Monday, May 30, 2011

A year in...and painting!

So apparently I have lost 2 blog followers. Is it strange to admit that it kinda hurts my feelings! Oh well, not much I can do about it!

Last Thursday we had an appointment to update our home study at the agency since we are hitting the year of waiting mark. We had to get notes from our doctors, saying we were still in good health, and we had to go over our profiles and think about some things we might want to update or add. Our adoption coordinator also gave us the advice that if we want our letter to go out to more potential birthmothers, we might want to open up what drug or alcohol use we are comfortable with. Right now we have that we are fine with marijuana and alcohol use in the first trimester. We were not ok with cocaine, heroin, or meth. There is also a new category, other, which includes pain meds or anti-depressants. All of this means that if a birthmother admitted to using, even once any of those drugs, including marijuana and alcohol after the first trimester, then our profile will not go to her at all. As far as the health of the baby goes, from what I have read, alcohol seems to be one of the most damaging, but we felt that there are times that women do not know they are pregnant in the first trimester, so social drinking or smoking pot might be common. The reason that we felt uncomfortable with other drug use was that we want to have a good relationship with our child's birthmother, and drug addictions can make having a good relationship difficult. Our coordinator suggested that we might want to expand what we are comfortable with because our profile would go to more birthmothers, and we can then decide if she picks us if we are comfortable with any drug use she may have had.

Does anyone have any thoughts or experience about this?

Since we have been waiting for a year, we also go on the last minute hospital list. Sometimes our agency gets a call from a hospital (most likely it will be in Southern California) with a mother who has just given birth and she did not make an adoption plan before hand, but she has decided that she wants to do now. Our agency will then send over, with a counselor, profiles of those on the last minute hospital list that match and prerequisites that she may have stated (such as a religious preference etc) and then she will pick one or two and then the counselor will call the first one and see if they can get to the hospital. Generally, they will want an answer within 30 minutes, or they may go onto the next family. This is up to the birthmother. If she is fine waiting longer because that first family is the one she wants, then the counselor will of course follow her wishes. So in this scenario, one day we will have no baby, and the next day, bam, we will be parents. That is a little frightening, but also exciting! I asked how many of these situations they see, and our coordinator says it probably averages like once a month. So not too common, but a possibility.

With the possibility of a last minute placement, we had a painting party over the Memorial day weekend. We took everything out of both bedrooms, with the hope of getting them both painted, and then the nursery will be set up in what was our bedroom ( a better closet!), and our new bedroom will be the front (bigger!) bedroom. We only finished our new bedroom. The nursery is all set up, and taped, ready to be painted sometime this week. Then the fun will begin, as I will start painting the tree mural. I am pretty excited about it, and I hope I can actually get my vision onto the wall!

Here are some pics of my sisters and Adam's dad helping us paint. I want to thank them, and our friend Chris for helping us out!




4 comments:

  1. Our adoption agency had us fill out a similar questionnaire. I did a TON of research in order to become more knowledgeable about drugs and alcohol use during pregnancy. I talked with my OB/GYN and GP about it and other bloggers. You might want to go to the March of Dimes website, they have a ton of information on this.

    In the end, we decided that we'd be okay with pretty much any drug use that was on a recreational basis (several times during the entire pregnancy) and marijuana on a regular basis. As for alcohol, it was a tricky thing because I'm very worried about FAS. However, after my research, so long as the mother is not getting heavily drunk day after day after day...chances are that the baby will be okay.

    Good luck!

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  2. Kammie if it makes you feel better, you've only lost one blogger! One of them (I'm 90% sure) was actually me from a different email address that I no longer use, so I logged in and deleted all blogs that I was following under that email :)

    I think it's good to research your options and get different opinions, but be sure to go with what you all are comfortable with. I think a healthy relationship with birth mom/family is most important so we based our "profile" off of that.

    I hope your not waiting much longer... remember, though, you are waiting for the child meant for you!

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  3. I think you cast as wide a net as possible and then determine if a possible match is for you. We are going on their self reporting anyway so it is truly hard to know. That's what we are doing...and it still hasn't brought about any potential matches but at least I know it's not for lack of trying.

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  4. Thanks guys! What you all have said makes a lot of sense. It always helps to hear from others going through the same stuff! I think we will cast the net wider and see where that takes us. And GS Smith, it does make me feel a bit better ;)

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