Setting Up the Crib

We've been waiting awhile to order the Emily crib from Babies R Us but it has been continually out of stock. Joel received an e-mail alert that it was back in stock while we were on vacation and we were able to successfully order it - hurray!

We've had a lot of difficulty with the crib situation and so I was so relieved to find out that one was on the way. I've been in Chicago all week on business and came home to a large box sitting in our office/baby room. The crib has finally found it's way to our home!

Joel and I have had a packed weekend and so we decided to grab dinner and then set-up the crib this evening. I was commenting to Joel how unusual it was that I was helping put the crib together (after enjoying a margarita at dinner to boot). Probably not the usual role of the soon-to-be mom in crib assembly. After figuring out all the nuts and bolts, the crib was successfully assembled.

I finally was able to pull all of our bedding out of the plastic container it had been living in for the past three months. Ordering the bedding was the most exciting part for me. I found a set online that was the perfect mix of everything I was looking for- gender neutral, modern design and that features animals. We decided to make the crib and let all of the bedding off-gas pre-baby. The crib looks great with all of the new bedding!

The room is beginning to look official (as long as you look past the filing cabinet and camping gear that is still looking for a home).

Four Months and Counting

We've officially been waiting for four months for bambino. Honestly, the time has gone by pretty quickly. I've been trying to temper my impulses to buy things for baby for the fear that s/he is going to be dressed exclusively in polk-a-dots and yellow and green. I'm saving some of my shopping for when I'm shopping for a baby that will soon join our family.

I think it's been important for me to start preparing. I'm not going to have 9 months of pregnancy to get ready for baby mentally, emotionally and physically, so, it's been helpful to begin preparing a space for baby both in our physical space and psychologically. Shopping and reading baby books and books about adoption are helping me to accomplish this mental and emotional preparation.

Part of me is resisting the urge to go crazy and buy everything. I think it's going to be important for me to be shopping for my actual child. Of course, in the back of my mind, I still have a bit of fear about doing this. It's easier to shop for a hypothetical child in adoption than a real child. What if our birthmother changes her mind and I've bought clothes and toys for a baby that will not be coming home to me? That's a hard reality about adoption. It's one that doesn't happen as often as people think but one that lives in the back of my mind and creeps into my consciousness every now and then when I think about baby.

We live in a two bedroom condo in the city so I can't help but to see the baby's room. It used to be our office and it is directly across from our bedroom. When I get up in the morning and leave our room the first thing that I see is our changing table. I try to picture my baby on that table. Sometimes it's an African American boy, sometimes a girl with dark hair, dark eyes and olive skin, sometimes it's a freckled girl with red hair. I really have no idea what my baby might look like so I just change up the bambino every so often in my mind. I wonder if people who are having a biological child do this? The variations probably would not be as vast. Probably more like green eyes vs. blue or brown hair vs. blond.

We're Really Starting a Family

I wouldn't allow myself to do anything baby related until after we turned in our video. Really, the likelihood of us being selected without a video is probably pretty slim.

Once we turned in our video I truly felt like we were starting a family. It was really going to happen.



I had this horrible feeling the entire time that we were going through our infertility that buying anything baby related was depressing and pathetic. Why was I stocking up for an impossibility, an unreality?

It was a little bit hard at first when we were accepted into the adoption pool that the outcome was really going to be a baby. After everything that we'd been through I no longer allowed myself to believe that that day would ever come.

It was a strange transition to walk into Babies R Us. No longer was I wishfully thinking that I belonged among the aisles of baby paraphernalia. For the first time I actually felt like I had the right to be there and I wasn't just a voyeur into someone else's reality.

Consequently, I really was on the verge of tears the entire time we were registering because I was shopping for a real baby that someday would be inhabiting the crib, car seat, socks and onesies that we were purchasing.

The Dreaded Adoption Video

Our final exercise to complete our adoption was to complete a 5 - 10 minute video that profiles my husband and I.

Through our agency, birthparents and adoptive parents that have profiles that are compatible (think match.com) are paired. The birthparents are given the first five families that meet their criteria to screen. This screening includes reading the letter we have prepared and watching our video. While the letter was intimidating, I would imagine that the video would be more critical in the decision making.

This process is truly excruciating. You want to do your best to honestly convey who you are as people; however, in the back of your mind you are always thinking "What does the birthparent want? What could I say to make them pick me?". My answer to both these questions is to be myself. I truly feel that we'll be connected with a mother and child who identify with some aspect of our personality, beliefs or lifestyle. I feel that the only way that we'll find the child meant for us is to be as honest as possible and to let our true genuine selves shine through. Of course we were diligent to highlight the positive and sweep over the negative - we're only human!

The process of making the video was difficult. Both my husband and I are creative but our processes are completely different. I help to produce videos for work that are documentary in nature and my husband has produced videos that are more informational in nature. Neither of us do this full time. You can already assume that this created some creative wrangling.

My husband wanted to write a script and create the video in that fashion. I understood where he was coming from as he had to edit it and going through 2 hours of misquotes and outtakes would be tedious; however, I felt that it would feel too canned. I, on the other hand, wanted to create an outline of basic themes we wanted to convey and then just speak naturally about each. I forgot that speaking naturally in front of a camera is completely unnatural to my husband.

We spent a few hours recording one video only to scrap it. My husband meticulously set up lights and sound but the video was horrible. We set up a potted plant next to the video camera that we both had to speak to (interview style). The plant did nothing to enhance my rambling dialogue or my husband's deer-in-the-headlights anxiety.

We ended up scraping the entire video and started over. We had a close friend come over and crafted questions for her to ask us. These covered everything from how we met and our roles in the marriage to our personalities, our philosophy on parenthood, our families, our view on faith and religion and our hopes for a child. It was such a blessing to have our friend there to prompt my husband to extrapolate on his answers and thoughts and to tell me when to shut it. I'll just say I'm not the queen of soundbites. There was at least a three minute clip on my views on religion that begins with "I most identify with the Jesuit tradition of Catholicism". It was all down hill from there. BORING and tedious! It was great to have someone there who knew us so well to make sure that we were truly staying on topic and portraying our true selves.

We ended up turning in our video to the agency two weeks late. But, we were still married after the process and I felt we sumbitted a very authentic video about ourselves and our life together.

I hope that it is watched soon!

Bambino not "The Kid"

We've decided to call our soon-to-be-baby bambino. My husband has been using the phrase "when we get the kid". His mom pointed out that this wasn't the most endearing statement. (He meant it affectionately but didn't have another word to use). We've now begun to call future baby the "bambino". We're not Italian, but, it's sweet and endearing.

Dear Birthparent Letter

The "Dear Birthparent Letter" is so absolutely intimidating. The mother of our child will make her decision as to whether or not to choose us as parents for her child based upon this glimpse into our lives.

My "Dear Birthparent" letter was off to an auspicious start. Despite 12 years of Catholic schooling my penmanship is abysmal. I finally got the letter to a somewhat acceptable state (under 3 pages and highlighting all the pertinent details of my life, philosophy on parenthood, relationship with husband and family etc.). It took me approximately 3 hours to successfully copy this (not messing up on the last line of the second page for the 9th time) to the beautiful stationary we had selected.

My handwriting is horrible. For starters, it tilts the wrong way. I believe that handwriting (if right handed) is supposed to slant to the right, mine slants to the left. If you've ever seen a junior high boy write in cursive, that pretty much sums it up. People always comment on how crazy my handwriting is and how it doesn't fit my personality. So, I was very concerned about the birthparents not being able to read the letter at all. I called our caseworker to see if I could also provide a typewritten version as a crib sheet. She didn't believe that it could be that bad. I brought it in to show her the illegibility and she recommended I find someone to write the letter for me. This was the second time in the history of the agency that this has had to be done. Excellent! My mom was kind enough to help out with this task. Very sweet of her but very humiliating for me.

Accepted!!!

It's so silly to think that we wouldn't be accepted; however, with everything that we'd been through it really felt like a distinct possibility in my mind. Up until this point, it seemed that the unvierse was conspiring against us in starting a family and so I was holding out hope until we were offically accepted.

On May 12, the day after Mother's Day, we were accepted!!!! This was the most exciting part of the process thus far (other than actually making the decision to adopt). We found out that we were number 33 on the list. It really felt like we might be able to start a family!

Unfortunately, my husband and I drove seperately, so I made the half hour drive back home by myself. I immediately called my sister and left her a message. I was sobbing on her voicemail that we were finally going to have a baby and that we were 33 on the list! It was hard to believe that this was actually happening- now all we have to do is sit back and wait for baby!