Thanks everyone for the sharing of personal stories and kind words after my last post! It means so much to Jen and I that we have so many people that love and care about us…and have faith in our parenting abilities! ;) We know what is meant to be will be and we’re excited about the new direction this adventure is taking us.
After being consistently disappointed we decided to sit back and regroup. We talked a lot about what we were hoping for and what it came down to for us is that we just want to be parents. We want to provide a good, loving home for a child and build a family. We both realized that for us, that doesn’t necessarily mean being a parent to an infant or a child that is biologically ours. So we started to look into adoption.
The research that we’ve done shows that most if not all countries outside of the US won’t adopt to gay and lesbian couples. While annoying, we had hoped for a child a little closer to home so we were fine to let that option go.
We spoke with some friends who had gone through a private open adoption about what that really means and how much contact they had with the birth parents. We talked with them about the pros and the cons and what the reality of an open adoption was from their perspective. They were amazingly helpful and it was nice to speak with someone who had been in our shoes and could shed light on a possible direction. I was much more comfortable with the idea of an open adoption than Jen even though neither of us really liked the idea of how “open” could have many interpretations or the feeling that we had to check in with the birth parents. Even so, we decided to look into some private agencies. We found one that we really liked that has a good reputation and a high percentage of placement with gay and lesbian couples. If any of you are familiar with Dan Savage (author, relationship advice columnist, and creator of the “It Get’s Better” Project) he and his partner went through this agency when they adopted their son. We were impressed with what we saw and so we called to sign up for the orientation/information session they hold. There we learned that the entire process with their agency costs $25,000. This doesn’t take away from the wonderful work they do and we know they have to pay their bills somehow, but it took the wind out of our sails so to speak. That combined with the fact that we weren’t incredibly sold on an open adoption, we decided to hold off on starting the process with their organization.
In doing research, I had seen a series of children's photos at a local bookstore that was organized by a group called The Oregon Heart Gallery. It was part of a larger Heart Gallery group that paired children in foster care with professional photographers in order to create little online scrapbooks about the children who were hoping to be adopted. http://www.oregonheartgallery.org/gallery The idea is people can see the photos and inquire about the children shown or adoption in general. I’d been talking about the website and had forwarded Jen the link so she could see.
In the midst of all this, one night when we were relaxing after dinner, Jen told me about a dream that she’d been having over the last couple of nights. She and I enter a house where there is a woman waiting for us. There is a little boy playing with some puzzles in the living room and Jen asks the woman if it’s alright for her to go play with him. She nods yes and Jen heads over while I speak with the woman. She sits down on the floor next to the boy and asks his name. “What do you want to call me?” is his response. She jokingly says, “I’ll call youuuuu…Monkey!” He giggles and says “Ok, I’ll call you Tiger!”. They work on his puzzle together and after a while the little boy climbs into her lap, snuggles into her and they continue to play. Jen looks over at me, gives the thumbs up sign and I nod yes. She and the boy get up and head towards me. The woman says we’re fine to leave and the little boy takes my hand and says “Come on, Moose!” The three of us leave together holding hands and smiling. It was the same dream every night. She said that she had seen the same little boy in other dreams, but didn’t recognize him as “ours” until then.
After the dreams she remembered the link I’d sent her and decided to check it out. I got a message from her with just a number and the link. The child she had been seeing in her dreams was on the site. The little boy who was “ours” was there. His description said his favorite activity was playing with puzzles and he liked to snuggle by crawling into your lap. It was that day that we decided to go through the Department of Human Services to find our child. We filled out the online request for information and listed this little boy’s information specifically. We knew that there was a chance given the length of the process that we wouldn’t end up with this little guy but more than anything Jen’s dream, our conversations about what parenthood meant to us, seeing all the images of the wonderful kids that need homes through The Oregon Heart Gallery, confirmed for us that this was the route we were meant to take.
Since that day we have been paired up with a local case worker who has sent us all of the information about the process and we’re signed up for the training classes that start next week. The first is an orientation and then each class will be focused on the special needs of the children available for adoption. We’re nervous but SO excited to get started!
And for those of you who are wondering, we’re not giving up on having a child of our own. Everyone says, relax and it will happen, so that’s what we’re trying to do. :) We’re working on getting my body in order and taking things as they come. In our early conversations about having children, we’d always said one of our own and then adopt. So we’re just reversing things and starting to see that our prayers are being answered, just not in the order we originally planned. :)
