Adoption

“I think his diaper is wet. You have to change him.”

With those two sentences, my husband and I became parents. We met our son’s other mother a little over a month before his birth. It all began with a phone call – a call I thought was a prank.

Our home study was almost done. Emphasis on ALMOST. I emailed the agency I wanted to work with to let the owner know that we were ALMOST DONE. My message was oozing with excitement, but her reply was short and terse in my opinion. It said, “Contact us when your home study is complete.” I was crestfallen. When a number with her area code popped up on my screen, I debated whether to answer, but something told me to hit accept.

She – let’s call her Mrs. S.- enthusiastically greeted me. I thought I was being tricked. I reminded her that she already replied to me via email. That’s when she told me that a case had arisen for which she thought my husband I would be perfect.

Say what?

An expectant mother wanted a family with at least one person of color to raise her son!!! Why the exclamation points you ask? Because that’s how excited I was.

It all seemed too good to be true. We sent our adoption book and got a call back days later, as my husband recovered from emergency surgery. The mother,who we will call EM, wanted to meet us in person. She was in the south. We were in the northeast.

As luck would have it, we were headed to the region for a wedding. We added an additional stop to our trip. We flew more than two hours and drove about two hours to meet EM.

When I saw her, my heart stopped. She looked like she could be my child. When she spoke, I could hear her already-growing unconditional love for her baby. I was off-kilter.

I feel like my husband answered most of the questions and I spent the time staring at EM, telling her how beautiful she was and that she did not have to do this. No one could make her do this.

Ten years after my husband and I married,

five years after we started actively fighting infertility,

five months after we began our home study

and five weeks after we met EM, she texted us to tell us she was in labor.

EM announced the baby’s birth and my husband booked our flight. As I showered, the phone rang. I could hear the tone and I knew…

Mrs. S said EM was changing her mind and we should stay home. My husband…I don’t have the words to describe my husband, but he was not ready to hear what Mrs. S was saying.

As I tried to get through to him, EM was trying to get through to us. She told us to come, but she wanted her two days with her son – our son- because we were all family now.

We met him on a Thursday. Just moments before my husband and I smiled for our first family picture with our son, we nervously changed our first diaper at EM’s request.

I was not prepared for the moment EM was released from the hospital. I wasn’t prepared for the way her tears and anguish shook my core. I wasn’t prepared for the insensitivity: the nurse ready to wheel her out before she could kiss her sweet child, whom she arrived with, but would leave without.

Here lies the conundrum of adoption: as my heart broke for her, it swelled for us.

We left the hospital as Mother, Father and Son. We hilariously struggled to get our son snapped into his car seat, clinched our teeth as we drove with him for the first time and marveled at his presence when we made it to our hotel room.

EM had five days to change her mind. She visited our hotel twice during that time, always saying she was sure and she was ok. I wasn’t ok. I worried about her. We worried about her. I’ll worry about her for the rest of my life.

Our adoption is open. We will see her once a year. I post pictures on social media for her daily – at first willingly, then reluctantly, then happily because being a new mom and digesting adoption is hard. Our goal – her’s, mine and my husband’s – is to raise a good citizen.

I’M A SAHM AND I’M PROUD

I am a Stay-At-Home Mom and today is the day that I stop being ashamed. You want to know why? I’m tired of feeling bad for having the opportunity to stay home and care for the baby I prayed for and begged for for nearly a decade (f*ck you, infertility).

Today a woman said, “I didn’t know people still did that,”  when I told her I didn’t return to work. She had a bit of a judgemental attitude. I can’t begin to understand why. I am college educated and I worked in my profession for more than a decade. It is my choice to dedicate myself to my son and not a career. Guess what won’t be on my urn after I die? “Dedicated employee of (insert company name here).” Do you want to know why? It’s because that company won’t pay for my funeral costs, won’t care that I’m dead and likely won’t remember my name.

I do plan to return to work after my son turns one. It WILL be hard for me to find work because I am going to try desperately not to return to my old career. That job, while fulfilling, was incredibly demanding. If something major occurred, my personal life had to take a backseat no matter what. I definitely can’t be the mom I want to be if the only time I see my son is after he’s gone to sleep and before he wakes up in the morning.

I want to continue to contribute monetarily to my household because I am no domestic diva, but when my son hits middle school, guess what? If I am able, I’ll be leaving work behind again. He needs to see I’m there and I’m watching. That way if he chooses the wrong path, I can say I did everything to give him a good foundation and I didn’t leave his “managment” to chance or a stranger.

So yes, Judgemental Lady, people still leave work to raise their own children. It’s so interesting to me that we are so brain-washed by capitalism that women are now looked down upon for CHOOSING to be THEIR children’s primary caretakers.

This is not a knock on women who CHOOSE to or HAVE to return to work. Do what is right for you, but don’t cop an attitude because I’m doing what I think is right for me.

I’m Insecure, but it’s because I don’t want to fail this little guy of mine. I’m not insecure because I’m uneducated or unsure of the type of child I hope to raise.

5 Things you need to know before bringing home a newborn

I spent ten years chasing motherhood. TEN YEARS. My husband and I completed multiple rounds of IVF and IUI. I had four surgeries to combat fibroids, endometriosis and an ectopic pregnancy. After all of that time, pain and money, we were still childless. We ultimately completed our family through adoption. I spent so much time daydreaming about motherhood that I was grossly unprepared for what really happens when you bring home a newborn.

I had people giving me bad advice left and right. Thank goodness I like to read. Through the glory of books, I managed to cobble together my own philosophy for getting through infanthood. it was the most amazing, stressful, loud, draining and beautiful time of my life.

I’d like to tell new moms five things before they leave the hospital with their child. Here they are:

1. Throw your plans out the window. Your child is not the perfect child from TV, the bus or wherever you saw the well-behaving baby after which you modeled your unborn offspring. Please let this child come into this Earth, meet the child and figure out what works for this particular person.

2. Sleep? Forget about it. I know people tell you this, but you truly have no idea. I don’t care that you have the perfect plan for making sure your child does not usurp your much-needed sleep. YOU. ARE. NOT. SLEEPING.

3. Sit in the turmoil of those first three month. Enjoy the incessant crying, the required cuddling and the liquid, projectile poop (yeah. It shot out like a bullet). In the moment, you will wish, pray and covet the self-sufficiency of a four or five month old baby, but stop yourself. You will never get these beautiful moments again. Your baby will never need you this much, this way again because at four months they start solids. WTH? I was just getting the hang of this infant thing…but I digress

4.Use YOUR mind. Listen to YOUR baby. If someone is offering you advice because they think you’re being too hard or too soft. You can listen if you want, but you know your baby and you have to spend the most time with him or her. Use what’s best for your household, not someone else’s.

5. Ignore images of perfect mommies who have it all together. Most of them took those pictures when their children were 6 months (or the first two weeks when the child isn’t firing on all cylinders). They had time to adjust. Don’t put impossible timelines on yourself. That doesn’t mean let everything go. It just means everything doesn’t have to be together two months postpartum.