closer

hello blog land. Im back from vacation in Northern California, and feeling mostly refreshed for it. Brian and I had our final homestudy interview with the foster/ adopt certifier on Friday. Whew.. what an invasive process. Every regulating body in the state of Oregon is totally nuts. We continue to inch closer to certification/ placement but its sort of slowed down to a crawl. This coming Thursday is the final saftey inspection, and walk through. We have a check list and its my job these next few days to be sure that everything is ticked off. Most of my vacation time was spent chatting with my stepmom, who had a TON of interesting info to share about the child welfare system and what is likely to happen with our adoption attempts. She has worked for the agency for 22 years. She said that sadly, family is ALWAYS given prefrence for adoptions these days. Even if its super extended family. Even if the child is already comfortable in a foster care setting and has been since birth. That said, often family members interested in adoption, wont be cleared or wont pass a homestudy. My certifier explained it as the apple does not fall far from the tree theory, but they do have to give family a chance. Adpopting through the state is possible, but not as easy as it was a few years ago, when they did give current caregivers some clout. My stepmom mentioned that she was pretty sure they would have us in mind as medical foster parents. This hadnt crossed my mind much, because I am not a nurse. I know a few practical nurses that do this for a living and I thought you had to have nursing skills. Ive been told that because of what I have done for work, caring for the elderly in their homes with nursing delegations for certain things like G tube feeding, medication admin, and wound care, that I can easily be put on the list to take infants that require a little extra care. Of course they wont give me anything that I cant handle. At least I hope not. Anyhow, the certifier confirmed that this is what she was planning to do, and she told me to start buying stuff for an infant! Finally ordered a crib Friday night and it should be here in a few days. Nursery room is getting totally douched out and we are setting up a shelving unit for plastic bins in the dirt basement. I plan to post some before and after pics in the next few weeks. Its a lovely feeling, knowing that our child is going to live in this nursery, in this house. Im still keen on embryo donation and might try it sooner than later. Perhaps this spring, even if we have foster kids. Nothing wrong with trying to complete the family in one fell swoop, is there?

catch up

This week has been a bit of a nightmare. Brian had his second solo interview with our certifier on Friday. He told her a few things I wish he could have left out. Unflattering things about his family, my family, and me. Im not up for candy coating who we all are or lying about anything, as we really have nothing to hide. Its just that some nitty gritty details could have been left out. Brian is like George Washington, he cannot tell a lie. He confessed to me friday evening, his defense was that he wasnt going to lie by omission, and I was saying that they never even asked about these things. He volunteered, and in my opinion embellished. UGH. Anyhow, this cumulated in my accusing him of attempting to sabotage our efforts to be foster parents. I was reptilian and mean about it for the better part of the evening. I simply couldnt stand the thought of having yet ANOTHER thing taken from me, should our application be denied. I finally came around to thinking that it is what it is. Brian is who he is and I wouldnt really want him to be any different. They will either approve us to be foster or adoptive parents or they wont.

Our homestudy is dragging on a bit. I thought the interview on friday would be the last until we did a final interview about placement and the saftey walkthrough. It seems that our certifier wants both of us to go to her office this coming friday to be interviewed on our own, one last time. I will wait in the lobby while brian does his, and then we will switch. All told we will have done 17 hours of interview and soemthing ike 32 hours of classes. Ive been asking around, people who have done this in other states think this process is a bit insane. I phoned my stepmother who works for DHS this morning, and she said its a brand new home study protocol and nobody knows exactly what they are doing. She hasnt done one or seen one yet.

My last day of work came and went without much fanfare. There was a cake, as promised. Ive still plenty to do to get things in order for our future foster children, but am also wondering what to do with myself. I want to take a class this fall, there is a Tango school up the street. Or maybe painting at the community college. Now that Im not doing fertility treatments I want to live like an adult for a while. An adult who has interests other than peeing on various kinds of sticks and spreading her legs for any doctor who will have a peek. I want girls nights out with wine and intellectual stimulation. I want my pre infertility / pregnancy loss life back, but I hardly remember who I was a few years ago. Its going to take a bit of effort.

Wait list

I am on a wait list for embryo donation at a clinic in southern California. They say the average wait time is 1.5 years. Im still going to check out the clinic in Seattle but I do like to have more than one option. The clinic in CA charges a bit less for this procedure, but of course I would have to factor in travel costs and some extra monitoring with my RE here in portland before I flew out for the transfer. The seattle clinic insists on several counseling sessions with a therapist that knows something about embryo donation before their clients procede. I think this is fair, although I doubt anyone locally would have a clue. My HMO had a hard enough time searching for somebody qualified to deal with recurrent pregnancy loss. Im trying not to get caught up in all of this, its really back burner stuff for the time being.

My last day of work is this coming saturday. There will be a party with cake on friday. Our garden shed is finished and we are in the process of filling it with some of the stuff from our "spare" rooms. The new AC unit has saved us a few sleepless nights, though so far this summer has been pretty cool. Friends from other parts of the country find it hard to believe that we get such hot summers here, and the fact that we hardly ever see any snow in the winter.

Im making a few plans for the time between quitting work and getting kids. I might make a trip to Eugene to see my dad and friends in my hometown. A long weekend to the coast may also be in order, one last private weekend with Brian before our lives change considerably.