Test, test

Hello there! I am writing from the present because I thought of this blog today and then I thought about how I always hated it when blogs just ended before you could know how things worked out for the writer.

It has been almost six years since I last wrote. Since then, our son has grown into a beautiful 9-year-old boy. He remains our only child. We had no success with IVF. We moved on to donor eggs, but that process was seemingly cursed from day 1. Every step of the way, whatever could go wrong went wrong. Test results were misinterpreted, the first donor we set our hearts on suddenly became pregnant, phone calls weren't returned, and then the next donor we chose threatened to quit because our hospital was moving so slowly and making so many errors (despite being named one of the top RE centers in the country). And finally, when we had persuaded the donor to stick with us and everyone had done all the required tests and the donor was one week away from beginning stims, we got a last-minute test result back...a screen that no other clinic had done in her (multiple) previous cycles. And that test showed she was a carrier for a really terrible fatal disease where children die before their third birthday. And at that point, we were done. We had already been ambivalent about the whole experience, but that nailed it.

We moved on to private infant adoption. The home study process was fairly painless, but when we began to be presented with possible matches, the number of red flags we were seeing with the cases and the pressure to make instantaneous decisions was overwhelming for...well, it was more overwhelming for my husband than it was for me, but no one was feeling good about it. Here's one actual example, though I've changed some details to be safe...

"Hi Anna. So we have a possible match. Mom is 35 weeks pregnant but says she just found out about it. She has three other children but doesn't have custody of any of them. Her drug screen did come back positive for amphetamines, but she says she took cold medicine, so that could explain it. Anyway, we need your answer by 5, byeeee!"

So we walked away from that, too.  But today we got word that, after a lengthy, oh so lengthy process of training and form-filing and home studying, we have finally been approved to adopt from foster care. There is a long story to how we came to choose this path, but that would require betraying the privacy of a little boy who has become our godson. He has a parent to care for him, but we provide backup. Knowing him opened our hearts to the possibility of another child who might not have a family member to take care of him. And the process has really been fairly painless. Slow, sometimes scary to contemplate, but also doable.

Given the nature of foster adoption and the need to protect privacy, I'm not sure how much I'll post here. We may not even find the right match. But if there is a worthwhile update to share, I'll figure out a vague-enough way to share it.