The begining of our adoption process and the loss of Asia

    Since Ryan and I had already decided before we went to Madrid that if our donor egg IVF didn't work then we were going to adopt.   It wasn't really a big decision.  We wanted to be parents.  I sat down and started doing research and boy that was a huge awakening.  Adoption through an agency is EXPENSIVE!!  Through a regular agency, it could cost around $30,000!!  What average American has this kind of money just laying around? Our entire savings was wiped out by fertility treatments.  We started looking into all of our options.  We took classes to do foster care to adopt.  Once we were done with the classes we had decided that it wasn't for us.  If we were given a child knowing that the child could be given back to the birth parents in 6 months, we were going to do the best that we could to protect our hearts.  But, that's not fair to the child, so we give the child all the love and care the he or she deserves and then we're possibly left with broken hearts.  We had already gone through enough heartache.  We had to be honest with ourselves and we just weren't up for something like that.  Then my husband had heard of a non-profit adoption agency here in town.  We met with the coordinator and went home with some information including how much this was going to cost.  That's when I started looking at ways to pay for something like this. We were told that we could take our a home equity loan. We haven't even lived in our house for 3 years. That wasn't an option. There are banks that offer "adoption loans". Just none in Kansas and the ones that do offer the loans don't like to lend outside their state.   

Within a couple days we get an email from the coordinator telling us that they have a birth mother pregnant with twins and that we could be a possible match and that she was planning on looking at profile books within the week!!  We don't even have a profile book!!!  Here's the kicker.  Not only do we need this profile book done, we need to have a home study done AND take this 8 hour class that tells us all of the ins and outs of the adoption process.  We dove right in!!  We have a wonderful friend that does scrapbooking help us with the profile book.  We filled out a very long questionnaire about how my husband and I were raised, how we feel about being infertile, how we feel about our jobs, how we feel about each other, etc.  Our finger prints had to be sent in and we had to have extensive background checks done.  Then we had our homestudy done.  All of this had to be done just in case the birth mother liked our profile book and wanted to meet us.  She decided that she wasn't ready to look at the books.  Considering how hectic it was for us to get all of this stuff done so quickly, for us, we found it a little humorous.  We couldn't even begin to imagine the turmoil that she's going through though.  We just waited for a phone call to either say that she was ready or someone else wanted to meet with us.  Eventually we did get the call to meet with the birth mother.  To be honest, open adoption had us a little nervous.  We were still in the process of understanding how open adoption works.  What if she was really demanding or what if we just didn't click with her. And even if we didn't mesh well, it's not like we would actually say no to getting the baby or babies.   It was a lot of worry for nothing.   She was amazing.  Her family was amazing.  We couldn't imagine a better meeting.

    We met with her a couple more times within a 3 month period.  According to the agency, we were "matched".  We started planning.  My mom bought us a twin stroller and some baby girl clothes.  We had also started doing fundraisers.  Even though we weren't going through a big agency, this was still going to cost a pretty penny.  There's a placement fee of $6000 per baby, about $2500 for counseling for the birth parents and then there's legal fees.  We decided to host 3 garage sales at 3 different locations.  Our friends and family got the word out and people donated tons of items for us to sell.  With the 3 garage sales we made close to $2400.  Some of this went to our homestudy fees and the 8 hour class that we had to take which cost $500.  Then someone that neither of us knew offered to do a Thirty-One fundraiser for us.  Thanks to her and our friends and family, we made $200 from that.  At that fundraiser, someone else offered to do a quartermania.  I'm still not sure I know how a quartermania works.  The turn out for that was great as well.  We made about $400 from the quartermania itself and a wonderful family friend gave us a $500 check. 

   All of these wonderful things are going on in these 3 months.  We even managed to trade in my husbands car to lower his car payment.  The day after we do this I wake up to Asia (our 16 year old husky) trying to drag herself into the living room.  I had originally thought that her hind legs had just slipped out from under her and she just couldn't get her footing on the flooring.  I had helped her to the area rug that we had bought when she had gotten so sick before so she had something with traction to help her get up.  We hated seeing her have to try so hard to just get up.  I let her lay on the rug for about 45 minutes so she could rest.  After that I had tried to get her to get up just to make sure that everything was okay.  She wasn't okay.   She couldn't use her hind legs and her hind paws had curled up. We had tried what we could think of to get her to try to move.  We offered her a treat and an ice cube.  We even tried brushing her.  If anything was going to make her get up and move it was the evil brush.  None of these worked.   I didn't want to take her to the emergency vet.  I wanted to take her to our regular vet.  This was on a Sunday and our vet offered to meet us at his office.  I sat in the backseat with her and cried the whole way to the vets office.  She just laid her head on my lap.  When we got there Ryan had to carry her in and laid her on the examining table.  The vet looked her over and figured that it was her tumor that they had found this past March attacking her nerves.  He said that we could probably do treatments that might help, but pretty much said that her quality of life wasn't going to be what it should.  She wasn't going to bounce back from this.  I had to make the decision to let her go.  Ryan and I said a prayer for her and told her how much we loved her.  For 16 years I dreaded having to make a decision like that.  I never thought that I would be strong enough to be in the room with her if she ever had to be put to sleep.  But that day came and there was no way that I was going to leave her when she needed to know how much I loved her one last time.  So, I stayed.  I had to hold her head while the vet administered the sleeping shot because of the way she was laying.  I kissed the top of her nose like I always did and told her that I loved her as I watched the life leave her eyes.  I had lost my baby girl.  Ryan had loved her too.  Even though she was always chewing up his things.  She was a little jealous of Ryan sometimes.  We had a personal cremation done.  Her remains are in a beautiful wooden box next to a framed picture of her in our living room.

  Not to long after the loss of Asia we find out that our birthmother had decided to keep her babies.   We were disappointed but not angry.  When we hadn't heard anything from the agency for a couple weeks, we called.  Then waited I think 4 days to receive a call back only to find out that the birthmother had decided to parent.  What had us upset was that we had to contact the agency to find this out.  It's like they were to busy to give us a call.  This was in July.  We've only received a couple emails since then, but that's it. We've started looking into other agencies that adopt out more than 6 babies a year and private adoptions as well.  We're hoping that we can get better results with one of these other routs.  Fingers crossed.  But for now we sit and wait...and fund raise. 

 Adoption Bug Fundraising t-shirts
http://www.adoptionbug.com/babybarber/

                                                   Asia October 1, 1998- June 24, 2012