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Monday, May 25, 2009

Final Class

Well, we had an interesting development yesterday and David asked if I was going to blog about it. I told him I couldn't yet because right now in my blog I'm only on the fourth class. So I guess I better speed it up! He said by the time I get caught up we'll have a child in middle school! He also said he wanted to write a post so if you see him or talk to him, pester him about it so he will!!

So I'll go on to our last class. We had a potluck that night, and I signed up to bring macaroni and cheese. It turned out that David had to work that night so I brought subs from Safeway instead. I wanted to label my subs "macaroni and cheese" but they didn't have any labels. Ha. That's my sense of humor for you. I guess I should stick to my strength of blogging and leave the humor to David.

There were three couples with their kids there. Actually one couple had a babysitter so their kids were at home. I'm not really even sure what the point was of this class other than for them to give their stories and for us to ask questions. The first couple had a baby who was probably 5 or 6 months old and they adopted her from birth. The couple had initially started with a different agency and were matched with a birthmom in Illinois. The baby was born, the adoptive mother flew to Illinois, only to find out the birthmom changed her mind and didn't tell her anything until after the baby was born. It was a mess and she was very hurt by the situation. She ended up switching to the agency we're with and only waited a couple months for her daughter. The adoptive parents are White and the baby is Black (I've read that Black and White are acceptable terms when unsure of origin of the individual--correct me if I'm wrong). The adoptive father said when he started this process for some reason he pictured them adopting a Black baby. They didn't make themselves restricted to only accepting a Black baby, it just happened that's who they adopted. Pretty cool.

The second couple had adopted one child and then adopted twins. They didn't have their kids there. The adoptive mom's recommendation was to tell everyone we know that we are trying to adopt, because their twins were adopted by word of mouth from a birthmother in either Washington or Oregon, I can't remember. At the time I thought no way, it's hard enough having to deal with the topic of infertility let alone having to answer questions that come along when people find out we're going to adopt. For a while I felt some sort of shame in being infertile. So talking about adoption meant thinking about being infertile, which brought up those feelings of shame. But I'm totally over that now, so I tell everyone!

The third couple had two adopted kids, one of which was there. She was about 2, super cute, and so full of energy. I don't honestly remember their story at all! I just remember how cute their girl was.

Right around this time I had been reading an article in an adoption magazine about adopting a different race. One thing that stuck out in the article was how the mother loved knowing she had such a "colorful" family. Sometimes she would look at families all the same "color" and would think they looked kind of boring compared to hers! I thought that was an interesting way of looking at it.

I was very happy the classes were finished. I learned a little bit and got to hear some great stories. They were definitely helpful but sometimes a bit on the long side for me. I've never been one to want to dwell on questions of "what if", which is most of what the questions by the potential adoptive couples ended up being. And the questions were generally what made the classes sort of drag on. It was the same for me in nursing school. All the other girls would go over scenarios of what classes they would have to take, who their professors were going to be, do this to get ahead, do that, etc. It goes on and on and just creates more stress than to just sit back and let it come. So with the adoption, I had a few questions, but I'd rather just know the basics and let things happen as they do. Whatever we don't know we'll find out as we go along. There are so many scenarios with adoption because no two adoptions are alike.

In the next post I will go over what our joint interview was like with our case worker, and you will find out just what we decided as far as preferences on race, family medical history, and drug use.

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