Stepping into the Unknown

Journal entry dated September 23, 2000 - It has been awhile since my last entry.  A lot has been going on.  We are in middle of the home study, which I must say is SO nerve wracking.  The agency sends a Social Worker to your house.  Many questions are fired at you. Jerry and I are paranoid about every answer that we give them.  It is like going through a interview that goes on for weeks in which, at the end some stranger decides whether or not you are "an acceptable human being".  Every decision that you made along the way in your life comes into play.  Every mistake that you thought was behind you can resurface, because of one question that the social worker asks.   Then, when they leave your house (that you cleaned till 2:00am the night before, so it was PERFECT), Jerry and I would wonder, did we do OK???  We are very excited. We hope that we will be blessed with a child.......soon.  They do warn you though that it could take a while.
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Forever Families www.forever-families.org/ , was the smallest agency that we considered.  They only take 25 families at a time, therefore, you are only competing with 24 other couples.  The two women, who owned the agency, just really made me feel that they were the right fit for us.  They were in it for the babies and finding good homes.  They did not seem motivated by $$$$$$$$.  One of the women treated me like a daughter and seems like she is really looking out for us.  She gave me some peace about the process.

I am very proud of the scrapbook that we put together for "the pool" of families.  It is amazing how eye opening it can be when you have to select pictures from your life, set them up like a story, to show a stranger, and then hope that they get who you are and what you have to offer a child, just from pics and writings.  Tricky.  But it was a deeply gratifying experience for me.  It made me realize how blessed that I am in my life.  I have absolutely wonderful parents, who were on board with everything we needed.  I have the husband that I always hoped for (of course, he is still a work in progress too. LOL), but, wonderful nonetheless...and I am healthy. I am turning the scrapbook in on friday.  Fingers crossed.
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Journal entry dated September 28, 2000 - Lucy is lying on my feet at the end of the bed SNORING.  Jerry is in St. Louis, working at the plant.  He went to Austria last week and says it was unbelievable and is taking me next time.  He is gone more that he is home right now. I am exhausted.  I did a lot of outside work today, planting grass seed, planting bulbs and then I went for a 7 mile run.  I don't know what I would do without being able to run.  It clears my mind and I escape my troubles.  I am trying to live by these three things:  Stay fit;  Don't spend; Laugh a lot.
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I probably forgot to mention that I quit my job right before we did the first ICSI, because I was commuting for 2 and a half hours everyday to work, and the doctors had told us that driving stress can contribute to infertility.  Jerry was "not really" on board with the decision to quit, but in my pshycho state of mind, I wanted to eliminate EVERYTHING that might get in the way.  Now, that we were trying to adopt, we (and I use the term "we" loosely) decided that since we had already decided that I was going to be a stay at home MOM anyways, it didn't make sense (in my head) to get a job closer to home at this time. It didn't matter how much the agency prepared us, in my mind, it had to happen soon, right?

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