Please pray for us. I will update soon and hopefully update with the best news in the world.
Fingers.. toes.. and everything crossed for our miracle to happen this week.
XOXO, A
My Journey to Becoming a Mommy |
|
A baby for Christmas did not happen. We are currently playing the waiting game. It is so hard to wait. I am hoping and praying everyday to get a call about a baby we can love and care for.. forever. Just wanted to post a little update. We are fully licensed for 2 children ages 00 months - 10 years.
Please pray for us. I will update soon and hopefully update with the best news in the world. Fingers.. toes.. and everything crossed for our miracle to happen this week. XOXO, A
0 Comments
I think it could happen. I am hoping and praying that we will have a baby in the house by Christmas. Nothing is for sure.. but I do believe we will be licensed. Once we are licensed it will only be about waiting. We are going to be licensed on November 27th, which is Tuesday (today is Saturday). I am praying that once we are licensed we will be able to do this quickly. You never know but one thing I do know is I am so ready. I cannot wait and am so excited.
There are so many new things coming up. It feels like I have been waiting forever and we are finally on our way. I hope that the next time I update my blog (at the rate I update things here...) I will be updating to say we have a little one in our home. My ultimate dream would be to have an infant (3-5 months .. or even a newborn) and a toddler (2-3 years old). This would be amazing. Any child would be wonderful and I am extremely hopeful and excited!!! I know it's been a really long time since I have blogged. When I look back at my blog entries I have written mostly in the summer when I am not working. Obviously it is easier for me to blog when I am not working. Being a teacher is difficult. You are on when you are on and working and when you are off.. you really are off. I have been off for the last 2 weeks and it has been amazing. In 2 weeks I've only went in once to sub for summer school. I have had other offers to sub but I didn't take them.
Because this is a blog about my process and journey to becoming a mommy I would like to write about what has been going on and where we are in this process. We had a slow down this past year in the adoption process. After our meeting with A from Teddy Bear Agency, which went really well... we had to give them paperwork from our physician. We did so. Everything was great. I felt uncomfortable with a couple of things that our counselor said and it caused me to stall. It caused me to feel judged, honestly. It also made me think about the adoption agency we were using and it made me feel like we should research things further. I reached out to a couple of other agencies and learned more about their process. I read more books and prayed about this process. One thing that is difficult for me is that I have not explored fertility deeply. I went to a fertility clinic and spoke with a wonderful doctor about our options. WOW we have many options. We have so many different options. Some of them seem easy and some of them seem really invasive. I deal with anxiety and 99% of this anxiety surrounds health related things. Because of my past (which I will write a post about this summer) I struggle with anxiety greatly. I struggle with going to the doctor and being able to have all of the blood tests, ultra sounds, etc. etc. I need to work on this. I need to work on this for so many reasons. Not only do I need to work on this because it is holding me back from being able to obtain my dream of becoming a mommy but I need to work on it because I am not addressing many important things about my health. I need to get my wisdom teeth pulled. However, because of my horrible anxiety I am not doing this. I need to get blood tests done and see a specialist due to an unusual test result I got over a year ago. I am afraid and because of this intense fear I am not going and getting these things addressed. I feel awful about this because I know that I am holding myself back. This is difficult for me and very sad. After talking with the fertility specialist I realized that I am able to go down the fertility path and I have great insurance that will help me have a baby. Our own biological child. I want to do this. I want to do this more than anything. I am determined to become a mother. I want to be a mommy more than anything in my life. Yes, it is scary. The entire process is scary but the outcome is wonderful. When I think about having a child to do wonderful things like apple picking, going to the zoo, going to Disney World and just taking to the park I know this is the best decision to make in the world. I have worked with a counselor for years to address my anxiety. However, I don't think I am making any progress. This is heartbreaking for me. I know that my anxiety is holding me back from reaching my dreams of having a family and having children. Recently, I was talking with another teacher about my fertility journey. She mentioned to me that she adopted one of her daughter and was a foster mommy 11 (YES ELEVEN!!) times. When I heard this it warmed my heart. I was excited immediately. I felt warm inside and excited. Here's why.. I am excited because when I thought about it I realized that we could work with DCFS to foster a child. We could learn more about this from DCFS and learn about their foster to adoption process. Building a family takes many different forms. I am open to many different ways to build a family. I always have been. I knew that adoption may be the way in which I become a mother and I am open to this in every way. I hope to blog more and write about this process. I am so hopeful that we will have a little one with us to foster and love by Christmas. I know this is wishful thinking but I will hope and pray for this wonderful blessing. XOXO .. Love you angel, Mommy As I wrote about the other day today we had a meeting with our adoption counselor. She met us near our house and we spoke at great length about our concerns regarding the additional medical information that was requested. After talking about it for a long time I do feel better about it. It seems like there is a general form from DCFS that everyone takes to their doctor and the doctor fills out. On the form are a variety of different health conditions. The doctor then checks off what conditions one has and what medications they are on. If someone is on medication or they have any health conditions the doctor then is asked to provide a letter explaining in more detail the health of their patient.
It gets a little confusing because on the form it asks what conditions you have and asks a variety of questions about if the doctor has any concerns about you adopting a child. The form asks questions about one's ability to parent a child and if they could do a variety of different things. If you can't do these things or the doctor believes that there is any reason due to your health that you wouldn't be fit to parent a child that would be marked on the form. This is where I get a little bit confused. Why do they need additional information certifying what your health conditions are.. if they are listed on the form and the doctor has already on the form said, there is no reason why their health would cause them to have have issues adopting a child. The only thing I can reason out would be that depending on the health condition you have the social work agency may determine independently of the doctor that the condition you have would disqualify you from adopting. I really can't reason it out in any other way. The explanation from our counselor was that the original DCFS medical form was just an initial medical 'checklist'. On the health section of the homestudy they will then use quotes from the health documentation you provide to talk about your health and how it will play a role in your life as a parent. Because we are using a large private agency we have to abide by the rules, regulations and policies that they have. They have a board they answer to and they are required to using their words 'due diligence' to investigate a couple clinically. As a side note: Teddy Bear Agency views counseling as a helpful and beneficial process. They don't view it as a negative thing and they are also requesting a letter from my therapist that talks about in a general sense what we work on in therapy. The amount of evidence they want for the file is vast. If I keep in mind the fact that this process is invasive, difficult and hard for everyone but that there is a light at the end of the tunnel and that we will get there in the end... I feel better about the process. I have to remember that the process is a series of steps that everyone must take. When you want something so badly and you feel vulnerable it makes everything even more difficult. I know resilience and patience are what will get us through this process. It has already been a long time and I am sure it is going to be a really long time before the process is over.. but as I get older I think about all the time that has past and realize that although the days can be long.. the years are short. I want nothing more than to have a child and to become a mother. We are walking this journey and will receive our dream. When I think about time, I realize I have been married for almost 5 years. I can't believe this. I just can't believe that I have been a homeowner for almost 5 years and I have been wife for the same. I can only think of 1 friend who is still married and has been married for almost the same amount of time, I have been married. She has experienced some ups and downs in her marriage and it is a little bit rocky but I do hope they will stay together. They do not have any children yet. Fertility When I think of my age I think I am getting old. I have begun thinking about fertility and thinking about everything surrounding fertility. I spoke with my therapist about seeking out a fertility doctor and learning more about options I have regarding fertility treatments. The truth is that I have not done this yet. We tried having a baby together for about a year and a half. After we were unsuccessful I didn't pursue any fertility treatments because I have really bad anxiety about medical treatments. I am always afraid of all the tests, procedures and 'what if's' that come along with medical treatment. This is holding me back... big time. My anxiety is holding me back from my dreams. This is really important and the more that I read about fertility the more I realize that if you are under the age of 35, the question is more.. what treatment is going to work successfully to get pregnant ? ... and not if you are going to be able to get pregnant. This is really important for me because I want a baby desperately. We want a child more than anything in this world. Today when we were talking with our adoption counselor we were talking about the many different things that we will love to do together with our child. Things like going to the zoo, pumpkin patch, park, beach, playing outside and in the backyard. All of these things including holidays are so important to us. We want them more than anything and want to share them with a child. I have dreams of having multiple children. I want no less than 2 children but more likely want 4 or 5 children. I have to get a grip on my anxiety so I can reach my dreams. I may start a fertility log, just like I started an adoption timeline/log on here. At the very least it will give me a trackable timeline of events. I have made an appointment with a really good fertility clinic. I looked up fertility rates and this clinic has IVF rates in the 60%. This is so much higher than the chance you have in an average cycle of a successful pregnancy. I owe it to myself and to T that we try fertility. Especially because the biggest reason why I did not explore it was because of my anxiety. I brought it up with my counselor and she agrees with me that yes, I have probably not explored fertility options because of my anxiety. I asked her what I can do about my anxiety and she said I should work on CBT. She said that although I have been in counseling and we have been talking through things we have not really worked on any type of targeted anxiety interventions. I would agree with this because when I go and see her we just talk about what has happened in my life. Situations. We do not work on anxiety specifically but I think that we should. I used to take medicine for my anxiety but I do not take it anymore. I think it could be helpful but there are other reasons why I am not taking it at this point. Because it is so important to me that I have a child ... it is important to me that I work on my anxiety so I can explore fertility options. What would be the best case scenario is that it would be something simple and quick that would help us get pregnant. We haven't explore this and so we just don't know what will happen. It is the next logical step. I do have an appointment with a fertility clinic set up. I will add a fertility log and post more about it as time goes on. One of the most important things that I keep thinking is that there are definitely relatively low risk and intervention options that can be explored before IVF. I think because I have PCOS it will be difficult but there are options and I need to cross that road and explore the options. XOXO, Hopefully waiting to be a Mommy As I posted about previously, our case manager from the agency kind of threw T and I off today. I just wanted to explore some options online and learn more about other agencies today. I reached out to Angels Adoption and Lutheran Child and Family Services. The main difference between our agency who I will call Teddy Bear agency and LCFS is that Teddy Bear agency does everything in house. They network with birth families, adoptive families, do home-studies, do training and all visits independently. With LCFS they do the home study and act as the social worker side of the adoption but they do not do any outreach or marketing to birth families. This is a huge difference.
LCFS is able to cast a much wider 'net' by marketing your profile to all 50 states. Teddy Bear only markets you to birth families in Illinois and Indiana. LCFS acts as the social worker/case manager side of the adoption. It is not a part of the marketing side. In fact, you can work with as many marketing agencies as you want and you should. This will help you cast a wider net and get the word out that you are adopting. I like the fact that you are casting a wide net. I like the fact that you are not waiting forever for them to contact you. I like the fact that the marketing agency is working for you. Their job is to help you be successful in your search. After talking to LCFS and Angel Adoption I learned a lot. I know a lot more about other agencies way for adoption. I now understand the many ways to adopting a child and I understand much more about marketing yourself as an adoptive family. I want to go back and look at Teddy Bear agencies contract and policies. I plan on making a list of questions to bring with to the meeting on Monday with our caseworker. It's always good to know all sides of the equation and I feel much better informed. I don't know if I blogged about this or not but I had googled adoption and found a TV news casters adoption profile. I was confused about how this worked because I later found out that they adopted super quickly. At this point I want to reach out to the team that helped her adopt. I think it's always worth the research. I am going to research more adoption marketing agencies, look for special books to buy my baby and pray for my beautiful family. Love, Anxious to be your Mommy This weekend was really hard for me as a woman who wants to be a mom. Fourth of July was on Tuesday. Over the weekend we went up to my parents cabin in Wisconsin. Their cabin is near Wisconsin Dells. Wisconsin Dells has so many fun activities for families and children.
I've been watching OWN for hours today. I started with watching Dr. Phil and then it turned into 20/20 and 48 hours. I watched a case about a young teenage African American boy who was shot and killed. He was murdered because he was listening to loud music and being disrespectful to the murderer. It was an absolute horrifying and nightmare of a murder. To kill a young man for listening to music loudly and have a verbal argument. The murderer got 1st degree murder and life in prison. I started thinking about this in relation to our adoption because of the fears I have regarding raising an African American child. Tristan and I are open to bringing an African American baby into our home. We are open to any culture or ethnicity.
I fear that other peoples prejudice, racism and biases could hurt my child. I want to dig deeper to understand how I can support and raise a child of a race different than my own. I know it will be important to reach out to friends and colleagues that share a similar culture and race as my child and have them serve as a cultural mentor for my child. I will also seek out professionals that are of a similar race and make sure that my child has strong professional role models of the same race as my child. I hope this can guide my child to not only accept their race but to embrace it. I am writing a blog post about this because it is something that I want to continue thinking about and building resources around. I am going to add another page to this blog that is a collection of resources. A file cabinet so to speak. I am going to post resources and links so I can review and look at them in the future. An important research topic that I want to explore more is raising a child from a different background than your own. You immediately become a conspicuous family when you adopt a child of a different culture. This means that when others look at your family they know immediately that you have come together through adoption. Mini- Adoption Update: We spoke with our adoption counselor and we are going to meet with her Monday, July, 10th at 11:00 AM. I am excited about this meeting and can't wait to move forward in this process. I also wanted to build a timeline page for this website. I am going to add these pages to my website today. -- Mrs.Can'tWaitToBeYourMomma As the title of my first post suggests I have wanted to create a blog/website or journal for a really long time. I want to chronicle the process of building our family. I also want a place to get out my feelings, thoughts, fears, worries and anxieties. In many ways I want this blog to be a love letter to my future child. I hope at some point I can show them this website and it brings them feelings of love, want, and need.
|
About Me:A is married to her handsome and loving husband, T. T and A have been in the process of building a family for the past 5 years. Although, things have been unsuccessful so far they are determined to be parents very soon. A is a special education middle school language arts teacher. Archives
January 2019
Categories |