Short and sweet

This is gonna be short because I only really want to post an essay I read the other day. It's basically about how much a person learns about themselves going through infertility and striving so hard to become a parent.

I really love it.

Here it is: How infertility has improved my life by Maude Allen

Collecting documents

We are gradually moving forward in this process of adopting. Today we spent $60 getting our police records and another $10 for the bank to send a silly letter indicating that we are their clients and how much money we have in which accounts. Talk about nickel and dimed. God forbid we just get into our account online and print up our balances. Too simple. The gentleman said he couldn't do it himself but somebody in India (yes, outsources!!) had to fill out an electronic form for us, "and it costs $10 to do this..." My response was almost "of course it does..."

Need to keep a running tab of all these expenses. We had a new friend at support group talking about how EVERYTHING in the adoption process costs money and at the time, it seemed like they were just complaining and they should suck it up. Well I'm now joining in on the complaining!!! And yes, because we are infertile, we have to suck it up. It just gets really old to have to keep sucking it up. I'm thrilled about the prospect of adopting. But I'll say what has been said time and time again. I'm frustrated by how unfair this process is. "Well, you could always adopt..." "fuck you."

OK now I've said it. Deep breaths and now we move on.

We have submitted our I-800A and are now we're getting our dossier ready to go.

The homestudy is done (and was submitted with the I-800A) and was really a relatively easy process. I think this is attributed to a really stellar agency that we worked with for the homestudy. I would send ANYBODY to these guys. They made it really unoffensive and as simple as possible. Although when we were in the thick of getting the homestudy done, it felt ridiculous. We started with getting fingerprinted at the county courthouse. Which was just about the most offensive event I could have imagined! Time to report our progress to date:

Homestudy began in mid-April. We had to get fingerprinted, go to the homestudy agency to get interviewed, have the social worker come to our home, get physicals for the homestudy (and the dossier), submit copies of our birth certificates & marriage license. We had to take 10 hours of courses online, and have background checks in every state we've lived in since we were 18 years old. I think that's it but I'm not positive.

So that homestudy was put in the mail with our I-800A form and on Friday 7/16 was sent to the US Citizen and Immigration Services office (part of homeland security) along with a check for $830. They have to approve that we are eligible to adopt internationally.

So now we are compiling our dossier which is composed of a statement from the bank indicating our finances, other info on our assets, tax information, personal references, medical history, plans for child care, criminal history clearance, birth certificates, marriage certificates, photographs of us and our lives, and all sorts of notarized documents which I do not understand but will sign where I am told. I know there are more, I just don't have the list in front of me. So today we got 2 more things crossed off the list.

Part of me knows to just keep moving forward, cross things off the list, and get to the finish line so we can hurry up and wait. But there are those brief fleeting moments when we think about what we have to go through and it just feels so unbelievable. yes, unfair, unfair, unfair. First infertility treatment, now going through the process of adopting. It's not simple.

Intended D and I were talking the other day and it made us feel better to really think about how we are literally working with our country and the adoptive country's governments to get a child U.S. citizenship. This is no simple matter and it makes it understandable why there are so many hoops to jump through. It's definitely a big deal. First our government has to find us eligible to adopt (this is the purpose of the I-800A) Then the adoptive country has to determine that we are eligible to adopt (using the dossier). Then the adoptive country gives us a potential child and then our government has to decide whether it's ok (the I-800). And then the adoptive country has to go through the process of placing their native child into foreigners' hands. Pretty intense and no surprise that it takes months and up to years to get this managed.

It's just tough. Ultimately we are very happy about this path and cannot imagine it any other way anymore. But losing my ability to imagine the simplicity of conception and childbirth is what I privately mourn in moments of weakness.