e-mail from the family.  They changed their minds and have decided to parent.

So now I'm very happy for them because I know that this child will be very loved; I have no doubt they will be amazing, strong parents and advocates for him.   I don't know if circumstances changed or if they just decided that they'd work things out as they go along, but in any case this little boy will be part of a healthy family and will grow up knowing every day just how much his parents care for him.  I'm so glad that he will have the chance to experience that. 

But I'm sad for me.

We have now lost two adoption placements in the last three weeks.  I compared losing Sylvie to having a miscarriage, and this second loss feels much the same only I think it's hitting me harder just because everything has happened so quickly.  Once again we're saying goodbye to a child who is still alive.  Once again we will be starting over at the beginning of our adoption journey, a little more wary, our hearts a little more bruised.

I am not a person capable, I think, of holding myself back from loving these children before we ever know them even if it would save me a lot of heartache.  Jeremy is a little better at being able to keep himself at a distance, but it's just not part of my personality to be able to hold back reserves until the day we actually cross all the 't's, dot the 'i's and the child is actually, legally ours.  Once we make a commitment to adopt a child, that's it for me. 

And though it opens me up to a lot more pain, I can't think that loving these children could ever be a bad thing, even if we will never be a part of their lives like we expected.  It makes me wonder how many people are out there now walking around not knowing that they are thought of by a stranger now and again with love.  It's amazing to think about the invisible connections that tie us all together.  How could more love being directed at a child, even if it is never known about or returned, ever be anything but positive?  I know love isn't a finite resource; there's room in my heart for all these children, whether or not we ever meet.

So I allowed myself to have a sad day today; after I took Connor to school I spent a few hours in the bathtub, sobbing into a washcloth and eating Cherry Garcia ice cream directly out of the carton, and by the time I needed to go pick him up I felt a lot better.  It'll take us more than a few hours to recover, of course, but over the next few days we'll start the process of saying goodbye.  I'll create another ritual for myself (guess those owls will have company) so that I can have some closure, and I'll allow myself to process the fact that we won't be bringing this precious little guy home either but that I'll always think about him, wonder how he is doing, and love him.  And that's okay. 

And then when we're ready, Jeremy and I will sit down with the Waiting Child list and start the process of finding the next child to fall in love with. 

We've got room.

~Jess