It’s A Good Thing.

Here is a picture of the way cool high chair. I fear I may seriously begin to use shopping as a drug to ward off The Waiting Dis-ease. Inside the chair is an Ugly Doll. Do you know about these? I love their nefarious look, but, even better, they each come with their own story. R. put my (ancient) silver baby cup out.

The Wait.

Now rumors have been swirling on Rumor Queen that the wait has been “confirmed” at 18 months and will grow past that. We are looking at a Summer 2008 Metcha Day, when I was hoping to have our daughter home by Christmas 2006. When we started we were told 6-7 months from LID to referral, then that increased to 12 months; now that we are waiting for a LID, it’s become a two-year process–or more. I know this sounds incredibly self-indulgent and self-pitying, but I am really beginning to feel jinxed, rather than just unlucky.

Last night, R. and I talked about options, including other adoption avenues, or maybe even DE. We have talked over the months about adopting a special needs kid. I was committed to going this route as our SECOND adoption, assuming that most S/N adoptions are slightly older kids and wanting the opportunity to parent an infant my first time around. It is always something that’s been in my mind, however, and it might be the way for us to go right now. It will allow us to parent a child sooner, and it will make a huge difference in a child’s life. We have the resources to provide whatever medical interventions would be necessary, and I have the time to devote completely to a child who might need speech or physical therapy or intense attention.

Using donor eggs (or donor eggs and donor sperm) is an option that I had dismissed…I didn’t want to contribute to the world population problem if we couldn’t have bio children, which is why we opted for adoption. But now it seems as if DE could actually be the best alternative to the waiting problem. These days the waiting problem seems to trump all other problems, which should demonstrate how small my world has become. After all, pregnancy is *JUST* nine months, and we could be totally done with the entire process in under a year, and still have a year to go on the adoption. That means a DE birth wouldn’t interfere with the Chinese adoption requirements of waiting a year between children. We’d have to update the homestudy, but we’d have to do that anyway given that the I-171H will run out way before Summer 2008. And, obviously, if we’re already committed to adopting, then using a donor’s DNA to create a child isn’t an obstacle for us–beyond, of course, the obstacle of getting pregnant and carrying to term. I am still not completely convinced that egg quality is our main infertility issue.

It is all very wearying. It is not clear what to do. As much as I want to be a mother and experience that relationship with a child, I am just amazed at the number of impediments I have met with. It is as if we’re being challenged to think even further outside the box, to defy convention even more than we thought we already were. I recognize that this experience could be a good thing for us, but it sure is frustrating. It’s as if these circumstances are hellbent on testing how far your mind/body/temperament/etc. is willing to go.

Back From The Brink…

I think I was having transition anxiety yesterday when I wrote that post about running away from the China program when faced with the current wait. Now that the paperchasing is over, I have to harness myself to the idea that this is no automatic thing. And what I know is that there are problems in ALL the programs. A-parents play the guessing game about ALL the countries, which is clear once you start to do even the slightest bit of research (i.e., blog-reading) into other programs.

We had looked into Guatemala, and their system is totally different than China’s in that it is run by private adoption attorneys, who work through the PGN (Attorney General’s office), so it is a non-governmental program (and thus not in compliance with the Hague Agreement). Things are really slowing down there as some of the players (UNICEF and the first lady of Guatemala) fight the current system. I’m not sure I have the stamina or the inclination to enter into yet another complex international adoption situation. Navigating the ethical waters of adopting from China is more than enough to keep me occupied.

Fight or Flight.

Just got the message today from The Agency saying that we will be DTC this Friday, July 14th. (They only send dossiers out once a week on Fridays.) I am hoping hoping hoping hoping that we will squeak out a July LID. I should be popping champagne and feeling very very happy that “all” I have to do now is Wait.

I am not sure what to feel, though, when the word from The Agency on wait times is 14-16 months. Even though RQ is still hanging on to a 12-month wait for referral, I imagine that no one really has any idea. No one’s even really mentioning the Beijing Olympics yet as a potential slow-down issue, but it has entered my mind that China won’t want the bad press associated with thousands of their orphans being sent away. How will they handle that? Or won’t it matter?

My point is that 2008 is suddenly looking like a real possibility for travelling to China for our daughter. Yikes. So, that brings me to this strange phenomenom that seems to be setting in…should we stay or should we go? I can’t even believe I’m writing that, on the one hand. I mean, we’ve just finished The Paperchase, and–since The Agency is a China-only one–we would be looking at starting from nearly square one if we were to make a switch to a different country/program.

On the other hand, believe it or not, we’ve done some research in the past week, called some other agencies. Because even if we were to start at square one, or nearly so, we would still end up with a daughter much, much earlier than we will if we stick with China. Aye, there’s the rub.

The appeal of switching to Guatemala, for instance, is that if I could re-do the paperwork that needs re-doing (just about everything, but the homestudy only has to be tweaked and the I-171 doesn’t need re-doing) in a month, then we would get an IMMEDIATE referral. Meaning, I would know who my daughter is in September. And then the wait is 4-7 months to travel. Like December-March. That shaves off (potentially) a year. A Year.

So, you can perhaps see why I sit here contemplating The Seismic Shift. Contemplating whether to fight the good fight and wait for the CCAA to stop its waiting-time-freefall, or flee to another program. Because I’m tired of waiting to be a mother. I should be better at this by now, after 12 years of infertility, but I’m not. It’s so tempting just to make it happen any way I can and not worry about being the good girl, who doesn’t want to upset her agency or piss anybody off. Because I’m changing my mind. Because I didn’t do enough research before signing with a China-only agency. Because I’m turning 40 in two months and don’t want not to be a mother. (Because double negatives are becoming a lifestyle choice lately. Ugh.)

Stay tuned for further tales of the misbegotten non-mother.