A fear of happiness

Do you ever feel like being too happy will jinx you somehow?

During our struggle with infertility and pregnancy loss I would try not to get too excited about any progress made, because it seemed like everytime I did something would happen to take it all away. Each positive pregnancy test was followed by excitement and then quickly by intense fear. It is hard, so very hard to to get past this feeling.

I’m afraid to be too happy. Like something is going to find out and come crash our party.

I’m going to say it… life is good right now (cringe).

This pregnancy is going so well. I haven’t had any complications or major scares. Especially once we passed the first trimester. I feel the baby move every day and it provides reassurance about his existance. I am fairly confident that come the end of November/beginning of December we will have another sweet boy in our arms.

Our quest to adopt Finch is moving along. We have been incredibly blessed with such a wonderful, beautiful son. It’s seems so surreal sometimes.

I don’t want to temper our joy. I want to experience it deeply and fully. How do I move past the fear and learn to trust that life isn’t out to get me?

Big Step

Our boy is legally free!!!

Yesterday was the hearing to terminate parental rights. We heard from the social worker this morning that it is all official. This is a huge milestone for our little family. Now our case gets transferred to the adoption worker and we start the adoption process.

I am amazed that we have come this far already. It is my understanding that the process usually takes longer. However this case is a little special in a few ways. Partly because Finch has an older sibling that has recently been adopted. In fact, it was just finalized a few weeks ago. That sets a precedent for this family. The other reasons I’m not comfortable going into.

We are obviously very excited about being able to move forward on the adoption. I’ve never actually been more excited about anything in my life. I love Finch more that words can express. He has changed everything, and I can’t imagine our life without him. But, I can’t help feeling a tinge of sadness or maybe it’s guilt. Here we are, so happy and embarking on an incredible adventure with the sweetest boy in the world. At the same time, a family is losing him. With foster/adopt it is quite a different situation than private adoption. The parents generally aren’t making a decision to place their child in an adoptive home. Most of the time, the state makes that decision for them. However, it is due to choices they have made and issues they are unable or unwilling to resolve. I do feel that we have an ideal situation though, in that we have contact with Finch’s extended family and his sibling. We plan to maintain those relationships throughout his life.

I am also thinking about how we tell Finch his story. How do we properly honor the complexity of the situation? Letting him know that having him in our life, being able to call him our son, is the greatest thing to ever happen to us. Being truthful about where he came from and why he is with us, while not making judgements about his birth parents. In many ways I’ve felt that he was meant to be with us. This feeling is contradictory to my usual belief about how things work, but I can’t explain it any other way. I hope that I can explain it all to him one day.

Well, here we go… I hope to have more to share on the adoption process soon. We will hopefully hear from the adoption worker in a week or so. I can’t wait until it’s all finalized!

17w, 6d + Finch Update

I think I felt the baby move last week. I’m not totally sure, but I’ve felt it a couple times now. 18 weeks tomorrow! My belly is getting bigger and I can’t wear my regular pants anymore (really need to go shopping). Although there are some days I almost forget that I’m pregnant. Our big ultrasound is a little over two weeks away. I can’t wait!

Finch will be 3 months in a couple days. He’s getting so big, so fast. His little bald head is starting to get more hair on it (so cute) and he’s been having little giggle fests that make my heart happy. He is a sweet, happy boy and we are SO grateful for him! His case is moving forward and his social worker signed the termination petition last week to start the process on terminating parental rights. I think tomorrow they will declare adoption as the goal, instead of reunification (which is always the first goal in foster care). We are very excited about this, although it could still be another 6 months before we can start the adoption process. In the meantime we are just loving every minute with our precious boy!

The Boy

Things have been quite crazy here with two infants. You can probably tell by the time between blog posts. My goodness.

Finch is the most beautiful baby. I am just crazy about him.

I love the noises he makes when he’s eating.

I love the how he smiles in his sleep (OMG. It’s too cute). He even laughs sometimes!

I love his little face and all the expressions he makes.

I love how he’s growing bigger and stronger every day.

I even love his little bald head!

Ugh. I can hardly stand it at times.

Finch

He’s here!

For those not following the protected posts, we picked up our foster/adopt son (Finch) on Tuesday last week on his 3 week birthday. This is the possible adoption situation I mentioned here.

Our house has been taken over by babies! Between Squeak and Finch we are not getting much sleep or downtime. Finch is the most beautiful baby boy I’ve ever seen. I’m so in love with him already. I could spend hours watching his little movements and expressions if I wasn’t trying to keep Squeak entertained too! She’s become quite the little attention seeker lately. And her sleeping schedule has gone downhill. Otherwise things are great. We are enjoying our boy and loving on him every chance we get. It’s so unreal that he’s here!

Squeak update

Today is Squeak’s 14 week birthday! We’ve officially had her half of her life. She has really changed a lot in the last 7 weeks. She’s grown a lot and we now refer to her as “sumo baby”. She is a chunky monkey! It’s so awesome to see her thrive in our care. And we are really enjoying her many new phases and developments. She is pretty talkative now, cooing and such. She also smiles a lot.

We have our routine pretty well figured out. She’s a really easy baby. She now sleeps mostly through the night, generally waking up once for a change and a bottle. In the morning we release her from her swaddle and watch her stretch and stretch and stretch. It’s so cute!

We haven’t had any recent updates on the status of her case. Right now we assume she is still going back to family. Although, we’d love to keep her forever.

Dude.

I have learned SO much about babies in the last couple weeks. Holy cow.

1. Did you know that they hardly sleep?! I mean, they sleep a lot, just not any hours in a row. DH and I have been struggling to get a grip on the sleep deprivation and manage to still accomplish something each day. Definately not as easy as it sounded.

2. The Kiddopotamus SwaddleMe is the best invention ever.

3. Actually, the SWING is the best invention ever.

I’m sure there’s more, but I’m clearly not awake enough to remember them all! All kidding aside, Squeak is a really sweet girl and we are enjoying having her with us. She is smiling more everyday and started trying to make some cooing sounds a couple days ago. Too cute! She’ll be 10 weeks on Thursday.

We found out that the plan is for her to live with her grandparents. They still have to go throught the home study process, so we will probably have her for a couple months. It’s going to be hard to give her up.

Squeak

We are in possession of the CUTEST 7 week old baby!

We got a call back on Wednesday last week about the foster baby. We went up to the hospital on Thursday and spent all day with her, then brought her home that night. Having an infant in the house is definately going to take some getting used to. Sleep is not something I’m good at living without. It’s especially weird to know that we are doing all this work and probably won’t get to keep her. But we adore her and we are doing it for her.

I was trying to think of a good internet name for her when we met her without much luck, then she made the most adorable sound while sleeping. Like a squeak! So, that’s her name…Squeak.

Holy Rollercoaster

Yesterday was CRAZY. We got our first call for a foster baby placement around 6pm. It was for a 7 week old girl. Well, we are pretty sure it’s a girl. Anyway, we accepted and then proceeded to scramble around getting ready. Our house was ready for a baby in November when we got licensed, but after the Peanut thing fell through we kind of got tired of looking at all the baby stuff everywhere. We picked up some formula, had a very informative conversation with a new mom about formula in the grocery store aisle, ran home and changed out the crib sheet, turned on the wipes warmer, unpacked and re-washed all the bottles, mixed a bottle of formula and stuck it in the fridge, paced a lot, tried to eat some dinner and then sat quietly for a few minutes. Then the phone range about 9:30pm and the social worker said the baby had to be admitted to the hospital so they wouldn’t be coming. We MIGHT still get a call today or in the next couple days if they still need a home, but we’ll see.

It’s almost comical when I think about it now. At least we are ready for the next call. I mean really ready.

Oh, we also spoke to the PBGP (potential birth grand parents) of the foster baby we could end up with in a few months and it went REALLY well. I talked to Grandpa and DH talked to Grandma. We are going to set up a time to meet in the next couple weeks. They already knew about us and were quite sweet about the whole thing. EEEKKK!

The Meeting

We had our meeting with MC yesterday. It went REALLY well. We loved her and her soon to be adopted daughter was absolutely beautiful! She is going to be the big sister of this new baby. It was pretty amazing to sit there and think that if by some miracle this all works out, we’ll be forever connected to these two people. I could picture it and it was such a beautiful thought. MC is friends with the aunt of the birth-mom. That is how she ended up with the first baby. They want her to take the new baby, but she is a single parent and doesn’t want to take on two kids so close in age. Her daughter is now 10 months. Everyone involved would like the new baby to be placed with a family that is willing to have an open relationship, both with his/her sibling and the birth family, which we are. She is going to recommend that the birth family request the baby be placed with us. We are already licensed to foster-adopt, so there shouldn’t be too many obstacles to that happening. She is going to talk to the team, including the birth family on Friday. And we are supposed to call the birth grandparents and introduce ourselves. Talk about a daunting task! I am feeling surprisingly calm about this whole possibility (not my usual mode of operation). Yesterday, sitting in the room with MC and her sweet little girl, it just felt so POSSIBLE.