A Day in the Life of An Adoptive Parent: Home Study Updates and Medicals

Every year as part of our home study update we have to have medical exams and a letter from our doctor stating that we are in good physical and mental health. Out of all the things we've struggled with during this process, this has not been one of them. I've seen the same GP since I was ten. My husband has seen him for most of our marriage. He was kind, caring, supportive, and he knew us. Then in December he sold his practice and moved to New Mexico.


I. Freaked. Out.


But after calling the new doctor and being assured that our care would continue as usual, I figured no big deal. We'd all adjust and move forward.


So a few weeks ago we went in for our physicals. I had quite a time getting the appointments scheduled, but decided the receptionist just didn't understand what we were needing them for. I was sure the doctor would be helpful. No need to "throw the baby out with the bath water" so to speak. The doctor seemed nice, but he didn't spend much time talking to us. But I thought maybe he was just in a hurry on this particular day. We went and had our labs done the very next day, and then we waited. And we waited. And we waited. And waited . . . I got a hold of the nurse last week, and she said it would be a few more days so I figured we'd hear something on Monday of this week  . . . or not.


Finally, on Tuesday I called again. The receptionist said, "I'll send him a message and get back to you." No one called me back Tuesday. No one called Wednesday. So by yesterday I was over it, and Patrick called. Side Note 1: Our first medical letter was sent to Bulgaria and had to be notarized. Our old doctor always notarized our updates, and the sample letter had a spot for notarization so I just went with it. But then yesterday, this doctor got very ugly about the whole notarization thing. And I don't mean a little annoyed. I mean he was flat out refusing to do it. Nevermind, that I had sent the sample letter in well in advance of our appointment, and made it very clear that all of our letters had been notarized up to this point. It was as if this was the first he was hearing about it, and he wasn't doing it.


I decided to call our case worker at the home study agency and see if it was absolutely necessary to have the letters notarized for our update. Side Note 2: I've been trying to get ahold of our caseworker (this is not our social worker . . . that's a completely different circus) at the home study agency for about a week. We've had about five different caseworkers thus far, and I even made the comment to Patrick that she probably quit or got fired. Guess what? When I called I was told that our files were being transferred because she was no longer with them. Awesome! So I left a message with whomever it was I spoke to and was assured I'd have an answer by the end of the day, but first, they were trying to locate all of our paperwork. That's reassuring.


At this point, I was two steps from completely losing it. So I called our adoption agency. I love our caseworker there, and our adoption agency is ultimately the final authority on all of our paperwork before it is sent across the Atlantic. I somewhat hysterically told our caseworker what was going on, and within 15 minutes she had calmed me down. She reminded me that we would get through this momentary crisis, and that God had always helped us. She's good at that, calming me down, and getting me to see the big picture.

About 4:30 I finally got a call from our new case worker (I think this is number six), and she said it would be fine to skip the notarization. Hallelujah! So I called the doctor's office and spoke to the same receptionist who's been so kind (insert sarcasm font here). When I told why I was calling she said, "Mmmm . . . hmmm . . . ". Nice . . . very professional lady. I told her that the letters did not have to be notarized after all, and that I would be picking them up in the morning (today) along with our medical records. She assured me they'd be ready.


This morning I got to the doctor's office, and surprise, the letters weren't ready. The girl wasn't even there. There were no patients. And the lady that was working had no clue that I was coming in. So I parked myself in a chair and told them I'd wait. While I was waiting (the letters hadn't even been typed) an older lady came in to speak to the receptionist because they had failed to transfer her files from another office and to call her back to reschedule her appointment. She and the receptionist proceeded to get into quite an argument where the elderly lady ended up saying, "I'm having problems with your office. No one else. Just your office." At the same time, the nurse was on the phone arguing rather loudly with another patient. This was all taking place right in front of me. No discreetness (is that even a word?). No real attempts to keep things quiet.


And I realized this isn't the exception. This is the rule. This is apparently how this doctor runs his practice.


Mass chaos, and the patient is NEVER right.


Then, in the midst of all the arguing and the waiting, Andrew decides that he may throw up, and we have to race past the arguing women (thus interrupting their argument) into the restroom. Thank goodness, it was a false alarm. And within a few minutes he was back to business as usual. (If you have kids, you'll completely understand how this kind of thing can happen. If you don't . . . well God bless you.)


Needless to say, I finally got our letters and our records, and we will be finding ourselves a new doctor.


And this is just one day in the life of our adoption. We've had other days like this. We've had other days worse than this as has every other adoptive parent I've ever spoken to. Murphy's Law was written for adoption. When you're depending on other people to help bring your child home, things don't always go as smoothly as you'd like, and sometimes they're downright disastrous. Still God has seen us through thus far, and He'll continue to see us through as long this whole process takes.

CHIFF

"God sets the solitary in families;
He brings out those who are bound into prosperity . . ."
Psalm 68:6a (NKJV)

I'm going to ask you to take just a minute of your time today and read about a piece of legislation that needs to pass. Children In Families First (CHIFF) will be of great benefit to the children currently stuck in orphanages around the world. It is a bipartisan bill that will allow for the development of a bureau within the Department of State. This bureau will handle international child welfare, streamline intercountry (international) adoption, and protect the children and the families adopting them.* If you've ever adopted internationally or known someone who has, you know that at times it can seem like a bit of a tug a war as paperwork bounces from agency to agency, and it's not always clear who is in charge of what. While I feel like most parties involved are doing the best they can with what they have, things need to change within our government to help orphans find homes and families. You can read more about it here. And please take the time to sign the petition here. It takes less than five minutes, but for the children this affects it could mean a lifetime of change.

For those that have already signed the petition, I can't thank you enough!

* Information taken from childreninfamiliesfirst.org

A Birthday and An Update

Yesterday was my 33rd birthday. When I woke up yesterday morning, I didn't remember that it was my birthday. I'm so hyper focused on this home study update and getting everything done, that it completed slipped my mind until Patrick told me Happy Birthday.


Despite my forgetfulness, it turned out to be a great birthday. Patrick got me Rascal Flatts tickets, and the concert is the night before our 11th anniversary so he killed two birds with one stone. We don't typically do anniversary gifts so that will more than cover it.



We finally had our appointments with our new doctor to update our medicals yesterday morning. Everything went smoothly, and I really liked him. We went and did our blood work this morning, and once that all comes back we'll be rocking and rolling and well on the way to completing another home study update.



We've now been officially registered and waiting for two years and nine months. I think, based on the trend that I've seen, that we should receive a referral sometime between September 2014 and April 2015. Could it be sooner? I'm not ruling out the possibility, but I'm basing my math on what has happened to most families in the past couple of months. Most families are receiving referrals around the three and a half year mark.



Once we receive a referral, we will travel to Bulgaria for one week to meet and bond with our daughter. Then we come home for four to six months, and while we're back here in the states court takes place, and she becomes ours officially. Then we go back for 10-14 days for our Gotcha trip and bring her home with us.



So if we receive a referral at three and a half years (nine months from now), travel a month (give or take) later, and then travel around six months after that to bring her home, we could conceivably have our daughter home in approximately 16 months. Obviously, that's all speculation, but I like putting some sort of quantitative measurement on this whole process. It helps me function better.


Sixteen months sounds like an eternity to most people, but for us, at this point, it seems like a drop in the bucket.


Still we pray that, by some miracle, it's sooner . . . much, much sooner . . .

Sometimes Life's Hard

This adoption journey is hard.

That's not a ploy for sympathy.

It's just a statement of fact.

Three years and (almost) four months ago we sent in our application to AGCI. That is a long time y'all. I look back at my naive, excited self and laugh. Wouldn't I like to share some stuff with that girl. But here's the thing, even if I knew it all, how unbelievably hard and stressful this whole process would be, I have no doubt we would do it all again. Because let's face it? Come heck or high water we're going to get our girl home. Giving up is not an option.

"rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation, continuing steadfastly in prayer" (Romans 12:12 NKJV)

On Exercise and Eating Right

One of my biggest pet peeves is when people ask me, "Why do you work out? You're already skinny."

I usually just laugh it off. First of all, I'm not extremely comfortable with being called "skinny". Comments about anyone's weight, mine included, make me cringe. I know some people feel like they're complimenting me, but in all seriousness, it makes me insanely uncomfortable.

Here's the deal. I don't work out to be skinny.

Do I want to maintain a healthy weight? Yes.

But that's not (the only reason) I work out.

About two and a half years ago I came to a point where I was super stressed. Work was draining me emotionally and physically. I was feeding myself a steady diet of highly processed, high sugar, low in nutritional value junk. I had gained quite a bit of weight, and while I didn't like that, I liked the way I felt physically and mentally even less.

I knew something had to change. This wasn't who I was. This wasn't who God created me to be. And I wasn't honoring the temple He had given me.

So I started to change things. I started running (actually walking/jogging again) for the first time since before Andrew was born. Was it hard? Yes. I was working a lot. I had a four year and a full time job where I showed up at 7:15 every morning and didn't leave until close to five (and then I took A LOT of work home). Plus I was wading through the stresses of adoption paperwork and waiting. Some days it was all I could do not to say "forget it". Sometimes it meant making myself work out at nine at night (or later), but I made myself push through the exhaustion and do the work. And you know what? I almost immediately started feeling better. The constant exhaustion I felt began to lift. The stress began to have less of an effect on me mentally and physically. It's always going to be hard. There will always be excuses. And there are days where I feel like I would rather walk across a bed of nails than work out. But the benefits, I reap from going for a run and listening to praise music far outweigh those few moments of "I don't want to".

I also started changing the way we, as a family, ate. I didn't want Andrew growing up thinking junk was the norm. So I started really paying attention to what we were eating. I started cutting back on the processed foods, and cooking and baking from scratch. I changed the way I prepared the foods we were eating. In college I took quite a few exercise and nutrition classes. I learned things from these classes, and from one professor in particular, that have stuck with me for well over 10 years. These were the classes where I learned about the chemicals that we put in our bodies and the damage they do. These were the classes where I first heard about hydrogenated oils and how crazy bad they are for you. This is also where I learned that whole foods are best. So I became a label reading fool.

Do we ever have junk food? Yes, we do. I'm not going to lie. I polished off about half a bag of Doritos yesterday afternoon. And I do have t.v. dinners on hand for those times when I just don't want to cook. Do we every eat out? Yes, probably too much. But my goal is to make most of our meals healthy on most days.

Some examples of this are: Baking from scratch and making sauces, etc. from scratch. If we have dessert, I want to know what's in it. I don't have issues with sugar in moderation (although I am not a fan of High Fructose Corn Syrup and try to avoid it for the most part). I do have issues with sugar in my spaghetti sauce which is why I make my own. I also try to buy organic when I can. Although, it is more expensive, and it doesn't always happen.

We eat butter.

We eat cheese.

We eat meat.

We eat eggs.

We eat vegetables.

We eat fruit.

We eat ice cream.

No foods are off limits. I want my kids to have a healthy view of food. I want them to understand that food is fuel for the body. I want them to see the importance of eating right and exercising, not to be skinny, but to be healthy. But I also want them to enjoy food. And so yes, sometimes we pile in the car and head to DQ for ice cream.

This isn't about a diet. It's not about "looking good". If the only reason you want to lose weight or get in shape is to look good in a swimsuit, it's not likely to have staying power. There has to be more to it than that. It's about taking care of the body God gave you. It's about being the best you can be. No amount of vitamins or supplements or crazy crash diets can take the place of taking care of yourself. It's about being physically and mentally healthy so that you can lead the full life God intends for you to live.

And that is my rant for the day.