Twelve Days

Twelve Days.

A lot can happen in twelve days. According to my good friend  Google I can learn to speak Spanish is less than twelve days; I can build a church dome in less than twelve days; a man named CK apparently earned $1 million dollars off of a $5 video in twelve days; the ground portion of the Gulf War lasted only 100 hours.....

There's also a whole bunch of "nothing" that can happen in twelve days. Unfortunately for us, when it comes to our Adoption Story, we have been hearing crickets chirp for just that long now.

Our Adoption Consultant, K, warned us that the adoption world is an unpredictable place. One week you're getting profile after profile and the next it's a dry spell. But even with that knowledge and her reassurance, it's still a painful dry spell to go through.

A little over three weeks ago we were officially placed on the "waiting to be matched" list. The Adoption Profile we created got rave reviews from those who proofed it for us, {to include a Birth Mom who volunteers her time to review Profiles for couples who are adopting so that they can get honest feedback on how their album will be perceived}, so I was feeling a little over-confident that we would be that rare lucky couple who had all the stars align for a perfect adoption to happen within three days. That's happened to other couples, so surely it would happen to us, too. Surely!

It almost happened. On day four that swarm of profiles came in that I initially wrote about. The twins were already born; had we had the $53,000+ that was needed immediately on hand , we could have been a Mommy & Daddy for almost a month by now.

I know I need to just get over that, but I really have had a tough time with it. We have saved, planned, and prepared for a long time now to make our dream happen. We knew the probability of an adoption being way out of our financial reach could happen {each case we see will vary based on the Birth Mom's unique situation}, but we didn't expect "the dream case" to happen right away, and to be the one we couldn't do.

{we'll get more into financing later, but as a quick summary when you are "matched" with a Birth Mom there is a sum of money due right away. Think of this as a "deposit"...this is also money "at risk," meaning if the Birth Mom changes her mind you don't get that money back. The remaining balance is due once the baby is born. So typically you have some time to access accounts and get money lined up. Since the twin boys were already born it was a case where the entire amount was due in one lump sum, right away. There was just no way we could have accessed that much that quickly}

We've seen several other profiles since then, all within our financial reach. But the "at risk" amounts due for each were extremely high...something we'll be willing to pay when the case seems like a solid one, but these cases each just worried us for one reason or another. From a Birth Father being in prison but wanting contact with the baby, to a Birth Mom who talked about how everyone else wanted her to give up her baby but she didn't want to, there was just something about each case that didn't give us the "warm fuzzies" about taking the risk to write a check for $15,000, knowing it would mean halting the adoption process if something fell through.

By now we could have also brought home a baby girl who was born last week, or could have been buying clothes and diapers for one of three little boys who would all be arriving before July.

Mike thinks I'm being ridiculous and dramatic, but I can't help but wonder if we made a mistake. Were we supposed to write a check for one of those profiles? Was one of those babies meant for us, and we missed the boat , and now Karma was 'punishing' us for being afraid to loose that money? When you look at the numbers, that's the only explanation I can come up with for why we've now gone twelve days without a single profile crossing our paths.

K has reassured me that we haven't made a mistake, that we have to trust our instincts, and that my emotions and Mike's {cynical/ pessimistic/level-headed/ rational/smart} outlook on each profile will eventually meet in the middle and we'll take that next step. But good grief! I hope we at least get another chance to consider a case soon. This waiting is tough...