"Labor" Pains

Yesterday was a tough day; but that's OK...I mean, it's not because we're bummed and quite honestly both need a long nap and bottle of wine to get over the emotional rollercoaster, but we knew going into this there were going to be a lot of ups and downs, tough decisions, and possible heartbreaks. But in the end it's all worth it.

I always hear women talking about their labor & delivery stories. After the braxton hicks, contractions, labor pains, and other "fun" associated with giving birth, the consensus is usually that after going through all of that you completely forget just how painful it was. You're holding this precious baby, and that's all that matters.

So, I guess this is our version of experiencing labor pains. Right now is not a particularly fun experience, but the excitment for what will eventually be makes it bearable. And once it's all said and done, and we're flying home as a family, this will all have been worth it.

After a lot of debate and medical talk, we decided that the Birth Mother's Meth use was just a little too scary for us. I feel horrible saying that, because this poor baby did nothing wrong and just needs a loving home. We would more than provide that; but there were just so many scary stories about the emotional and medical problems a meth baby could have as they grew. We just don't know if we are prepared to take that on. The cost of the adoption was the other contributing factor; we just couldn't swing it.

We were still waiting for the first Birth Mom to make her decision, and quite honestly we felt really good about that profile and our chances of being picked. We'd heard such good things about our Adoption Profile, and we fit the requirements for what the Birth Mom was looking for in a couple. It made "passing" on the little premie a bit easier to swallow; we still had hope and we were hanging on to it with everything.

***

Late yesterday afternoon K sent me an e-mail asking me to call her ASAP. I knew it couldn't be the news we wanted to hear; if it was good she would have been on the phone right away to us with a big smile in her voice.

The first Birth Mom - the one we were really feel good about - wasn't going to pick us. A lot of families had submitted their profiles excited about that case, and ours wasn't at the top of her list.
While we completely understood and knew this was a possibility, it was a letdown. But, that's all part of this process...and like I wrote before, some other family is going to get the news they've been waiting for. Someday that will be us; but for whatever reason, this one was not meant to be.

(he is going to be a gorgeous baby. I think a part of me will always wonder about him. A mix of Puerto Rican, African American, Greek, and Caucasian....I'd be lying if I said I didn't already picture myself holding him....)

K would later get back in touch with us. She was calling with something a little unprecidented; the lawyer in the premie/meth baby case had called her. He understood we were unable to afford that adoption, and eventhough he also knew we weren't comfortable with the meth use he wanted us to reconsider. He was offering to help us find a place to stay while the baby was in the hospital, and would take $10,000 off the cost of the adoption to help us out. Apparently there were also some donations that would be available to help us as well.

Thank goodness for K. I was a mess. This baby needs love, and we have it to give...but we had already decided that this case was too risky for us. Part of me - no, all of me - felt like a gigantic hypocrite and jerk. If my own parents had known that eventually I would have major medical problems, would they have still wanted to raise me? I would hope so. And did me being diagnosed with a rare vascular disease make them love me any less, or make me seem like a burdon? I sure don't feel like it did....so how on earth can we want nothing more than to be parents, and then turn our backs on a baby in need because we didn't think we could handle the lifetime of medical and emotional issues that would result from his Birth Mom's drug use?

Several posts ago we talked about how throughout this process you have to be honest with yourself, with what you are comfortable with, and with what you could realistically afford. This was not easy for us; emotionally we wanted to be on a plane headed out to rescue this baby.

Being an adoptive Mom herself, and having to have made these same types of tough desicions, it was so wonderful to have K's shoulder to lean on. She understood how hard this was, and how much it was weighing on us. She admitted that she almost didn't call us with this lawyer's offer; she knew it was going to be hard on us. If he had only offered a couple thousand off she said she knew it wouldn't have been worth it, but she'd never had a lawyer offer to take so much of the cost off in addition to helping in other ways, so she felt she had to give us the offer to consider.

In the end, we stayed with our decision to keep waiting for another case....