"Adopting? Now you'll get pregnant!" {what not to say}

Recently, I had the following conversation with someone at a big group dinner (an acquaintance):

Her: So how long have you been married?
Me: We just celebrated our fifth anniversary in May.
Her: (teasingly) ....so, kids any time soon?
Me: (somewhat irked) Well, we've actually been trying since we were married, and now we're pursuing adoption.
Her: Oh! That's wonderful. I have a friend who right after she adopted, got pregnant!
Me: That's honestly pretty uncommon...
Her: But it can happen!
Me: (feeling pretty steamed by now) Well, if it happens, we're all for it - but right now we're pursuing adoption for its own sake, and not as a first step to getting pregnant.

(I think she then realized that this was not going well, and began talking with someone on the other side - and I needed a minute to calm down and let the steam roll out of my ears....!)

I felt pretty crummy after this exchange! I should say right up front that I think it's charitable to always give the other person the benefit of the doubt, ascribe to them kind motives, realize that people are generally trying their best, and so on. Sheesh, before I experienced infertility and trying-to-adopt, I'm sure I said some not-so-great things to friends struggling to grow their family! (In fact, I can think of concrete instances.)

All the same, as part of this space is our chance to share what we've learned about adoption, hopefully it's not too much of a stretch to write a post about what NOT to say to people when you learn they're adopting.

The #1 thing based on the conversation above is, please please PLEASE refrain from saying anything along the lines of "now you're adopting, just watch, you'll get pregnant!" or telling any stories to that effect.

I get why people want to share this kind of thing. On the one hand (the better hand), it's beautiful to hear when people who have tried for a long time to have children get back-to-back kiddoes! Hey, we'd love that! So in that sense, they are joyous stories and I understand why people like sharing them.

But on the other hand, what it can feel like to someone trying to adopt is minimizing the particular joys and struggles of adoption. It's like a major case of deflection. "Oh, you just graduated? That's cool, but I know someone who has this amazing job right after graduating!" "Oh, you just bought a house? Wow, but just watch, you'll win the lottery any day now!" It's really frustrating any time you share something - especially something really personal and important to you - with someone only to have them basically change the subject immediately. Booooooo. In this instance, instead of talking about adoption (which I always love talking about, and have a lot of thoughts on) suddenly we're talking about pregnancy, which I have zero experience with and actually is not a particularly happy topic for me. (Not to mention the reminder that we've been married five years....where are the kids?)

The other thing is, bringing up the "pregnancy after adoption" thing makes it seem like these two are somehow related. The fact is, just because some people do get pregnant at some point after adopting (in fact: 3-10%, so not that many!), adoption has absolutely no effect on your ability to get pregnant! Seriously. No effect at all. (And no, the mythical "just relax" infertility cure hardly applies here - adopting and parenting a newborn or young child is all kinds of wonderful things but I don't think very "relaxing"!) So yeah. If we are so blessed to adopt, perhaps it will be the case (God willing) that we conceive at some future point. But even if that happens, the adoption honestly won't have anything to do with it. There's definitively no cause and effect going on here.

Lastly, and I think most importantly, bringing up pregnancy when someone tells you they're adopting comes across (to me at least) as privileging pregnancy over adoption - like despite just getting done saying you're excited to be adopting, what you really, truly want is to get pregnant. Now, of course that would be great! Any time! I do want that! But we're pursuing adoption whole-heartedly, and not with a hidden agenda. If we are so blessed to adopt, we won't at all think our child is "second best" because we didn't conceive him/her. Adoption doesn't cure infertility - the deep longing to conceive and bear a child will probably always be present in our hearts - but we are happy about the adoption path we're on and will embrace our child as our own and not as a kind of "substitute" for a biological child.

So there you have it! Something to avoid when talking with someone who is trying to adopt. A better path? If someone tells you "we're adopting," good answers include:

• Congratulations!
• What wonderful news!
• Tell me about it.
• What kind of adoption?
• Where are you in the process?
• How is it going for you?

And most importantly of all: I'll pray for you.

[Bonus: My blogger friend Stephanie wrote a fantastic post a while back that is much more detailed and witty than this one! Definitely worth a read: http://blessedtobeblog.blogspot.com/2014/02/myth-adopting-will-make-you-pregnant.html] 

While We Wait: June & July 2016 (Months #6 and #7)

We thought we'd combine two recap months into one because these two months just flew by!

Adoption related stuff:

We did the required updates to paperwork that have to be annually updated: getting fingerprints done for background checks, going to the doctor and having forms signed saying we're still in good health, and submitting paperwork to the state to check that we haven't been convicted of child abuse. We did those in mid-June so now that's out of the way for another year.

Other than that, it's been slow in the adoption realm, largely because after we moved in July, we now have to update some additional forms that are house-related. (A home study only applies to one address at a time.) So for right now we're not eligible to be considering any adoption situations or having a child placed with us. It's only temporary, though! This is what we have to do in order to get back in the pool:

• Fire safety survey: list of safety standards to check off
• Fire inspection of our new home (by a county fireman)
• Map of new home with exits marked
• Emergency plan, like where we would meet if we had to escape
• Updated financial information
• Update to our personal bios, basically what's new between last time and now
• Visit by our social worker to our new home, and conversation with her about how things are going

Our goal is to get these things done in August and be back in the pool by September. Some of it is dependent on other people's availability (fire inspection & social worker visit) but we'll do our best! Then after these things are done, we won't have any major paperwork to do until either we adopt or another year passes and we have to update forms again. 

Other stuff we did:

We moved! That was definitely the biggest event of June and July: getting all packed up, moving, and getting unpacked. It's a lot of work but totally worth it. We feel so grateful for our new home, which we are loving!! All of the neighbors have been really friendly, and three houses so far have people in them who grew up there! This is a big difference from other places we've lived where folks have been more transitory (like us). We love being close to a pool, churches, a farmer's market, and in a very safe, pleasant neighborhood. And despite how much work moving is, it was a joy to spend time with family and friends that day - very convivial. 

Right after moving, we traveled to New Mexico for a week (crazy) for work. We were thrilled we both got to go on the same work trip!

At the top of Sandia Peak, 10,000 feet up

San Miguel in Santa Fe: the oldest Catholic church structure in the country

In June, Bethany had a nice visit to PA for Father's Day weekend to spend time with her parents and treat her dad to brunch at Cracker Barrel.

That same weekend, Dan went to a different part of PA to celebrate a friend's bachelor party. They stayed in a renovated barn in the woods and had a blast.

Dan helped run two major events at the JPII Shrine, one in June: a family retreat day, and one in July: a neighborhood-wide young adult festival timed to coincide with World Youth Day in Krakow, Poland. So that kept him busy!

Perogies - YUM

After Mass in the Basilica

It will be really good to have a breather now after such a busy two months! We are happy to have a more relaxed schedule in August, with time to get all settled in to our new home and to get all the "extra" paperwork done. The path to adoption seems awfully slow at times (admittedly, somewhat of our own doing) but we will keep pushing forward!

A slight detour....to an even better destination (literally!)

We have a life update on something that's adoption-related but not "about" adopting: we are moving (again), this time to our own home! Yay!!

If you've read our "adoption timeline" page, you know that we moved to our current place because our previous home, a basement apartment, was sans windows in the bedrooms and thus not fire-inspection-approvable and thus not adoption-home-study-approvable (bummer). Our current home has been amazing for us! For the past two years we have rented from friends of ours who had to move out of town for work, and have shared a lovely home with two wonderful housemates and their dog. The rent is great for our area, allowing us to save and save and save toward our adoption and future life in general. And our housemates have been so supportive of our adoption plans, which involved them by way of background checks, TB tests, and vaccine records - even the dog had a role to play!

But now it's time to move on, literally. As our two-year lease drew to a close, we talked and prayed about whether we should stay or try to find a new place. For our future long-term home, we have wanted someplace a bit bigger (to adopt multiple children, God willing!) and also eventually someplace to ourselves. This home we thought would make us stronger adoption candidates as well because we will be able to share with birth mothers that we own our own home. So we decided to dip our toes in the house market pool and just see whether in fact there was anything we could afford (and liked) in our rather challenging and expensive area. To make a long and tedious story short, turns out there was! Further, just for transparency's sake, we wanted to tell everyone that (of course) we will not be touching any of the adoption fund savings or donations, so we won't be delaying our adoption plans too much.

Thanks be to God, we found a fantastic house that is just right for us and (God willing!) our growing family down the road. It is bigger than our current house and in a great, peaceful neighborhood with lots of nearby amenities: a pool, library, parks, churches, etc.

It has been a whirlwind getting everything figured out for the home purchase and move, while staying on top of adoption paperwork too! June is when three of our important forms come around for renewal: medical form, fingerprints (FBI background check) and child safety form (a state form showing that we have not been convicted of child abuse in the past year). One day at a time, and thanks to our adoption agency's amazing staff, we're staying on top of everything!

Once we move (July 16) we will need to update a number of other forms that are house-specific: our family safety plan in case of an emergency, the fire inspection, our family monthly budget and overall financial picture, and so on. Our social worker will come back for a walk-through of our new house, and then we will be good to go!

So the home-buying is a bit of a detour on our adoption process, and we are itching to get moved and back in the game so to speak. But the minor detour of a few weeks as we move will put us in a fantastic position for the next years and years of our lives. We will have the bedrooms now to welcome more than one child - maybe more than one at a time - and we will be more settled and ready to (hopefully) watch our family grow.

We'll leave you with a picture of our new home :) and an invitation to come visit next time you are in Maryland or DC!

While We Wait: May 2016 (month #5)

Adoption related stuff:

It's been another slow month with no situations presented to us, with the exception of a sibling group of four our Maryland agency was trying to place. Unfortunately that's not something we feel equipped to do at the moment. Maybe some day! :) Believe it or not, we're actually coming up to the one-year mark of a few of our home study forms that need to be annually renewed: doctor's form, background check, and fingerprints - to make sure our health is still reasonably good and we haven't committed any crimes in the past year! (makes sense) So we'll be working on those in June to make sure we don't have a "gap" in our home study approval. The staff at our Maryland agency has been fantastic with giving us plenty of lead time for getting forms completed.

We also were offered the opportunity to sign up with another additional placement agency, in Georgia. They contacted our Maryland agency saying that they are seeing a lot of potential adoption situations and are looking for additional families to be in their waiting pool (!) Our Maryland agency asked if they would lower their entry fees for us, since we've already be paid to be on one placement agency's list, and they agreed. So we'll be working on paperwork for that agency soon. It won't be a lot - mainly having our home study shared with them, sending copies of our profile book, etc.

Finally, a note about our fundraising thermometer, which you may have noticed is gone from the side of our blog. For some reason, it kept getting hacked! We'd look at our blog and it would say something like "goal: $1,000; received: $324" - ummmm that's not accurate at all! It had a password to edit it but I guess you can get around that somehow. So now you can see just a very basic box with our fundraising information. You'll have to imagine a thermometer BASICALLY AT THE TOP thanks to the oh-so-generous people in our lives!! We are feeling very good about our financial foundation to adopt going forward.

Other stuff we did: 

May is always special to us because it's our anniversary month. And this was a nice one: five years of marriage! We celebrated by going on a mini-getaway to Richmond, VA, a few hours south of us. It was a lovely weekend with good food, interesting historical sites, and was just so great to get away from work, chores, etc. for a while and celebrate our marriage.

In the Capitol: Mr. Dan and Mr. George Washington

Enjoying the "Mellow Mushroom" - as trippy as it sounds

Fancy chocolate writing always makes the food taste better

The Jefferson Hotel: for some reason we were reminded of the Titanic

Back on the home front, we took advantage of the very limited good weather in May to go on a hike to Great Falls. The water was so high with all the rain we got!

Okay - to be honest since this blog is sharing our lives - the hike was intentionally planned for Mother's Day, which is a difficult day for Bethany (and Dan too). While we remain very hopeful that the gift of motherhood is in our family's future through the wonderful gift of adoption, it is tough to come around to this day another year without a child. It's a day in need of some major healthy distraction! And a relief to see it in the rear view mirror once more. We love our moms and the mom-friends in our lives but are happy to be past the weeks of ads leading up to Mother's Day and the deep aversion to being wished "happy Mother's Day" by strangers (as if it's like "Happy Thanksgiving" - for everyone) - now to do the same for Father's Day in a few weeks....! (we have plans already in place :))

Thanks for humoring that excursion! A final PSA: next Mother's Day, and Father's Day too, say a prayer for those you know for whom this day is hard - which is a lot of folks for one reason or another. It's a good chance to affirm the men and women who are fatherly and motherly, too, even if they haven't been blessed with children.

On to June! We hope and pray that everyone had a great month. Thank you for keeping us in your thoughts and prayers. We appreciate it so very much.

While We Wait: April 2016 (Month #4)

Adoption Related Stuff

• April was a slow month for us in terms of adoption. Unlike the previous few months, we didn't have any situations presented to us. And nothing else major adoption-related happened. While of course we can't WAIT for our adoption to happen, it also was okay to have a bit of a "breather" month. Navigating the various situations that have come up has taken a lot of energy and it was nice in a way to get to regroup, have a chance to rest, and get ready for whatever God has in store for us this month.

• There was one workshop offered by our agency on post-delivery referrals. This means when a family gets a call that birthparents have chosen them for a baby that is about to be born or already is born, so there is very little lead time to get ready (between the call and placement - of course the family may have been waiting for months or years before that!) We learned that these types of placements happen in about half of adoptions, so we have a fifty-fifty chance that this will happen to us! During the workshop, two couples who adopted through our agency last year shared their stories. Our takeaways are that you always need to be flexible with adoption - things can and do change very fast, so you have to go with the flow; and that the time around a placement is highly emotional for everyone involved. It sounds so intense! What a ride this is....

• The only other adoption-related news is that Bethany bought a book called Breastfeeding Without Birthing that had been recommended by adoptive moms who breastfed their child. Yes, it is possible to breastfeed an adopted baby! We had no idea. While we're not sure whether we'll attempt this or not, it is good to get more information about how it can be done. 

Other Stuff We Did

• Good friends from Connecticut came to visit us this month, so we did all the touristy stuff in DC: the "Catholic tour" of the John Paul II Shrine, National Basilica, Franciscan Monastery, etc., and the "tourist loop" of the major downtown monuments and museums. The weather cooperated for our downtown stroll - whew, we had forgotten how far apart all the monuments are! We walked 9 miles :)

tulips at the Franciscan Monastery

We had our wedding pictures taken in these gardens!

On the Lincoln Memorial steps

World War II Memorial with the Washington Monument in the background

• We indulged in some live theater by attending a showing of "Pride and Prejudice" at the Catholic University drama school. We enjoyed supporting actors-in-training and the prices were a lot better than professional theater! Plus, Mr. Darcy [says Bethany].
• We also had a fun "farm" day on a farm in Virginia where we buy eggs, bacon, etc. The farmers are friends of friends (and attended Bethany's same college) and they have a drop-off once a month at a location near where we work, so it's easy to put in an order and pick up some delicious farm-fresh goodies. They hosted a "come and see" day at their farm and it was really fun! The setting was gorgeous, in the hills near the Blue Ridge Mountains, there was live music and food trucks and adorable pigs. It was a treat to get out in the country!

We hope your April was great!

While We Wait: March 2016 (Month #3)

Adoption Related Stuff

• Bethany attended an all-day conference put on by our agency. It was really well-done and very informative, with some powerful stories from people touched by adoption (adoptees, birthparents and adoptive parents). Another confirmation of our call to adoption.
• Two potential situations surfaced in March, but neither progressed very far. Please keep praying for us! Each possible situation places another child on our heart that we will continue praying for, as well as their parents and all who love and care for them.
• We got approved to adopt multiples (twins or triplets) just in case that becomes a possibility! Hint, hint, God! (Background: our home study only approved us to adopt one child, so we had to have a follow-up conversation with our social worker to add specific approval for adopting more than one child at a time. It was a short conversation about our thoughts on adopting twins or triplets, how we would handle that, etc.)

Other Stuff We Did

• In sad news, Bethany's grandma passed away on March 4th, which was her 69th wedding anniversary. We spent a few days in PA with family for the funeral and burial service. While it was sad to say goodbye, it was a blessing to have the time reconnecting with family, and gave us a renewed appreciation of those family roots. 

A few of Grandma's many talents: canning and winning prizes for food at county fairs.

Dan trying shoofly pie for the first time, a central PA specialty!

• Dan had his first work trip, to Connecticut, which went very well. He got to experience high-speed rail travel, where virtually every passenger was travelling for business. Dan also went on a weekend retreat which was rejuvenating during this busy and challenging season of life.
• We started some seeds indoors and planted some seeds outside in pots. While we're not planning on having an actual in-the-ground garden this year, we will be doing some container gardening. Bethany in particular has been itching to get her hands dirty with gardening again!

Tomatoes, peppers, and basil enjoying the sunshine

• Bethany's parents' dog came to stay with us over Easter! (Her parents traveled to Florida to visit relatives.) Penny is an adorable Spaniel puppy with LOTS of energy, who LOVES to cuddle. We took her on a long walk at the National Arboretum on Holy Saturday, which was beautiful because the magnolias and cherry blossoms were at peak bloom. It's been great having a little furry friend around who is always happy to see us.

Getting to know Penny the Puppy

• Easter: we love the Easter services at our parish (Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter Vigil and Easter Sunday). Bethany is in the parish choir and sang for all the services. On Easter Sunday we hosted a few friends at our house for a delicious and huge dinner. He is risen!!

We hope you all had a lovely March.

Adoption Conference Notes

Today I (Bethany) attended our Maryland agency's annual day-long conference for prospective and current adoptive parents, adoptees, birthparents, adoption professionals, and really anyone interested in adoption. (Dan was out of town on a retreat that had been scheduled first.) I attended last year's conference, too, and was really impressed again! We feel blessed to have an agency that provides such quality education for everyone in the adoption "constellation" (a term I learned today, meaning everyone affected by adoption in some way). It was nice to have a chance to learn more about adoption and related issues, and to take some time to reflect on the complex relationships that result from it.

Here are ten new things that I learned:

From the keynote speaker Alison Larkin, author of The English American (who was hilarious):

1. All parents need to parent the child they have, not the one they might wish to have. While this applies to every parent, adoptive parents in particular need to recognize that their child may have strikingly different interests, personality, etc. than them, rooted in their biological heritage, and celebrate those differences.

2. Adoptees often try to protect everyone - they don't want to hurt their adoptive parents by showing interest in their birthparents, and they want to protect their birthparents from hurt, too, and make sure they are okay.

3. Adoptees often struggle with trust issues deeply rooted in their early experience of not being raised by the parents they are born to. The speaker talked about her difficulty of trusting men, and her disinclination to have children, which she identified as connected with being adopted and feeling abandoned (even while not having ill will toward her birthparents). There's a happy ending, though: she met her birthparents and felt a lot of peace about knowing her origins in a deeper way. That also gave her confidence to marry and she and her husband had two children.

Also, I loved this quote the author closed with, from Jane Austen's Emma: "If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about you more." (in regard to her adoptive parents - she got choked up and so did I)

From a panel about "connection" with birthparents, adoptees, and adoptive parents:

4. Adoption stories are powerful and moving! I was very touched by the speakers' stories of placing a child for adoption and later reuniting (or not) - two "pairs" of birthmoms and daughters spoke together - and by the adoptive parents' work to build relationships with their children's birth families. Everyone's story was so unique and yet had similar themes of love, loss and (in the happier stories) healing brought by openness and healthy relationships between the adoptive and birth families. It all made me wonder so much about what our story will be like in the end.

5. Birthmothers and birthfathers are incredibly courageous and generous. The two birthmothers who spoke made their decision wholly thinking about their children's future, even though it was so hard to say goodbye.

6. Birthfathers are often the forgotten member of the adoption community. Their rights vary from state to state, but often they are either voluntarily not involved or involuntarily excluded from the birthmother's decision to place a child. The birthfather who spoke talked about the pain of seeing his daughter in the hospital after her birth and then not since then. My heart went out to him.

From a workshop on family dynamics after bringing an adoptive child home:

(This one ended up being about older child adoption, but was still interesting.)

7. Loss is part of both the adoptee's and the adoptive parents' story. For the parents, this includes loss of the dream or vision they had of parenting and what it would be like. Maybe (like us) that vision had included biological children who look like us, have similar traits, etc. Good parenting requires grieving that dream in order to live in the present moment with this child, not a fake dream child. A parent's unresolved grief or sense of loss can get in the way of attaching to a child and responding to his or her needs.

8. Adopted children need to know they belong to the family. This can be done by hanging family pictures in the house, letting them decorate their room, etc. A sense of truly belonging is so important, especially for older children who may have lived in several homes.

From a keynote by Sarah Saffian, author of the novel Ithaka:

9. Therapeutic writing can be really helpful for those affected by adoption or in the adoption process. I am keeping this in mind and would like to try it! She suggested writing a letter to your future child, or to their birthparents. Pretty sure I would get through only a few words before the tears started flowing...!

10. She read a powerful section from her memoir Ithaka, which is about being "found" by her birthparents as a young adult and gradually developing a relationship with them. In Ithaka, she describes two origin stories, one about being adopted and the other about born, in that order since she was conscious first of being adopted and only later (after meeting her birthparents) did she really think about the earlier birth origin. Anyway - the excerpt she read was a creative exercise in speaking as the child in her mother's womb and how it felt first not to be noticed, then to be a source of anxiety for her mother, then to be born, have some time with her mother, and then after her mother left and she was alone in the hospital nursery, "I look around for her but everyone is a stranger." Wow - powerful. A good reminder that even people adopted at birth experience a serious separation from the only people they've known, especially the mother who carried them in her womb.


Overall, it was a great and enriching day! I felt re-motivated about our path to adoption. Both Dan and I are feeling impatient (*understatement) and are so hoping that we adopt soon!! It helps to go to events like this where we can continue to get more educated and prepared. At the end of the day, it's not about us. It's about being the best parents we can be to a little one in need of a home and a family. We pray for that day to arrive and continue to trust in God's timing.