Mommie or Bust ~ A Mother’s Journey Through Adoption

Let me tell you about the MOM's Club that I found.  First of all, Jacob and I decided when he was 3 months old that it was time for us to get a "social" life.  We needed some peeps.  We signed up for this crazy stuff called Gymboree.   There, we met some other cool three month olds and their mommies.  This was a pivotal decision in my life.  For this simple endeavor would bring the start to some very meaningful friendships for both me and Jacob.  We discovered our community.  Kids have a way of drawing you into arenas you would never have entered.  Until Jacob came, Jerry and I tended to migrate back to our old neighborhood and did not know much about the community that we lived in.  All we knew was that it was a great school district and a beautiful place to raise a family.  Right away, Jacob and I made friends and started joining playgroups and having a ball.  We heard about this Mom's Club thing and we checked it...

I wanted to share something with you that I learned over the past 10 years of raising Jacob.  I did not realize the mistake that I made until he was about 6 years old.  Jacob is a sensitive child, who is very hard on himself.  He expects perfection from himself in everything that he does.  I began telling Jacob that he was adopted from an early age.  Around the age of 3-4, I would just bring the word adoption up and use it as much as possible, so that he would learn the meaning of the word adoption.  The first time he asked me about growing in my tummy was when my sister in law was pregnant and he was understanding that a baby was in her tummy.  I told him that he had 2 mommies.  One mommy made him in her tummy and gave him his life and the other mommy (me) is teaching him how to live it and loving him through it.  I told him that both mommies are important, and that God brought us together as a team to be everything that he needed.  He ...

I wanted to share a little about myself.  I came from a family of four.  My parents have been married for 46 years, and are still like two teenagers on their first date.  They have been great roll models for me.  I had a great childhood.  The only thing that I might complain about it was that, my parents had this insane habit of moving.  They would get the "itch" to move.  They moved us 6 times before I graduated from High School.  Every time we moved, I had to start over making new friends.  I did alright, but moving to a new school in 8th grade was the hardest one.  By that time kids are pretty much set in their clicks.  Social became my primary focus.  Trying to find a place to fit in.  It would take me a while to find my bearings, but I did ok.  Jerry on the other hand, lived in one place his whole life and to this day still has the same friends from kindergarten.  I so envy that.  I think the reaso...

After all was settled with the courts regarding parental rights.  Jacob was now legally in our custody.....but not adopted.  The process was not over.  Now, it was up to the agency to handle the court business and for us it was a waiting game.  We fell right in to the daily life as parents.  Everyday was a new experience with Jacob.  We were living in a bit of a peaceful state, compared to our previous 5 or 6 years.  Daily life with an infant is busy to say the least.  I had a ball.  We were so proud of our little boy.  His presence was healing my heart everyday.  I joined Gymboree with him.  I met some amazing women and their babies.  Some of whom, I am still very close to.  When meeting new people, I struggled with whether to be open about Jacob being adopted right away, or to keep it to myself until I felt comfortable.  I found that right away, I had to make a decision about sharing our story, because, the nat...

My post today is not from any journal entry, but from my memory.  I remember the day that we went to court for Jacob's birthmothers hearing for relinquishing her rights.  I was so full of emotion.  We really didn't have to be there, but she requested it.  She wanted to see him.  Naturally, I had mixed emotions.  On one hand, I wanted to see her as well, and make sure that she was doing ok and that she still felt confident about her decision.  Let's face it.....he is her biological child and who knows what kind of emotions she is having.  On the other hand, honestly, I wanted to dye my hair and go into hiding on the outside chance that she wanted him back.  (I wouldn't really do that).  For three weeks I had cared for and loved on this child 24/7 and bonded deeply with him.  My protective instincts were in high gear.  It was so nerve racking.  We were in the hallway at the court, waiting for her and our social worker to arr...

Journal entry dated November 21, 2000 - The shower was amazing.  All of our family and friends gathered together an gave us so many wonderful gifts.  It was so touching to see how this child has brought together so much love into one room.  At the end of the shower, Jerry arrived with Jacob, to show him off a little.  I loved watching everyone gush over him.  The night was very emotional.  Several times while I was speaking to the group, I got quite choked up.  The joy that I am feeling just came flooding out out me and into the MICROPHONE that I was holding.  I did it, you know, the "ugly cry".  But, I am glad that we got the chance to publicly profess our love for Jacob.  Afterwards, when we were loading up the car and saying our goodbyes, Jerry and I had a moment together that I will never forget as long as I live.  I climbed into the back seat with Jacob and as Jerry put his seat belt on...he looked in the rear view m...

Journal Entry dated November 13, 2000 - When we were leaving the hospital today to bring Jacob home with us, it all hit me.  We are going home with our little boy.  It felt strange.  Wonderful, but strange.  Kinda like when you go through the drive-thru at McDonald's, and as you drive away, you realize that they gave you an extra cheeseburger and you think, "I'd better get out of here, before someone realizes they made a mistake".  Mixed with all of this excitement is a lot of fear.  I did not realize that I would feel this so strongly.  It is like I am getting on an airplane going on vacation and I am full of excitement. Then comes that feeling when the plane is taking off and you are nervous, then you reach a point in the air where the nervousness lessens, but never really goes away.  Then the plane touches down and you are ok.  I am nervous to fall so deeply in love with this little angel, and then something goes wrong...

I didn't give you the gift of life, But in my heart I know. The love I feel is deep and real, As if it had been so. For us to have each other Is like a dream come true! No, I didn't give you The gift of life, Life gave me the gift of you. --- Unknown My last few posts have been quite draining on me.  Reliving all of these moments is awesome while and the same time, it brings up all of the old wounds.  Don't get me wrong, at this point in my life, I have healed from all the turmoil that we went through.   The healing began when this amazing little boy came into our lives.  I promised God that I would share my story, in the hope that someone could feel comforted through their own journey.  I had no one to help me in understanding the rollercoaster of emotions that comes with becoming an adoptive parent.  Our journey is just beginning.  Our story has just begun.  The day that we took Jacob home, one ...

The ride up the elevator felt like the longest 2 minutes of my life.  The doors opened to the maternity floor and we were immediately greeted by the nursing staff.  They were so excited to see us.  That was a surprise.  Deep down, I guess I thought that the nurses would rather see a child go home with a birthmom.  They were telling us that they had looked at the our scrapbook with our birthmother and they were very happy to meet us.  They treated us like royalty.  Wow!  I think I took a big sigh of relief in that moment.  So, they shuffled us toward our birthmothers room and our social worker said, "Jacob is in there with her and she is saying her goodbyes. She wants you to come in".  This moment, I will never forget as long as I live. She was beautiful.  She had a big, amazing smile.  The warmth of her personality jumped right out at us.  I could see that she must have been crying a bit, but over all, she looked...

LEGACY OF AN ADOPTED CHILD Once there were two women who never knew each other One you do not remember, the other you call Mother Two different lives shaped to make you one One became your guiding star, the other became your sun The first one gave you life, and the second taught you to live it The first gave you a need for love, the second was there to give it One gave you a nationality, the other gave you a name One gave you a talent, the other gave you aim One gave you emotions, the other calmed your fears One saw your first sweet smile, the other dried you tears One made an adoption plan, that was all that she could do The other prayed for a child, and God led her straight to you. Now, which of these two women, Are you the product of? Both, my darling, Both, Just two different types of love. ---- Unknown Isn't that just beautiful?  That is how I feel about it, exactly.  I fell in love with this quote.  Now, I know, that I don't have to tell you that,...

Journal entry dated November 11, 2000 - I am still in SHOCK.  Shaking. My stomach feels like I am in an airplane and we are experiencing turbulence.  Today is Veterans Day and since Jerry had the day off, we decided to go hang out with Jerry's parents and maybe do a little Christmas shopping.  We were sitting on the couch chatting when the phone rang.  My mother in law answered it and came around the corner from the kitchen and whispered to me, "its the adoption agency".  She says, "they said they have been looking for you".  I told her to "RELAX, we finished our home study yesterday and they probably have a question for us." I picked up the phone and said "Hello".  The next few minutes, I would be silent and frozen in my footsteps, for fear that I may be misunderstanding our Social workers words.  "We have a baby boy here at the hospital and the mother has selected you and Jerry to become the adoptive parents."  Not sure that I ...

Journal entry dated November 10, 2000 - We finished our home study with the Social worker this week.  We are just waiting for our background checks to come through and Jerry and I still need to get our physicals.  It's just a matter of waiting now.  Who knows how long it will take....I'm still thinking about going back to work while we wait.  I won't go back to the corporate world....I hated it.  It is so hard to get in that mode of thinking when all that I really want is to be a mother and live all that comes with that.  I am just glad that we have our agency and we have moved along through the process in order to get closer to the building of our family.  It hasn't been easy.  Jerry has his guard up.  I can't do anything about that.  He worries someone will take advantage of us somewhere along the way.  This is unchartered territory for us and the world of adoption seems so unregulated.  My gut tells me that we are in g...

I know that most of my blog has been about bringing you up to speed on where we are in our life today, but today I wanted to share a current event.  Jerry had today off along with the kids for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, and we wanted to do something fun with the kids.  Something that in the last few years hasn't been easy for us with the economy and all.  We have had a rough couple of years with Jerry losing his overtime and me staying at home.  Don't get me wrong, we are one of the lucky ones who didn't lose their income completely.  Sometimes, we were struggling to get through the month to the next payday.  Getting paid once a month is hard to manage with 4 kids and all of the EXTRA things that pop up unplanned.  You know, field trips and a turn at snack mom for preschool, roller skating parties for school, a donation here and there for the elementary school.    It all adds up, so the kids learned that we needed all of our money for the t...

ON THE WINGS OF A PRAYER I set you free on the wings of a prayer To fly through life in His tender care, You're free from the nest and the ties that are bound Free from the pressures I carry around. If I kept you I'd only be cutting your wings, Not offering the chance a true family brings. The decision I've made has my heart torn in two, But I know what I'm doing is the best thing for you. The sky is so vast, the mountains so high Take wing and remember: I love you. Goodbye. --LISA BOTE-PHILLIPS, a birth mother I thought that I would share this with you.    I loved it.

WoW.  Last night I was laying awake, thinking about yesterdays post.  It brought back some of those old feelings that we went through.  When we were waiting for a birthmother to select us, we felt so exposed .  In our scrapbook to show the world that we were "worthy" of being parents, we put it all out there.  Imagine that .  It was not easy for my husband Jerry to do that.  By nature, he is a very private person and he had to really reach down deep in order to put himself out there.  I was very proud of him because, I know that most men would not be comfortable doing so.   I am realizing through this blogging thing, that him and I have really grown a lot from those two scared people, who had a dream and kept running into walls at every turn.....but, we never gave up.  We would just pick up the pieces and look for another road to travel.  Quiting was NEVER an option for either one of us.  I do understand how some...

I am going to share a very personal letter with you today.  This letter came from my heart.  It is our "Dear Birthmother" letter.   This was a very challenging letter to write.  I was trying to keep in mind how a birth mother would be feeling as she read our letter and what words would comfort her as she made, what seemed to me, to be an impossible decision.  We couldn't possibly understand where each other was coming from, but I felt that there had to be some common ground for us to meet.  The agency told us that you never know what one peice of information may draw a birth mother to you, so we should be thorough and full of detail.  This is our letter. Dear Birthmother, Selecting a future home and family for your child is a very difficult and important decision.  We greatly respect and appreciate your need to know about us and the kind of home that we would provide for your child.  By gaining some insight i...

Occasionally, throughout my years of infertility I would have what I called a "Momentary Meltdown".  These came when my emotional well being was in conflict with Jerry's theories about logical thinking and suppressing feelings.   Most of us women know that the two do not work well together.  How do they do that whole thing?  You  know....."not think about it".  Guys can push emotions down deep inside and bury them.  Me....I try, but it gets all mangled up with the "what if" thinking, and the "why" thinking.  Journal entry dated October 26, 2000 - For a few days, my head has been focused on my body.....I was LATE.  At least 5 days late, so naturally, my thoughts have gone right to....what??? Yes.  Could I be pregnant???? My head knows better.  My heart is an IDIOT.  It falls for it every time.  Anyways, today "it" came and yes, again, I fell apart.  Jerry kept telling me.....you know that you are not,...

I thought that I would share a little with you about my faith.  I am christian.  I became a christian in my 27th year on this planet after a very difficult time in my life.  I had been raised christian, but truly accepted Christ as my own personal savior that year.  For the most part, I lean on God and leave my worries at his feet and let him guide me.  Occasionally, I pick them right back up and think that I can do it myself.  Then, I put them back down there, again.  This I struggle with because, I can be a bit of a control FREAK.  God knows this about me.  He taps me on the shoulder and reminds me that I am doing " it " again.  I must give God a lot of credit for getting me through my years of infertility.  There is this part of you that feels broken or incomplete when you can't just "have a baby" when you want to.  I used to get so mad inside when I would hear women talk about how horrible it was to be pregnant and that the...

I want to share my very favorite quote.  I found it when I was 21 years old and  I was going through a difficult time.  At that age, most of us are still very selfish.  Thinking that the world revolves around us.  At that age, you do not realize that the decisions that you make could have impact on the rest of your life.  I have kept this quote close throughout my life to remind me that this is the kind of person that I want to be.  How far you go in life, depends on your being... Tender with the young, Compassionate with the aged, Sympathetic with the striving, and Tolerant with the weak and the strong; BECAUSE someday in your life.... You will have been ALL OF THESE. --George Washington Carver   Journal entry dated October 29, 2000 - I am going crazy.  I think Jerry is gonna jump ship.  I know that I am making him NUTS.  This waiting stuff is excruciating.  I know that we just got started, but my mind is runn...

"Acknowledging the good that you already have in your life is the foundation for all abundance." — Eckhart Tolle ( A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose )

At this point, it was now a waiting game.  Kinda like sitting on a time bomb.  Tick Tock.  At any time the phone could ring and there could be a baby waiting, while on the other hand, it could be a long wait.  So, you see, just because we moved on to adopting, we still were not without the rollercoaster ride of emotion.  I was ready to take it on.  I was just hoping that the anticipation wasn't going to make us nuts.  We were still going through the details of the home study, getting state and city security clearances, and we still needed to get physicals.  Journal entry dated October 12, 2000 - I realized that this week marks the 5 year point since we started trying to have children.  We started 2 months after getting married.  * We were ready.  I remember talking about kids on our first date.  On the second date, we went to dinner at and sat there for about 4 hours talking about everything under the sun....

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 coul...

I'll cut to the chase and tell that we did go on to do the 2nd ICSI in May of 1999 and unfortunately, there was no pregnancy from the procedure.  I was very deflated to say the least, but through the grace of God and a loving supportive family, I survived.  I tried really hard everyday to stay out of the "Why Me" frame of mind.  Anyone who has gone through years of trying and failing, tends to get caught up in that.  I can't say that I didn't fall into it quite a bit myself, but I am here to say that time does heal.  Our doctors said that they recommended that we try again since we had one success.  SUCCESS?  Are you looking at my file MISTER.  That was the "reactionary" part of me lashing out.  I do tend to be a reactionary person, but I must say that having 4 children has helped me tighten the reigns on that.  Again, I am a work in progress. For me, it was an emphatic NO.  I will not go through it again.  I needed time....

Jerry and I, even though we were sad, we planned to "pick up our ball and get back in the game", so to speak.  Neither of us have ever been one to back down from a challenge....but this challenge would be mixed with a lot of emotion.  All in all, our outlook was good. * Journal entry dated January 14, 1999 - I fear that I will never experience that joy.  You know the joy you see on a mothers face on those "Baby Stories" shows on TLC.  When the nurse puts the baby on your tummy and you see your little angel FOR THE FIRST TIME.  Will we be that BLESSED???  I am hopeful, but guarded.  I am good at that  whole "guarded" thing.  Too good, I would say.  "Suck it up", is what that little voice inside me says.  Never let anyone see you......down.  All I want it to be a good mother.  Boy, girl, I don't care, just a good, old fashioned mother.  Its funny, but lately, everywhere I look, its Babies, Babies,...

I know I kinda left ya hanging yesterday.  Yes our prayer was answered.  We were expecting, not one but two little ones.  We were PUMPED to say the least.  We had decided to do our nursery in the Winnie the Pooh theme and it was all painted already with the most wonderful shade of yellow.  I started to plan.  It was the most fun I had ever had in my life.  Fortunately, I was feeling fantastic and was forging ahead at full steam.  There was this little, tiny, miniscule voice inside me saying, whoa girl, slow it down.  It is early.  I was about 5 weeks pregnant and very tired, and I started sleeping all the time.  Christmas 1998 was wonderful....it was a new year (1999) and we were gonna celebrate a fresh new beginning toward building our family.  At the 6th week mark, I felt a little cramping.... * Journal entry dated January 5,1999 - Long time since I journaled. Christmas was great.  New Years was fun.  We had some...

It's funny, but since I started this blog, I have looked back at the journals that I kept during the years of our "Infertility Wars".   I have found that rereading the words that poured out of my heart and onto those pages, was heart breaking.   It is amazing how far that I have come from those days.  After 2 months of contemplation....we moved forward into the ICSI process. * Journal entry dated November 19, 1998 - Today was our first day of shots.  Were getting closer to the "procedure".  For the most part, I am very excited about all of this, but I am struggling with the recommendation from the doctors to selectively reduce any fetuses over two.  I realize that doing so,  will give any babies I do carry to term a better chance, but it is really difficult to imagine having to do this.  All that I can do is pray and hope that the issue does not come about.  Upon going into this, I didn't realize the scope in ...

"Gratefulness for what is there is one of the most powerful tools for creating what is not yet there. What does gratefulness mean? It means you appreciate what is. You value, you give attention to, you honor whatever is here at this moment." You will see many quotes in my Blog from this man.  His book "The Power of Now, a guide to spiritual enlightenment" changed the way that I lived my life.  It helped me find sanity within the crazy life that I was about to embark on.  I was going to need to find a great sense of peace to edure the emotional roller coaster that lay ahead.

My husband Jerry and I were married in August of 1995 on a very hot and sticky day.  We were ready to take on the world.  We would have it all.....love, family....happiness all the way.    In the first year, we didn't panic when it seemed that getting pregnant wasn't going to be as easy as our parents led us to believe.  We tried a little temperature taking in the morning....counting the days of my cycle....timing whoopie.....we had a few tests, (both of us).  What we learned was that we both clearly had issues.  These issues weren't going to be anything that we couldn't tackle.  Our doctors were confident that we could conceive.....with a "little help". In all actuality, it became a full time job.  Twelve months of inseminations....all failed.  The next step would be a crazy procedure called ICSI (Intracytoplasmic sperm injection of eggs, & then IVF & embryo transfer to the female is an effective treatment for m...