Adoption Update

First, a disclaimer; parts of this entry may be more judgmental than necessary and even than I actually feel but I’m getting a bit beat up on the whole baby business.

I am a not so closet tabloid junkie.  I became one when the Gaffer spent her first three months in hospitals.  They were easy, mindless, disposable and the nurses loved when I left them behind. Unfortunately, I found it difficult to leave my addiction behind as well and I had to set limits for myself. I decided I can buy them for travel or medical appointments. I stick to those rules for the most part, but during the summer, all bets are off.  I indulge my habit as completely and as often as possible, until today.

Today I got a double whammy and just couldn’t bring myself to pick up the rags. There have been more delays and setbacks on the road to adoption for us non-famous normal average married people. I wrote in the winter about our disappointment with the closure of the programme in Vietnam, a month before Angie managed to adopt Pax, as a single woman in a country that does not allow common-law couples to adopt. I guess if you are a celebrity and everyone in the world, except seemingly, the head of the adoption programme in Vietnam knows you live with Brad Pitt and he is going to adopt your newly adopted Vietnamese son when you get back state-side you are still eligible even though happily married Canadian couples who are only famous in their own families are not.

I’m not going to repeat all of that again here, this is supposed to be adoption update, not repeat. After the Vietnam closure, we decided to pursue domestic adoption. It seemed if we were going to run up against government bureaucracy, we may as well deal with our own. We changed our homestudy and began contacting domestic licensees. It costs money to meet with a licensee and then more money to register with them. Many licensees will not accept prospective parents until they have taken a course on open adoption. We found two acceptable courses. One is offered in Kingston and one in Ancaster. They are not offered very often and for a family with two parents who work, a toddler and three step-children, a weekend away for a course is very difficult to co-ordinate. We did eventually do so, only to be told the week before the course was offered that they had over-subscribed and had no room for us. Without the course we could not register with any more agencies and there was not another course offered that we were available to take until late fall. Amid all of this, we were informed that the Ministry may require changes in the course and that would delay the next dates offered.

In the midst of all of this we learned of another international programme that seemed much more stable and organized than Vietnam. We met all of the early eligibility requirements and there was no waiting list. We decided to pursue this avenue as well, hoping somewhere our baby was waiting for us to find him or her.  I rushed around at the end of the school year, marking exams, writing report cards, packing for the cottage and making sure all of our documents were up to date so that our homestudy could go off to the Ministry for the 6-8 week trip it takes for approval as soon as possible.

This morning I got an e-mail letting us know that several of our documents need changes/updates. This is all do-able and possible but it means more delays and more lost time. I was weighing all of this in the check out line at the grocery store when I noticed that the magazine racks that had been empty all weekend were full with the latest Hollywood gossip. I was looking forward to stocking up and drowning my sorrows in the trials and tribulations of others when I noticed that the cover of each tabloid was dedicated to Hollywood pregnancies and babies and Nicole Richie. One magazine had a picture of Nicole pregnant, one of Angelina holding her tummy with a "#5?" on the caption and a comment on Britney’s bad parenting skills.

Sheryl Crowe, who I quite like and admire from afar with no personal knowledge of her whatsoever, can adopt a newborn baby boy just one year in remission from breast cancer, yet we cannot even get our documents stamped for approval because the photocopy of Mr. Husband’s medical is not clear enough. Nicole Richie can get pregnant in the same year she is pulled over under the influence of both drugs and alcohol and as she prepares for possible jail time. Britney has two sons, spends time in rehab, gets out and gets photographed drinking and changing clothes with friends in bars as though none of this had ever happened, and then gets upset that people are concerned about her parenting skills.

I know how tabloids work. Who knows if what they say about any of these celebrities is true. All I know is that they can have babies and I can’t. And if they can’t have babies they don’t seem to have trouble adopting them.

I’m not rich, famous, or a recovering addict. I’m just a relatively stable, happily-married, hard-working mom and step-mom who lost her uterus before she was finished building her family. How come that’s not enough?