The Wait

I stole this from a friend who has been through one adoption and is currently in process for their second child.  I needed to hear this today and thought I'd share.  I get to feeling so selfish at times during this process and I forget sometimes that their is actually a living, breathing child at the end of all this whose wait is probably much harder than ours is.  

'About the long wait and many frustrations that adoptive parents encounter on the journey... “Oh my, I can speak to this. First, forget whatever timeline you were given at the beginning. Forget you ever heard that. Put that in the trash can. Adoption will change, shift, slow down, hit snags, be weird, be difficult, take longer than you think, take longer than you can stand. This will happen. This is the normal thing. When someone gives you a timeline, say, “Thank you for that cute little sentence. Flush.” 

Potential adopters, let me tell you this: Get your “YES” straight at the very beginning. Decide on it. Roll around in it. Put it on the table and shellack it. Because you cannot let every delay and snag derail your certainty about adoption. When you say YES, you are saying YES to enter the suffering of the orphan, and that suffering includes WAITING FOR YOU TO GET TO THEM. I promise you, their suffering is worse than yours. We say YES to the tears, YES to the longing, YES to the maddening process, YES to the money, YES to hope, YES to the screaming frustration of it all, YES to going the distance through every unforeseen discouragement and delay. Do not imagine that something outside of “your perfect plan” means you heard God wrong.

There is NO perfect adoption. EVERY adoption has snags. We Americans invented the “show me a sign” or “this is a sign” or “this must mean God is closing a door” or “God must not be in this because it is hard,” but all that is garbage. You know what’s hard? Being an orphan. They need us to be champions and heroes for them, fighting like hell to get them home. So we will. We may cry and rage and scream and wail in the process, but get them home we will.”' written by: Jen Hatmaker

God, please help me to be thankful for the this process and to be patient.  Your timing IS perfect.  And please keep our little one safe, protected, and loved until the day we finally meet.  Amen.  

Dossier...Done!!

That's right; for real this time our dossier is done and on it's way to China!!  All the paperwork is officially done.  It's exciting, but I find myself in a weird place.  A place where once again, we wait.    We are excited, but very cautiously so.  Can't wait to finally get the phone call saying that we are matched!!  

Our Jacker Boy

What a week it has been for our little family.  Matt flew to Arizona for work last Sunday night and was gone until late Thursday.  On Monday and Tuesday night I took Jack to Standing Bear Lake~a lake near our house that we spend a lot of time at. Both nights it was super hot and Jack was just acting weird for example pulling on his leash or acting like he wanted to sit down all the time.  I honestly thought it was probably just too hot for him or he was mad because his dad was gone.  Either way I let him in the lake both nights to cool off.  Jack normally loves to swim but Monday and Tuesday night he simply stood in the water and looked at me.  Wednesday morning it was obvious that something more than just heat or obstanance was going on.  His temp was 105 by this time.  I called the vet as soon as I was able and they were able to see him that afternoon.  The vet, Dr. Dritley, ran blood work that showed Jack was both anemic and had very low platelets.  They determined that Jack had developed a bacterial infection from "something he got into".  Possibly from the lake or he ate something he shouldn't have~ a dog will be a dog :)  Dr. Dritley gave him an IV steroid and antibiotic and we were on our way.  Wednesday night it seemed like that was all Jack needed and he was going to turn around quickly then came Thursday morning...

Thursday morning I was awoken at 5:30am to Jack struggling to breathe.  I counted his respirations to be around 80 per minute and loud.  He was having to use his abdominal and chest muscles (accessory muscles) to help him breathe.  Luckily I work with amazing people who understood Jack is not just a dog, he is our baby boy and told me to not worry about work and just take care of him.  :)  I walked into the clinic as soon as they opened, without an appointment and they escorted me right back into an exam room.  Dr. Dritley came right in and looked Jack over again.  It was determined that Jack needed more tests including a chest x-ray.  The lab work had not changed much from the day before, but the chest x-ray held the most devasting news.  Dr. Dritley explained to me that because of the infection, Jack was collecting fluid around his lungs and even worse than that, because of the low platelets he was also bleeding into his lungs because he was unable to clot effectively.  Dr. Dritley calmly told me that we were not in crisis mode yet, but that if we couldn't get Jack to make a quick turn around he may not make it.  I was devasted and now I had to figure out how to tell Matt; over the phone in Arizona. 

I had no idea how to tell Matt what I had just heard and I knew I was not going to be able to keep myself together to tell him calmly.  But I also knew he was waiting for my call to get an update.  Having to pass on this information was one of the toughest things I've ever had to do.  Thankfully Matt was already scheduled to come home that night.  He tried to get an earlier flight that day but unfortunately had no luck.  Dr. Dritley's biggest orders were to keep Jack quiet and resting as this would be the best medicine for him.  Unfortunately and fortunately, keeping Jack quiet and resting has not been a problem these last couple of days.  Jack is normally full of life and energy and this last week it's all he can do to walk around the house.  I was able to stay home with Jack on Thursday to watch him and Matt stayed with him on Friday. 

I am happy to report that Jack is one tough dog and he is doing much better!!  He is still having to work harder than normal to breathe, but much better than last week.  No temp since Friday morning.  His energy level is still very low but the twinkle in his eyes has returned.  I have no doubt that our spunky little boy will be back to normal before too much longer. 



Immigration Appointment Is Done

I'm definitely late posting this information, but yes our immigration appointment for fingerprinting was done on June 14th.  We will hopefully be getting our approval letter in the mail for them any day.  This is the last piece of our dossier we are waiting for.  We received word late last week that all of our other dossier documents have been certified and are now on there way for authentification by the Chinese Embassy.  Things are certainly moving in the right direction!!

China's Matching Process

We received an email late last week from Holt stating that China would be releasing children this week.  We were given a heads up by our social worker that these emails will be coming, but boy did the email start a whole string of emotions for us over the last week.  Emotions ranging from excitement to sorrow, anxiety to joyfulness.  Unfortunately, it doesn't look like our baby was in this group.  Honestly, we're doing ok~better than I thought I'd be feeling by today if we didn't get the call.  We knew it would be a long shot to be matched the first month we were eligible.  But it's hard not to get your hopes up in spite of that reality.  We're just so anxious to meet our child!!

China's matching process is very different from Ethiopia's.  There is still a waiting list, but because we are in the Child of Promise Program (meaning that our child will have some type of special needs) we will be matched with a child who matches our medical conditions criteria that we are open to.  The medical conditions criteria was part of our home study.  There were numerous possible medical issues and we were asked to state if we were open to the issue and if so, to what severity.  This was a tough job.  We spent a lot of time studying what the conditions were so that we felt we were making educated decisions.

China releases a group of children every month or so.  Holt staff then has the difficult job of matching families with the children.  Like I stated before, the decision is based more on matching the demographic and medical information of the child with a family that matches those things.  Once a family is notified that they are matched, they only have 24 hours to decide if this is the child they have been waiting for.  The short time frame allowed to make this decision is why I think they give us a heads up email.  The heads up allows us to make sure we are available by phone to be notified, to make the decision quickly, and if we need to take any information to a physician to review we have time to set up an appointment.  I can't imagine saying no to a child at this point so I am very thankful for the staff at Holt who have gotten to know us well and will help match us with our child.    

We are continuing to trust and are walking in faith that we are on the right track to meet our child.  We are still believing that our perfect child is out there an we will be matched when the time is right.  We will continue to pray for our baby's health and safety until the time we get to hold them in our arms.  And believe me once we get ahold of them, we're never letting go!    

Dossier for China...(Almost) Check!!

We are almost ready to check off the next big step...our dossier!  All the paperwork for our dossier is now on it's way to Holt so that they can send it off to be certified and authenticated before it goes to China.  The only paperwork we are still waiting for is our immigration approval.  Our appointment with immigration is scheduled for June 14th.  Hopefully our approval letter will come quickly after that appointment.  Then the paperwork will be finalized for China. Getting closer!!

Holt Gala 2012

Last Saturday we were able to attend the Holt Gala with Matt's parents.  We had so much fun!  First of all, I love being able to get dressed up and go out.

The Holt Gala started with a silent auction.  There was a ball room full of items for sale.  This year we were able to get coasters made in Guatemala, China adoption books, and a baby quilt.  I am in love with the baby quilt.  In fact, I may have guarded it when only a few minutes were left in the auction...maybe!!  I have been looking around for baby bedding for a while now and haven't found anything that I just love. It may sound silly, but I don't want it to be your typical "baby" decor.  And this quilt seems to fit the bill.  Now I have to figure out what color we want to paint.  Maybe match the green?

We ended up sitting with the same family we sat with last year, which was cool to catch up with them.  For supper we had salad, steak, chicken, new potatoes and dinner rolls.  It was delicious!  Especially the steak.  It was so tender.  For dessert, we did the dessert dash again.  This entailed bidding as a table for dessert.  Then they called the table numbers in order of highest donation to less to pick your dessert.  I was nominated to make the run this year.  The heels had to come off for this serious competition :)

At the end of the auction, Holt had 6 left over bottles of wine.  To get rid of them they had everyone who wanted them stand up.  Then we all played heads or tails; they'd flip a coin and we'd place our hands on our head or tail to place our bet.  When I made it to the top 5 or so, they had us all come stand in front...so everyone could get a better view of our tails I'm sure ;)  In the end, I won 6 bottles of wine!!!

We had a great time meeting new people catching up with some friends.  The Holt community is such a fun and unique group of people.  Not everyone has adopted, but everyone has been touched by adoption in some way.  It's one of those things that you just can't completely understand until you've been through it and we are very thankful for our friends and family who are walking this road along side us.