Paper Pregnant and Slogging Through a Seminar

Okay… now that I’m over my semi-stunned state of ecstasy… I’m so freaking excited now. It’s REAL. I know there will be ups and downs and everything in between, but it’s real. It’s really going to happen at some point and hopefully within the next eighteen months (which is how long the certification lasts in Arizona).

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The hurdle I have to get over is DH’s insistence that the child be three or four years of age. While not impossible via private adoption, there’s a better chance to adopt a child that age through the State. I don’t know if y’all are aware, but our foster system in Arizona is a disaster and CPS (Child Protective Services) does not have a shining track record. I don’t think that there’s a month that doesn’t go by where there is a child that has been given back time and again to abusive (drugs/physical/emotional/sexual/etc) parents and winds up dead, and the story winds up in the paper. And these are just the ones that make the local print media. And the chances of a couple taking in a State child will more than likely have to hand the child back to the very parents whose actions caused CPS to get involved in the first place. And,when not awarded to the potential, privately certified parents, they are shipped to those certified through a foster-to-adopt program – privately certified people/couples generally get the shaft in these situations.

I think I feel kinda strongly on that.

Ya think?

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So I have to get to the root of this issue. As I’ve stated before, I think DH is terrified of newborns/infants, terrified of the disruption they bring (i.e. sleepless nights), and terrified of them in general because he’s never handled one, never really dealt with one except in limited scenarios, and so he doesn’t want to deal with them.

My position is this: let's list our age range from birth to three years of age, then let God take care of the rest. He has taken care of us so far – OMG, the Lord really has, it’s amazing – and allow Him to bring to us the child we are meant to have.

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Tonight’s seminar/class/whatever you want to call it had so much potential. I liked Beverly on first sight. She’s just one of those people whose first impression is of a person who is happy with their lot in life, happy with their job, and happy to help people in a practical way through the wringer of adoption. My gripes with the seminar have nothing whatsoever to do with her or her topics.

DH met me at the Agency. It started well, with six people: DH and me, another married couple (we’ll call them “A”, the husband, and “B” the wife) about our age, and a married woman (I’ll just refer to her as “W”) with her best friend (“F”; W’s husband couldn’t get away from work). The first third covered things we’d already gone through as we are already certified. I sort of tuned out and chimed in when Beverly asked me to.

Unfortunately, “A” stopped the flow of topics within the first ten minutes, and fixated on the statute-mandated pool fence, boring the shit out of DH; DH promptly tuned out for the rest of the seminar. A shame, but he has no patience for people who ask the same question in seventeen different forms in the span of fifteen minutes. “A” stalled the flow several times through the 90 minutes, and it got very annoying. He has the right to ask, but come on already. “B” looked intently at her notebook by the third time. She knew.

“W” pretty much kept her mouth shut throughout the whole thing. It was “F” who asked all sorts of really good questions. It made me wonder who was the one adopting. It was kind of strange.

The last, say, thirty minutes were full of good information. We talked about adopting through the State (shudder), potential expenses (yikes), networking (emails are amazingly effective), and the birthmother letter (with copies of examples of successful profiles given to us in a packet).

We also talked about the national “agencies” which are really “facilitators” – the ones that list children, usually but not always minorities, with this health problem and that prenatal drug addiction, demanding a $25-50K agency fee, plus expenses, plus your travel expenses, plus legal fees, plus whatever – they’re generally baby mills for the desperate. I saw their sites on the first search I ever did and was wary of them from the first site I looked at. I think this may be a topic in itself on another day.

The important thing was that I did get my pressing questions regarding adopting through the state, interstate adoption, and a couple of other topics answered.

It was overall a decent 90 minutes, but disappointing in its way. Oh well. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, right?

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And you're not going to believe this.

"Twenty Questions" is on the reading list she gave us. No! Nooooooo! Nooo!

Now I really have to smarten up my draft on that and post it. That book should NEVER be on any agency's reading list.

Have a great weekend everyone!!