Adoption Option

During the summer before his first of four freshman years at college, my brother Walt moved into a frat house. I was five. At six we left Marty and Murray in St. Joe while the rest of our shrinking family moved to Kansas City. Hazel moved out, back to St. Joe, her senior year of high school and lived with Walt and Adrienne. I would have been about nine or ten. The same age I was when I began spending more time with my Barbie and drawing families than I spent with my own. Always ten children. I wanted a big, close family then, so I planned on having one when I grew up.

I first met my husband when he was twenty-one, just barely. I was thirty-one. We married when he was twenty-three and I was thirty-three, turning thrity-four one month later. He joked around that he wanted six kids. I told him he should marry a younger woman whose eggs weren't so close to drying up. He assured me he wanted to raise his children with me. Yes, I got a good man.

After I had Stella, I swore I'd never make her live as an only child. I knew how lonely it was. We stopped using birth control six months after Stella was born at the recommendation of my OB-GYN. I got pregnant right away and miscarried two days after the positive line revealed itself on my pee stick. No luck since.

Stella will be five in July. She has been begging for a brother or a sister since she could speak. Hank recently announced to me after we got home from a fun family gathering with lots of his nieces and nephews around that he is ready to seriously start searching for a kid to adopt.

Whoa! What about my writing? I barely have time to write now with only one child to care for. And here I'd gone and repressed my maternal cravings these last four years at the first sign of each month's period. I'd forgotten how much I wanted to be a mommy amidst a big, loving, nurturing family and was ready to focus on our one wonderful daughter and my writing.

But the more we talked, the more it came back. The big family. So many arms to hug you. So many mouths to laugh with you. So many weirdo brains who understood your jokes. Good. So, so good. I did want another child. And Stella wants a sibling. And Hank wants to use more of his daddy powers. As Hank said when I asked him to marry me one night after a sublime tussle in bed, "Sure, why not." We could do this.

Hank and I had often talked about adopting an older child in the foster care system someday, regardless of whether we had another biological child or not. We're both softies for "unwanted" kids. We don't want to be foster parents at this time because we want to know that we're the parents and not just temporary guardians (ok, I'm a control freak). We also think it would be too difficult for Stella and us to part with a kid who entered our lives for any amount of time.

Here's what we decided we would look for in a child to adopt:

--few complicated medical problems
--preferably a girl (this was actually Hank's idea, thinking she'd probably enjoy having a lifelong sister)
--between the ages of 3-4 (out of diapers and around Stella's age so they can grow up together)

We understand most kids who weren't adopted as infants and who have been through the foster care system have behavioral problems, and we're willing to work with them, find them a counselor, etc. We're trying to think of how it must feel to lose your mommy and daddy and how rough that will be to overcome, but we want to help a child do this and we think we'd be good parents.

Stella currently has an imaginary brother who she plays with A LOT. Sometimes she has other imaginary siblings too. So she's very enthused. We've tried to explain to her that if we do adopt another child they might have problems with yelling or fighting or bossing or any other behavioral problem and that we'll have to work as a family to help the child work through his or her problems. She says she would love to help another child. We'll see when the time comes. :)

We can't afford private adoption - it costs around $2000-$10,000. Plus, there are long waiting lists for these kids because they have fewer problems than kids in the foster care system have. And we WANT a child from the foster care system, so we're just looking at state agencies.

In doing several national and state searches, we have found several kids who kinda fit our criteria, but most of them have too many medical problems. Lots of medically fragile kids. So sad. But Hank and I wouldn't have the time and energy and resources to handle a medically fragile child in addition to the parenting responsibilities of raising Stella..

But the other day, I found a four year old girl named Myleigh who is in the foster care system in Iowa. She sounds ideal, but of course, we'd have to go through the 10 week classes the state has prospective parents take and a home study and background check, etc. Then we'd meet her. But nothing is set in stone at this point. It generally takes anywhere from 2-10 months to go through the whole process of adoption, and even after the child is placed in your home they work with you for up to 12 months to sort out the legal issues and any mental health issues that need to be addressed.

The kicker is this: she has two older brothers, Carston (7) and Kale (5) and we would not want to break up their family. They are both in school and from the profile it sounds like they have few medical problems and just a few behavioral probems like not paying attention in school. Hank pointed out that he'd be an understanding parent for them since he struggled with that too. :)

So, we've been rethinking our plan. Could we take in three more children? That would be a big change for both Stella and us. I'd have to start cooking more and tightening our budget even more. Hank would have to start taking his lunch to work instead of eating out every day. Little ways we waste money would have to be taken into account. More laundry. More noise. More sibling rivalry. More sick kids. We'd have to sell the van, the truck and my Bug to pay off our credit cards and use what's left as a downpayment to buy a used minivan, but that's something we're willing to do. We'd have to get bunkbeds, two sets. We explained to Stella that she would have to share her room with Myleigh. She said, very seriously, "I will share everything with my sister, my bed, my toys, my socks, EVERYTHING." :)

The weirdest thing of all is this. When we first started seriously talking to Stella about adopting, I said, "Since Mommy is having trouble making another baby, we've decided to find another kid whose mommy was able to make him or her but she is unable to care for him or her. So we'd care for the child and be his or her mommy and daddy and you'd be his or her sister. Would you like us to find a brother or a sister for you that way?" Without hesitation, she raised three fingers and said, "How about three?" This was long before we found this sibling group of three.

We're really excited, but we're not going to start the application process until Hank's dad is on board since he plays such a large role in our child care. When we told Stella about Carston, Kale and Myleigh, she said, "I need to talk to my brother." Then she crawled under the table and whispered something, came back out and announced, "He's ok with it too."

Lots to think about. We're trying not to get too excited in case it doesn't work out, but just looking at those three little angels' picture makes my heart burst. Hank thinks Carston looks like him. And he's right. So it's weird to feel oddly draw to a picture and a bio. We don't know anything else about these children, and yet we're thinking about letting them into our family. Big stuff.

Good thing I had my individual therapy session the nest day. I mentioned how excited I was that Hank is ready to adopt another child, but that I was hesitating since I worried an extra child would consume the time I already don't have. She reminded me that it doesn't have to be all or nothing. She asked me to consider one thing. Why do I want to have another child? Because we want Katie to grow up with a sibling because I've recently realized, with the passing of my brother, how much more connected I feel to my remaining siblings and mom? Because I want to give a child the kind of life I think I missed out on? Because I'd rather make my life in the here and now more chaotic so it reminds me of my own upbringing because the thirst is more familiar than the drink?

Did I really want to take care of another person, to share my life and time and love and food and shelter and family with? Or was my subconscious agenda to get an opportunity to staunch off my perceived generational mistakes? This shouldn't be about me. It needs to be about the kids. So I need to work on me so I can help work on these kids. Hopefully the parenting classes will help with that in addition to my once-weekly group DBT and once-weekly individual cognitive therapy. Well, and the 200 milligrams of sertraline if you're counting.