The Adoption Process: Hurry Up and Wait

The adoption process, whether domestic infant, international, or foster care, can best be defined as hurry up and wait.

It involves paperwork, deadlines, urgent emails, frantic cleaning, and important phone calls. It also involves a lot (a LOT) of waiting. Much of our process has gone this way. We check our email constantly, clear our schedules as much as possible, and spend late nights surrounded by paperwork to turn things in as quickly as we can.

And then, we wait. County and agency workers are busy, and have a number of parents and children on their case loads to communicate with and make decisions about. Things are being discussed and considered behind the scenes, and that takes time. Not to mention the chaos of trying to coordinate meetings of anywhere from two to a thousand people.

Now here comes the BUT…

BUT sometimes, things move quickly and there isn’t much time to wait. For whatever reason, county workers find themselves in a situation where they need to find an adoptive family quickly, and certain families get swept up in that process. Suddenly, it’s a lot more hurry up than it is wait.

Now here comes the SO…

SO two weeks ago, we learned the names of our future children. I’ll let that sink in for a minute (it’s still sinking in over here, too).

Let me preface this by saying, at our new year’s family meeting, we chose our word of the year: SLOW. We decided to give ourselves over fully to the wait, to take things as they came, to program our schedules less so we had more time to breathe. But life doesn’t like to wait, it likes to surprise you.

Okay so, there we are, all ready to go SLOW…and we get an email from our social worker on a Thursday with the public profiles of two little boys who needed an adoptive family quickly. Although we only had a few sentences about them, we both immediately texted each other and shared that we felt there was something special about these boys, like this might be it. Within minutes we replied and told our worker to submit our home study for consideration.

On Monday, we heard that the kids’ workers would like a phone call with us and our worker. On Tuesday, we said yes, we’d love to move forward into collateral meetings. On Wednesday, we heard they wanted to move forward with us too. On Thursday, we heard they’d like the boys to visit for respite care Friday through Sunday (which is highly unorthodox…as I’ve mentioned before, you typically don’t meet your children until you are fully official and have said yes to adoption).

That all means that just eight days after reading their names for the first time, we met our boys. They slept in our home, we played, we read books, we ate meals together, we had bath time. These cherished moments that we have been anxiously awaiting for over two years were happening, right this second. By Sunday evening when we dropped them back off to their foster family, we knew that there was nothing in the world you could do or say to convince us that these two little souls were not meant to find ours. We missed them before they had unbuckled their seatbelts.

Since then, we’ve had two more follow up calls and created a tentative transition plan. We will have a few more overnight visits, and then in a few short weeks, they will move in. For good. After so much wait, it’s time to hurry up. Time to make their room a little cozier, to have their favorite foods on hand, to prepare our hearts and home for a constant presence, to catch up on sleep! To have one last late night out just the two of us before we insulate ourselves at home for a while to bond as a family, before we become Mom and Dad, forever.

This is exciting, and terrifying, and surreal. This is fun and hard. This is the craziest and best thing we will ever do. So here we go–here’s to hurry up and wait, to this gentle and wild life, to our sons.

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Precipice

Suspended (in disbelief)

Teetering on the edge

Terrified to move forward

Unwilling to turn back

Water rushing…somewhere

Tides churning far below

Or waves surging from behind

Bound to take me with them

Ears ringing

Mind vibrating

Heart thumping

Arms outstretched

Step.

I Could Never Say No

Person: “How did the match meeting go?”

Me: “Thanks for asking, it was really informative. But unfortunately, I don’t think we are the right fit for this child.”

Person: “Ugh, I could never, ever say no to any child.”

---

How would you respond?

A) Start some shit. “Well, I did kick it off with a pretty huge yes by pursuing adoption in the first place.”

B) Verbal eye roll. “Wow, you MUST be a MUCH better person than me then. I just find it SO incredibly easy to say no to children in need.”

C) Get real. Spend the next half hour delving into the complexities of a broken system and pouring out feelings of grief, shame, sadness, disappointment, and longing.

D) Say nothing.

The thing is, I could never say no either. But I have to. 

After each match meeting, we have to do something incredibly hard: picturing our life, day in and day out, forever, with that child, as best as we can with the limited information we have. How many appointments will we have throughout the week with therapists, OT, skills workers, and teachers? Will school be a struggle, or sleep, or meals, or something else, or all of the above? What things will be trauma triggers for them, and are we prepared to parent them through the healing process? Are we ready to welcome not just this child, but their birth family, whatever that may look like and whatever may come with that, intimately into our personal lives? Can we say yes to this child, now and in all of their future forms?

Then, after all of that, sometimes we have to do something even harder: we have to say no. We have to grieve the fact that for whatever reason, we weren’t enough for this child. We have to sit in the discomfort of knowing that our decision kept a child in the system a little longer. We have to send the worst email ever, cry together, and pray over this child, their birth family, their support team, and their foster family. We have to break the hearts of our friends and family by telling them this wasn’t the right fit. Then we have to rally ourselves to start all over again.

I have learned that there is much joy, hope, and excitement wrapped up in saying yes, but there is even more guilt, sadness, and disappointment wrapped up in saying no. It feels icky and wrong. It is laced with platitudes like “You have to do what’s best for you AND the child,” and “Just think, your no got them one step closer to their forever family.” It results in feeling like I was stabbed in the heart when someone says “Oh, I could never say no to any child. I don’t know how you do it.” This is how I do it. Painfully.

So please, of all the things you could say to me about this process, PLEASE don’t tell me you could never say no. Trust me, neither could I.

Yesterday

We heard no.

Yesterday was hard, but yesterday’s tomorrow is harder, because now we cope with the aftermath of yesterday. It took me a long time to convince myself not to just stop writing after that sentence, We heard no. It took us a long time to convince ourselves not to just stop this whole thing altogether. Forget roller coasters, I feel like I was living in zero-gravity and someone turned the gravity back on and suddenly slammed me to the floor. My stomach is still somewhere up there and hasn’t caught up with me yet.

But there’s no time to be wasted in this process; before we even hung up the phone after our worker told us the news, we had already told her to reach out as soon as possible about all the children we had missed out on while we were waiting for this one. The time for processing your feelings needs to come AFTER business hours, there are emails to be sent.

Like every place we visit in adoptionland, we are tasked with making space for so many feelings at once. The sting of rejection, the anxiety of worthiness, the sadness and joy that comes with knowing a child found a family, but we weren’t it. The frustration of their justifications, and frustration at ourselves that there is nothing we can do about them. The fear and pain knowing there are many, many more nos to come before we will hear just one yes. How many more times will I have to say it? We heard no. We heard no. We heard no.

We’ll take the weekend to sulk, and try to retrieve the hope that yesterday’s today held. Next week’s children, next month’s children, deserve our whole selves. But those are our next week, next month selves, and our “this weekend” selves are just going to choose one feeling…sad.

Today

Maybe I’m just a glutton for punishment, but I want to hold on to this feeling, in case I forget someday.

As I explained in my previous post, there are a lot of stops along the way in this process where decisions have to be made, both by us and by a child’s team. Think of it like the Game of Life: stop here, even if you didn’t land here exactly, and make a decision on whether to get married, which house to buy, etc. Bad metaphors aside, if the answer given by us and the answer given by the child’s team match up, we move forward together, until the next time we stop and decide again.

Two and a half weeks ago we had a match meeting for a child. It was actually our very first match meeting, ever. Even though we felt excited about this child, we weren’t sure if we should move forward because…well, most people don’t marry the first person they date. What if we were just excited because this was our first meeting? How can anyone in this process separate logic from emotion?

Just over 24 hours later, this sentence was shared in the monthly parent support group hosted by our adoption agency: “If you wouldn’t feel comfortable saying no, then it’s best to say yes.” That sealed the deal for us. Even if we weren’t sure about saying yes, we knew for certain that saying no would mean missing out on a child we felt could be a very good fit. We passed along our decision and went back to (you guessed it) waiting.

Several weeks, a lot of anxiety, and approximately one thousand emails later, we got an email this morning from our worker saying the child’s team will be sharing their decision by the end of today. TO-DAY.

TODAY.

We have been focusing so well on taking things one day at a time, because that’s the only thing that’s useful to us. There’s no use stressing over what we said or forgot to say in the match meeting, wondering about how we compare to the other families they are meeting with, picturing our life with this child, navigating how we will move forward if we hear a no, or any of the other infinite past or future things we could worry about in regards to this process. There is just today, and the first-thing-in-the-morning question we ask each other: “Do you think today will be the day?”

Commence stressing about all those things I just said we had no use stressing about. Did we say enough? Did we say too much? Did they like us? Would they like us more if they met us a second time? Are we really ready for this? Have any other workers reached out about us? If they say yes, could this be our forever child? If they say no, have the last few weeks been a waste? What do I even want? What does this child want? What do they need? Are we it?

It feels like these workers have our lives in their hands (dramatic, I know). And yes, I know that comes off selfish, because really they have the child’s life in their hands, and they should take all the time they need to make such an important decision. Nate and I have discussed how if we do hear a know, our grief walks hand in hand with the joy we feel for this child, who will have been matched with the best family the team could find for them.

This process frays your nerves. It leaves you feeling exposed and powerless and highly sensitive. Each yes along the way, however exciting, signifies a no to some other child or children we haven’t learned more about yet. Each no along the way, however heartbreaking, signifies a yes to another child or children who could be the fit we are searching for. Most days, I don’t know how to feel or what answer to hope for.

But damn if my pride doesn’t want to hear yes

TODAY.