Nor'Easter? More like Bore'Easter

Here's comes the next overly hyped megastorm. Good thing we're all still sick and ready to stay in the house the whole weekend. 
Now Little H is down for the count with a bug just annoying enough to keep him up and crying all.night.long and clinging to me in tears all day. I love a good cuddle day, but not when it's accompanied by screaming. I thankfully, finally got him down in his crib for a nap and when I came down, W was watching a cartoon (lay off, super mom, it's cold and raining and he played his little heart out all day). I took advantage of the serenity and started to clean up the impossibly huge mess in my kitchen from heaven-knows-where and after a few minutes, I heard snoring in the living room. W had fallen asleep watching tv. I quietly switched the tv off, turned off the light and laid a comfy blanket over him. It was such a quiet, intimate moment between us. I tried to soak it up as much as possible. I wanted to curl up in the chair with him, in the blanket, but that would have roused him and he would have gone back to dinosaurs versus Buzz Lightyear again (fyi: the dinos win every.single.time). So my moment of motherly zen was fleeting. But it was just enough to erase all of the mayhem from a sick H and snot covered hoodie and unholy messy house. Thanks for centering me, little guy. You're the best.

Do you ever have moments like that? Where the rest of the world melts away and it's just you, completely in the mothering zone?

Adoption Interview Project 2012: My interview with Shannon from Peter's Cross Station

Heather over at Production Not Reproduction  is the mastermind behind the Adoption Interview Project. I'm so happy to be a part of this blogging community, although my part in it is infinitely small and lame-o. And let's face it, it's pretty much flat lined at the moment. I'm blaming it on my two little maniacs who leave me unable to form complete thoughts most days. Every time I break out the laptop with a blazing thought in my head, two little bodies amble over to me like attention zombies and drain me of inspiration, motivation and lap space. Personal time and space is a thing of the past. I got a really long hug on the toilet this morning. Yeah. I'm not one to ever turn a hug away, but come on...

Stay on topic, Lindsay...
The interview, yes. I was lucky enough to be paired up with Shannon of Peter's Cross Station. Her blog is passionate and informative. She's a smart cookie with a beautiful family created through open, domestic adoption. Shannon has written for multiple online sources about adoption including Babble and BlogHer.. You'd be wise to runnotwalk to her blog and pick her brain. She's a valuable resource to the adoption community.

Here's my interview with her:
Did you and your partner arrive at open adoption easily? Did you consider any other avenues?
We arrived at adoption easily. My partner threw out a short list of fantasy sperm donors among our male friends (the top of the list and his partner became our girls' godfathers), but I was literally laughing as she did. It was a five-minute part of the conversation. Then I said, "okay, I'll research adoption agencies tomorrow."

If we had gone the pregnancy route, one of us (for a number of reasons, my partner) would have had to do a second-parent adoption anyway. So I just figured we would do best to keep it adoption from the get-go and focus on that.

Once we started researching adoption agencies in our state that had a good track record of working with same-sex couples, we found these were agencies that primarily placed African American babies. So then we knew our adoption would be transracial. When I dug just the tiniest bit further it was soon quite apparent to me that open adoption would be best for a child, her first parent(s) and at the very least by association, for us.

So all of these things just fell into place. We never considered international adoption because we knew we would have to closet ourselves to do that, whereas we could be open about our family in a domestic adoption (in our state, at that time--this is not, by any means, universally true for same-sex couples adopting domestically).


When it was decided that you'd proceed with an open adoption, what issues were important to you? Have those issues changed with time?
My dream was to adopt the baby of a woman I could be "best friends" with. I was jealous of families in which both mothers were really involved with the child/ren and the moms were close and talked all the time. But the further along in adoption I get, the more I realize that a woman I am likely to identify with at that level is probably not a woman who needs to place her baby for adoption. A woman "like me" enough to talk on the phone every week and plan all the birthday parties together is more likely to have been coerced into placement--because she could have done it herself.

(I am not saying this is true in every case, and I firmly believe that even a mother who "could" do it, has the right to choose not to--to do something else, whether abortion or placing a child for adoption. But I do think that most of the mothers I am friends with who placed their children would not do it again and many say they were coerced in one or several ways.)

The longer I live adoption the more I see that coercion of mothers to place their babies for adoption is widespread, if sometimes subtle, and is perhaps the number one poison to healthy adoption practices, both institutional and individual.

I do wish very much I had better relationships with my children's mothers but the reasons I don't are the same reasons they truly needed us to adopt their babies. It is sad all around, but at least I know this really was the best thing for my daughters and their mothers--however tragic.

Meanwhile, our door is always open to our girls' mothers. We send lots of letters, pictures and texts. We leave phone messages for birthdays and Mother's Day if we can't get through. When we do have fleeting contact it is always a banner day.



Your family is multi racial. Did you encounter any hesitance within your families or your birth parents' families prior to placement?  If so, how were the issues resolved, post placement?
We didn't really have any race-related problems from our families (on either the birth or adoptive side). If there were issues, people kept them to themselves (which we appreciate!). For many years (until this past June, when my sister-in-law had a baby girl) our children were the only grandchildren or nieces in either of our families. They have been duly spoiled. (Now we enjoy spoiling our baby niece/cousin too!)

Our older daughter's mother did say she chose our profile because it was the only one she was shown with "any color in it" because pictures of our friends included African American people. Given few choices, she was resigned that her daughter would be adopted by white people. We talked openly about this with her. It was a positive conversation overall-as positive as such a sad occasion can be, at least.



Your blog is very passionate. you seem like a great ambassador for open adoption. how do you keep your passion for the subject alive?
My kids, my kids, my kids.

The older they get the more they need their [first-birth-natural-original-

biological-just, plain] mothers. And loving them means wanting to give them everything they need.

I can't deliver their moms under our complicated circumstances, but I can do everything I can to make it clear that those bonds belong to them and always will, no matter what. I can make it clear to them that they get to feel about adoption whatever they feel. I can make it clear that it is not their responsibility to make me feel okay if they are hurting or angry. I can make it clear that they can count on my partner's and my unconditional love--and we trust that they love us, even if adoption and its causes feel sad and unfair to them at the same time. I can make it clear that we are with them and have their backs no matter how they are feeling.

The more I learn about open adoption the better mother I can be to my girls. The more I advocate for open adoption, the better off adopted people will be. I consider everyone involved in adoption to be my extended family. I advocate for moms' rights on behalf of my daughters' mothers; for adopted people's rights on behalf of my kids. Open adoption is one element of ethical adoption and making adoption ethical is one of my priorities in life. I took that on when I chose to adopt.



What are some of the lesser known challenges you've encountered in your multi racial family?
The hardest thing about being an interracial family is finding real, living, breathing interracial places to be in U.S. society.

We live in a very segregated country. Take that as value-neutral if you want to, but interracial spaces--truly integrated spaces--are few and far between. A lot of times, white people will see a brown face in a crowd and feel warm and fuzzy and think they are in integrated space. I find myself counting all the time--I count the number of total people on the playground, then the number of non-white people, then figure the percentage. If it's less than 20% non-white, I feel like I've failed my kids. (No, really. It might sound silly, but it's true.)

Based on my reading and talking to adult transracially adopted people, I think the most important thing a white parent can do for a child of color is provide real peers and adults of the child's race for deep and long-term relationships. Living in a well-integrated neighborhood is a bonus, practicing new food ways or culture consumption is great. Learning to braid hair is a basic life skill, but real people to whom your children can relate are the number one priority.

We are lucky to have had a chance to move to one of the most racially diverse neighborhoods in the United States (statistically) and to have found a nearby dance studio full of African American instructors and students for the girls to attend. We also go to an unusually integrated Episcopal church every Sunday where the girls just blossom and glow under the admiring beams of surrogate aunts, uncles, grandparents and cousins who look like them.

But moving into integrated spaces can be uncomfortable for white people--even supposedly anti-racist white people. It's taking a risk that someone won't like you, will judge you in some frightening way; will just be too different to understand. I always say, put yourself in your kids' shoes. If you are always asking them to be the token person of color it's not fair. It doesn't matter if every is "nice" or if your child is "welcome." Asking them to always be the different one is too much for a child. As the adult, as the parent, put yourself on that line whenever you can instead of your kids.

The godfather I mentioned above--top of the fantasy sperm-donor list--is Afro-Caribbean. So even if I had given birth, our family would have been interracial, and seeing as he is a surrogate brother to me, it already was. For us, thinking about living integrated lives far predated learning that our kids would be Black. Both of us were (are) scholars of American culture with an emphasis on race and therefor had (have) colleagues and friends of all races.

But even so, actually being an interracial family requires an almost mundane level of constant awareness of race and how it affects day-to-day life. The older the girls get, the more issues come up. I can now be at some distance from them in public places and watching them negotiate the world as little Black girls (often, when people don't realize their mother is watching) is an eye-opener.

A few weeks ago, a white woman tried to kick them off a swing so her daughter could use it. She had no idea their mom was observing the whole exchange. My older girl was about to give way, but her little sister shook her head defiantly. I was proud of her and let her handle it for a few minutes more before letting the other mom realize who I was. I hope she was darned embarrassed. And I don't really mean darned.



As a blogger, how did you learn to draw the line regarding the girls' adoption story or their birth parents or even just daily life?
I haven't learned where that line is, so I tend to err on the conservative side. I try not to tell someone else's story if she doesn't have equal access to tell it from her own perspective, so I say very little about the kids' moms. I feel kind of the same way about the kids. Up to a point, talking about kids is the same for everyone--teething, crawling, walking, potty-training, cute little kidisms...but my kids have reached an age now when they are much more individual and their stories are more about them and who they are than just about me having cute kids. Yet they are too young to tell their own stories from their own perspective. So I have cut back on blogging generally and blogging about the kids and OUR adoptions specifically.

That said, there are many stories I do tell in more private venues. I am open with anyone who emails from the blog to ask a specific question because they are doing their own adoption research of one kind or another or because they identify with us and want to share or ask advice, or whatever. I also tell more in detail at adoption conferences and other places where the information is targeted in a particular way to improve adoption overall or someone's family specifically.


I'm a new adoptive mom and our new addition looks a whole lot like my husband and I. So when it comes up that he was adopted, I get weird responses from people. I find that I'm still tripping over my words a lot when asked the usual, nosey questions about adoption. How did you find your voice regarding inquisitive strangers and acquaintances?
I'm an over-sharer. I am also a teacher. So I usually assume people mean well (you can tell when they don't) and talk frankly about the truth of our situation. If my kids are around, I will still talk about it, but I will include the kid/s in the conversation so they don't feel talked about. If the kids are at all uncomfortable we keep it simple and change the subject.

The biggest problem I have is the "oh what a saint you are" response people sometimes (often) have to recognizing us as an adoptive family. It really makes me angry, because well-intentioned or not, the person is implying that it is especially difficult to love my children. It is not. It is wildly easy. Ask anybody who's been on the receiving end of one of their smiles.

I am also really angry when people automatically assume it's okay to say negative things about their mothers. I bite my tongue and pretend I don't understand, then start speaking admirably of the girls' moms. "Oh her mom is such a genius!" "Oh she has her mom's eyes, that's why she's such a beauty!" "Her mom works so hard..." etc.

To say rude things about my kids' flesh and blood is to ay rude things about my kids.



Do you remember one stand out moment where you felt the connection between you and your new child? Was the bonding experience relatively similar for you each time, or did you have different experiences with each child?
This is not the case for everyone--whether a parent by birth or adoption--but I really did feel an instant connection with each of my girls the second I laid eyes on them and held them.

In the case of my younger daughter, I was waiting for the social worker to bring the baby from the hospital in the lobby of the agency (a building that held many other offices too), in front of a huge plate-glass door. People were getting off the El across the street and walking home from work. (It was rush-hour, and in fact, the social worker was stuck in traffic.) When she walked through that glass door, she put the baby right in my arms and said "congratulations, you're a mom again!" and I was thinking "wow, those people walking by outside might see this and have no idea what a profound moment it is in my daughter's and my life." It was a little bit surreal and really happy.

I had to go to a courthouse recently to get some document for something or other (I forget) and was flooded with a happy feeling. It occurred to me that the last two times I had been in a courthouse were to petition to adopt my daughters. So I have this bizarre happy association with annoying bureaucratic spaces now!

Thank you, Shannon for allowing me to drop these questions on you at the last minute. And thanks for some fresh inspiration to keep chugging along with this little blog.

Now, behind the jump is my attempt to sound like an intelligent adult with more than one synapse firing as I answer Shannon's questions...

Stuck in Maybe-Baby Limbo is the Pits

Here we go again. We got a call on Thursday from our dear social worker. There was a birth mother and birth father with a three month old that were looking to make an adoption plan and did we want to be considered for it. It turns out, we were the only people in our program to agree to be shown to her, due to the nature of her medical background (more on my feelings towards this later). She's taking the weekend and Monday to decide with her family and the birth father that placing with us is the right thing to do. So we could have a possible placement on Wednesday. Holy balls! We were just starting to get over the last disappointment and now this.

I have coined this period of waiting to see if a baby comes home with us "maybe-baby." And you know what? Maybe-baby is really starting to take a toll on me. I can't take much more. If this situation doesn't work out, I'm going to need a few weeks without any baby drama.

This baby comes as a major surprise to us. We've only been shown to African American or biracial birth mothers to this point. We've been preparing for over a year now to be a trans racial family. This particular baby happens to be Caucasian and we were knocked off kilter a little by it. It's weird for two white people to have to prepare for a white baby. But that's what we're doing. More on this later, as well.

We haven't told many people about this situation. But I feel like to stay true to the process, I needed to comment on it here. I created this blog to help others in the same situation. And to help myself get through this excruciating Wait period. So dear friends, this could be the first post marking my descent into madness. Haha... ok, that's a little dramatic. But who knows, at this rate, a few more weeks here and there of maybe-baby could have me going bonkers for sure.

I also need to add that I am fully aware that no amount of anxiety I am feeling can come close to matching what the birth mother is feeling. I can't imagine the pain she is going through. My heart is with her (even though we haven't met yet) during this agonizing time and I hope that our profile is comforting to her. If I could speak to her right now, I'd like to tell her that if she decides to place, we will love and honor her forever as one of our own and she will be with us always as we raise this baby she has entrusted to us. He will always know who she is and how much she loves him. That's how we roll.

So peace and godspeed to her and her decision. We're here, ready and willing.
Wish us luck and hopefully we'll have a joyful update later this week.

Why We're Adopting

"Oh, we're fertile. We have a biological son."
     I tossed it out there lightly, without much thought. I saw my words hanging in the room like lead balloons and I  tried desperately to shove them back in my mouth. We were at our first formal adoption group class with our agency. We were just asked to discuss our feelings on infertility with the group. Sitting in tight nervous pairs all around us were couples who couldn't have babies. I didn't know their stories. But as I was trying to shove the zeppelin back in my mouth, I could feel  their pain They probably had really long infertility stories marred with failed attempts and miscarriages. I felt terrible for seeming so cavalier about what drove us to that meeting. I wanted them to know that we, too felt incredible pain and this wasn't something that we decided to undertake "just because." 

     I didn't bother to go into the details at that meeting. I didn't tell them that W was just one pound and completely see through when he was born. Or that he suffered a pulmonary hemorrhage that almost killed him and that they were pumping blood out of his collasped lungs for weeks. Or how we couldn't hold him for a month after he was born. Or how he suffered a brain hemorrhage and we weren't sure if he'd ever be able to walk or talk. Maybe I should have. Then they would have understood that there was nothing cavalier about why we were adopting.

     Little W and I were quite happy together when I was pregnant. I was getting a cute belly, he was growing, we were doing prenatal yoga and exercising and learning what each other liked to eat. I followed all the rules. I was the picture of pregnant health. Then like a tornado at 25 weeks, we were on hospital bed rest. Preeclampsia was the culprit and it was ANGRY. I barely had time to come to terms with what was happening to us when they took him from me at just 26 weeks. The next four months Little W lived in the NICU and we held constant vigil at his side.


     And I Googled things. Lots and lots of things. I found that the chances of this happening again with a subsequent pregnancy where anywhere from 10-70%. No, thank you. Before W was even home with us, we decided that this would be our only foray into the world of reproduction. We could not live with the guilt of trying to make another baby when so much could go wrong. If that kid didn't turn out 100% perfect, I'd blame myself forever and probably wind up pulling a Sylvia Plath.

     We decided right then and there that we didn't care whose loins our children came out of. Then about 15 seconds later we decided that we didn't care what color those loins were. And then about 12 months later when we got serious about #2, we decided that if this child was to be of a different race than us, they should have a connection to their birth family. And thus our domestic, open adoption love story began.
   
     Maybe I should have told everyone all of that at that first meeting. If for no other reason than to save face from my mindless gaffe. But honestly, the "why" just doesn't seem all that important to me. What's important is that we have a lot of love to give. We're committed to bringing a beautiful baby home with us and forging a lasting bond with their birth mother. And I think that's a beautiful thing.