Risking to Love

The thing I have struggled with the most since our disruption last October is the idea of trusting another birthmother to not do the very same thing. Right after our profile went back on the website, I spoke at length with our agency about how we would relate to our next birthmother. In a way, I almost feel sorry for whoever decides to pick us the next time. As much as we want to get to know her and build a relationship with her, and as hard as we might try to do so, there will always be a piece of us that resists out of fear. It's so sad. We have a lot of love to offer both baby and birthmother, but I often wonder how much of it will be unconsciously withheld from the birthmother until after we've brought our baby home and our hearts are safe from the anguish she has the potential to impart.

This is something that has plagued my thoughts for several months. How do we simultaneously open our hearts and make ourselves vulnerable while protecting ourselves from the painful possibility of another loss? The answer is that we can't. It's literally impossible to be both vulnerable and protected at the same time. But protecting our hearts would almost certainly alienate a birthmother from us, driving her further away and perpetuating exactly what we've been afraid of all along. So the only option left is to trust and to love, and that is a very frightening thing. How do I give my heart to someone who might break it?

April Adoption Update

Still not a whole lot to report on the adoption front. March had the highest hit count on our parent profile website of any month since we first went active last July. I called our agency a few days ago to see if there was anything else I needed to be updated about. Apparently hard copies of our profile were sent to two birthmothers in January, SEVEN in February, but only one in March. Again, though, this doesn't include copies that were sent electronically or via fax, and we don't know how many of those went to birthmothers who are just taking their sweet time filling out paperwork because they're not very far along in their pregnancies. So I'm back to my original frustration. It seems like there are lots of birthmothers looking at us as potential parents for their babies, but no one seems to like us enough to make a match. It's a frustrating place to be. Something our agent pointed out that I hadn't given much consideration before is that once a birthmother picks us, she still has to match what we've previously agreed to accept (like ethnicity, history of drug use, family history of certain genetic disorders, etc). So it is possible that one or more birthmothers has picked us, but that they didn't meet our criteria for one reason or another.

The other issue we discussed during our phone conversation is getting a new home study. We're supposed to be moving to a different state between now and the end of June. Since home studies are regulated by the state and the requirements vary from state to state, we're going to have to get a new home study after we've moved. My concern is how long it will take to complete the new home study. With our luck, we'll get matched with a newly born or soon-to-be born baby during the period after the move but before the new home study is complete. So our agent gave me the names of two new home study agencies so I could touch base with them and find out how the process would go. Ideally, they'll be able to use all the materials from our current home study (ie, FBI fingerprint clearances, child abuse clearances, medical clearances, letters of recommendation, etc) to process the new home study as quickly as possible.