First

J and I recently made the conscious decision to stop calling K's firstmom his "birthmom". J didn't like the term in general, due to the negative connotation that it tends to have here in the U.S.; I also felt like it doesn't accurately reflect her role in his life. I'll call K's firstmom T. T did not just give her child life, an amazing gift in and of itself, but birthmom felt like a term that would relegate her role to that level. She is a woman who raised her son for almost a year, most of that as a single parent after K's firstdad passed away. She is a woman who was very obviously grieving very hard when we met her--grief transcends language. She is a woman who made an incredibly hard decision for her little boy, one she will have to live with for the rest of her life, in a culture that absolutely loves children. "Birthmom" didn't seem like it could even come close to demonstrating her role in his life.

Recently, I was reading a blog (not one of my usual ones) written by an adoptive mom about her child. She was going on about how much she felt she had missed, how sad she was that her child was not with her for several months before bringing the child home. It was obviously written with love and desire to have spent more time with her child. And it made me wonder if most adoptive parents feel that way.

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Erin is one of the contributing editors for International Adoption. She writes daily at PCOS Baby where she chronicles life with her children and parenting after adoption from Ethiopia.

The Truth Behind the First Month at Home

Having K--it's really, really, REALLY hard sometimes. There are so many complicating factors right now, and there's really no way to talk about just a part of it--so that's my way of warning you that this is probably going to be a really long post, and not always PC. I'll probably try to split it up, maybe when I just get tired (it's almost 11:30 on Saturday night and P had a friend sleep over last night, so no one got much sleep).

I hardly know where to begin. Part of me wishes that I'd documented more of our first month home through my blog or other writing; another part of me knows that was just asking too much on top of actually being home with K; and a third part of me doesn't particularly want to think about a whole lot of it.

As it turned out, the times when I did see friends, K seemed perfectly happy. I was constantly getting comments--from family, from friends, even from his pediatrician--about how attached he already seemed to be. I agreed a lot at first, until I realized what it was...then I kept agreeing because I didn't know how to admit what was really going on.

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Erin is one of the contributing editors for International Adoption. She writes daily at PCOS Baby where she chronicles life with her children and parenting after adoption from Ethiopia.

Must Not Feel Overwhelmed

Keep repeating that, Erin, or you may end up running, screaming, through the neighborhood while wearing only your penguin slippers.

We've been mired in adoption paperwork and plans lately. Sunday was the first part of the adoption preparation seminars. It was a lot of fun--we met another couple who's adopting a toddler from Ethiopia, as well as a lot of other nice people. We didn't take a whole lot away from it since it was mostly geared towards first-time parents. This was a little ironic, since there was only one first-time parent couple who was there. The rest of us all had at least one child already, some biologically and some through adoption. Most of it was about not trying to shoehorn your child into a specific role and being flexible. Since J and I have always tried to read P's signals and adjust as needed, we're already used to being flexible. I think we'll get more out of next week, when it focuses on transracial parenting.

We've got most of our paperwork close to done for the homestudy. I feel like we've really made a lot of progress. Our first appointment with our social worker is this afternoon. I'm excited and nervous. I can't imagine why we would fail a homestudy, but it still kept me up worrying for part of last night. Naturally, I'll update you all.

We've also got the next packet of information from our adoption agency, and it includes how to get started on our dossier. We can't officially do it until our homestudy is approved, but we can start collecting documents and paperwork now. J's got a notary at his office (he can't notarize his own forms), so that part will be easy and free. We can get our photos taken and do a lot of the paperwork. And, since we got our application in early enough, we avoided the $1000 increase in Ethiopia program fees that our agency is implementing!

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Erin is one of the contributing editors for International Adoption. She writes daily at PCOS Baby where she chronicles life with her children and parenting after adoption from Ethiopia.

Erin's Story

Erin is one of the contributing editors for International Adoption. She writes daily at PCOS Baby where she chronicles life with her children and parenting after adoption from Ethiopia.

I'm 30 years old and the mother of two. P was born in 2003 after primary infertility, a diagnosis of PCOS, and successful treatment with metformin. After thinking that it was actually pretty easy to conceive when on the right medicine, we started TTC#2 with metformin when P was 11 months old. After two more years of that, Clomid, Femara, and several IUIs, all unsuccessful, we decided to stop treatment at the end of 2006 and move onto international adoption.

When we first thought about adopting, I thought we'd adopt a baby and we were deciding between Ethiopia and Vietnam. After several more months of conscious non-decision making, we both realized that Ethiopia felt right, and that we really didn't want to adopt a baby. A toddler boy felt like the right choice for our family. We started filling out paperwork in February of 2007 and completed our homestudy at the end of May. Our dossier was complete, including USCIS approval, in September and was in Ethiopia by October.

Right before Thanksgiving, we received our first referral for a beautiful little 2 1/2 year old boy. After much rejoicing and telling simply everyone, we were on the verge of sending back the acceptance paperwork when we found that he had cerebral palsy, a condition that we simply weren't prepared to parent. Heartbrokenly, we declined his referral. It was one of the most painful experiences of my life.

On P's 4th birthday, we received the referral of another beautiful little boy. He was 2 weeks past his first birthday and named K. He was malnourished but otherwise healthy. We accepted his referral in early December 2007. We passed court in Ethiopia at the end of January 2008 and traveled to get K in February of 2008, almost a year to the day after beginning our paperwork. He is a wonderful child, an amazing addition to our family, and we are incredibly fortunate that he is here. With luck, our family will grow again in the future--we would like two more children and hope that at least one of those will be another child from Ethiopia.