I'll back up for the benefit of those who don't know me, or my story. I'm Stephanie. I was born in 1977 - December to be exact. I was the only mutual child of my parents, but each had a kid or kids from prior marriages. And so, our blended family emerged. Perfect by all means (eghh hmmm... perfect because *I* had been born, I'd still argue to my three older brothers). :) The problem was, around age 2, I started getting sick. Very sick. I had a cute little toddler belly - only it wasn't a little belly. It protruded out - a lot. I don't remember anything about those days, but according to my parents, I would proudly announce I had a baby in my belly. (Who knows how at 2 I knew babies grew in bellies! I don't think sex ed started that early, even in the 70's!) But, one thing was for certain. I knew there was something growing in there. After seeking opinion after opinion to no avail, my parents drove me from our little town near Bangor, Maine (for those Maine Buffs - that would be where Stephen King lives - LOVE him!) to Boston Children's Hospital. According to the medical records I tried to finally decipher 8 or so years ago, that would've been around the end of December around my 3rd birthday. 1980. YES! The 80's! ;-) (I'm an 80's girl.. totally rocked it!) Back on track: so after testing, just after New Year's (and a few days after my birthday - yep, I'm a Christmas baby) - they got the news: I had Stage IV Neuroblastoma, a type of cancer seen usually in infants. I was given virtually no chance of survival. None. Zero. Zip. But, hey, here was an experimental protocol they could try.... so then started the surgeries to remove the mass, and the cocktails of chemo drugs (later described as akin to Agent Orange... if you're too young to know what that is, google it.. it's NOT good), and radiation from my breastbone to my pelvis. The tumor was the size of a grapefruit. Remember that protruding belly and "baby" I claimed was in there? It was this nasty glob of bad stuff, sprouting like a past-it's-good-date potato to all my major organs. Fortunately, the only one it entered was my right ovary, which was "saved" but essentially a useless minuscule perpetually 3-year-old version of itself for life thereafter. So the treatments went on for the better part of a year. I got sicker and sicker. My parents finally made them stop the treatments in favor of some quality of life. Unbeknownst to everyone, I survived. I was one of 2 who did... and later, 1 of 1 (the other survivor relapsed and succumbed to his disease a few years later). I was the sole survivor of a certain-death sentence unfairly dumped on a toddler (one, mind you, barely older than my own toddler now.... I can't imagine how my family held it together. I'd have been a nutcase).
So.... moving forward. Against all odds, 5 years of remission and I was "cured." A miracle in its own right. I took it for granted a lot when I was a kid. I had resentment and anger (not gonna lie - sometimes I still do, but for different reasons now). I couldn't remember being young. I'd look at pictures and be told stories, and I remembered NONE of it. I cannot begin to explain to you how STRANGE and UNFAIR it is to not know yourself before you were nearly a decade old. There's nothing left in that memory bank. My mind has (probably in a good way) blocked those memories. Those terrible days and the most horrible treatment. I'm resigned knowing that I'll never regain those memories, and I'm told, it's for the better.
So, back to my earliest memories of dolls and playing and being a mommy... I was 8 or 9. It was then (maybe before, but I don't recall it) that my parents began explaining to me that I would likely NEVER have my own children. The treatments all but assured that. ANGER. DENIAL. All those steps of grief they tell you about? I went through them... over and over and over. It wasn't until I was a teenager that we realized the doctors might once again have been wrong. I "developed" when I should've have... some might even say God went on overboard on that one! haha But, things were working, without the assistance of pills or injections or surgeries. For awhile, my body was normal. It was tricked into believing that I was a normal pubescent and fertile young girl. For awhile....
I learned carrying to term was going to be an "issue" early on. It likely was going to be a BIG issue. I won't go into detail on how I first came to this knowledge, but I did. And I was pretty damn young. Too young to know this or truly be dealing with it, and the potential for parenthood. But, at the time, I thought I was smarter than everyone (don't all teenage & young adult girls?)
I knew that what my parents had instilled since I was a little girl playing with my dolls - the ugly one and the factory-made ones - that I wasn't perfect. I was the ugly one. And I likely wouldn't be having a child that would live long enough inside me to live outside of me. Ever. But still there was hope. A tiny glimmer. The docs had been wrong SO many times before. Surely, this was just an anomaly.... or not.
When I first met my husband, I had no intention of having a long term relationship with him (cat's outta the bag!!!) We were just finishing up college and I was more into myself at that point. Having someone to go on a few dates with and kiss (yes, that's IT!) at the end of the night was fun, but that's all it was at first. That went on for a few months, and he eventually moved, and I moved on... It wasn't until a few years later, when he was finishing up law school up north, and I was just beginning down south, that we reconnected. If you've been to law school (or nursing school, or any type of school or program that's so emotionally draining and challenging all in one that your ONLY camaraderie is found in others suffering through a similar fate), then you understand! I needed someone to talk to! To reassure me that I wasn't completely batshit crazy for dropping my social worker job and going back to torture myself through Torts and Contracts and the Rule of Perpetuities (if you don't know what that is, trust me - it's a GOOD thing!) for the next 3 years. So, I chose my husband.. well, then, he was just a friend. As time went on, we became closer. We traveled to meet up and hang out. Nope! Sorry! Hate to bust your bubble - there was no baby making going on! We were, in all truthfulness, just best friends. Slowly (and I'll emphasize SLLLLLOWWWWWWLY), we grew closer and our love began to grow for one another, and we realized we didn't want to live apart. (Insert "awwwww. how sweet." here) So, we eventually (several years later) moved in together, then bought a house together, then got engaged, then got married. Yep, in that order. ;-) (Conventional? Did I ever suggest we were?)
After we tied the knot in October 2008, we pretty much immediately started trying to have a family. By that, I mean: he told me NO MORE 4-LEGGED CHILDREN! He wanted the human kind. So did I. Remember the dolls? It was ALL I ever wanted... to be a mommy. Now, I was in my very early 30's and feared that I might be stuck being a mommy to a doll forever because we both knew my "parts" were functioning less and less in the past few years. Ugh. Enter: my grandmother. My loving, amazing grandmother. She had adopted my dad when he was an infant: her only child ever, and did she EVER love him... Back step for a moment: in early 2009, we went to a world-renowned fertility specialist who, luck would have it, practiced less than an hour from us. He was amazing. He even gave my husband a ration of shit for being a blonde "berber" (Italian). It was all in good humor. He told me: "no worries. I don't care if your ovaries aren't working anymore (they weren't at that point). I can get you pregnant." And I believed him. Unfortunately, there was one little problem with that plan: in addition to my ovaries being bunked at that point, my always-small uterus (hence the ability to carry to term issue earlier) was even more shrunken now... um, approximately to the size of a ... you guessed it - 3 year old's! But, the doc said "no problem. We'll make it grow." HUH? We said. I had never heard of such a thing, but we went with it. Worth a shot! I pumped my body full of a cocktail of hormones and drugs for six full months, hoping that little sucker was stretching out quickly. They were going to recheck it in September. In July, my grandma was suddenly diagnosed with lung cancer, and it was bad. She had weeks, possibly days. I dropped everything and went out to Arizona to be with her. I needed to hug her one more time, and to hear her tell me stories about my dad as a baby. About her adoption story. Even though we were convincing ourselves right then that we'd just take someone else's eggs & fertilize them & implant them in me & have beautiful babies at the hospital... deep down, we all knew we probably weren't ever going to do that. I had a longing to FEEL a baby grow to term inside me; to be the one to give birth; to lay eyes on that baby first. I didn't know any other way. She shook my head around and said, "Stephanie. Adoption. It has always been your plan. And it's such a wonderful way to parenthood. Trust me." I said "okay," but still partially blew it off, even as I walked away from her in tears, knowing I'd never physically see her again. I was right. She succumbed about 2 weeks later. (Oh, and by the way - I'm in tears right now recalling this. Moreso than anything else in our journey... this conversation has always stuck with me because I HOPE she knows that I knew she was right; always have; and I'm SO thankful she never stopped telling me to adopt!) So back on point: that September, about a month after my grandma died, we went back to the Doc. They did another ultrasound. My uterus had grown: about 1/6th of the minimum it had to grow to sustain life. At this rate, it was going to take no less than 3 years, maybe more. I was done. In all ways, done. Put a fork in me. How the hell was I ever going to be the one thing I'd always wanted to be? How was I ever going to have that baby to love? ADOPTION. ADOPTION. ADOPTION.
We talked for a long time about it. The pitfalls, the expense, the planning, the uncertainty. And the love that my grandma spoke so kindly of that I couldn't shake. The fact that I'd been programmed to expect to become a parent through adoption since my earliest days. The fact that he knew it from the start. I won't lie. There was a time when he had a hard time, in the beginning, grasping the idea of loving a child who didn't come from his little swimmers (the technical term, of course). But then, even before we made the decision - even before we ever went to that doctor - even before we ever got married.... another miracle happened. My niece was born - 10 weeks early. She spent a lot time in the NICU. And so did I. Every day after work I made the drive. Every weekend I made the drive. I fell in love with a little baby I thought was sure to die the first time I laid eyes on her, and she fell in love with me, and then with US when she came home. And the most incredible of things happened: HE fell in love with HER - a child who was not only not of his own sperm, but wasn't related in any way, shape, or form to him. He loved her like a daughter, and it was then I knew that he knew he could love ANY child as his own. No doubt about it.
So, in the end of August 2010, I made the first step in what was to become the hardest, and most rewarding couple years of our lives: I contacted an agency. By October, we were meeting with our social worker for the first time, filling out gobs of paperwork, and getting printed by the FBI to pass our background checks. Interviews, home visits, scrubbing the corners of the walls, searching for the crease in the bed sheets that might raise a red flag that we wouldn't be the very best parents in the world.... and we were ready! In February 2011, we got the call that we were approved, licensed, and ready to go! We went in "the book" in March 2011 with our agency. We were chosen six days later by a married couple with 2 girls looking to place a third, thought to be due in 10 weeks. WOW. This was really IT! We scrambled to get our composure; we bought a little $5 bear for each of the little girls at the store, and we went to our agency to meet this couple. We had always been told that we'd have SO MUCH in common with our match that talking would never be odd. It was. I don't know if it was my nerves or my gut saying this wasn't "the one" and not wanting to acknowledge that... but I just couldn't find my words (and if you've gotten this far in this post, you'll know THAT doesn't happen often!) My husband and the birth dad? Got along like CHAMPS! Sports! They had TONS in common with that tie. I thought to myself, "well.... if HE'S happy with the match, at least one of us will have that connection." But I found myself glancing down at the stack of papers the birthmom had with her; one of which was a "dear birthmom" letter from another couple, and a picture of them, with a horse. That horse would be the death of us, so it would seem. You see, our agency had arranged for these birthparents (and their children) to meet TWO families.. not just us, and get to know us both and then decide between us. Wanna guess who the "losers" were? Yup. You guessed it. The ones WITHOUT the horse! Looking back a few days after we got the devastating news that our match was no more, I wanted to scream out "But we DO have a HORSE! She's a leonberger!" (google them - they're fantastic dogs for kids - and are about the size of a mini horse! haha). But, I didn't. I just cried and went into a hole for a few days, trying to mend my heart that felt it would never heal.
I decided I wasn't going to let the agency dictate when I became a mommy. I started researching and put together what then was a pretty rudimentary website about us (trust me, it's MUCH better now than in those first few weeks, when it went "active" in April 2011). I'll add another post later about my networking efforts, but let's just say, for now, that I was sharing the website as much as I could. We were contacted by a few potential birthmoms who seemed legit. We talked to a few of them for weeks. For one reason or another, those didn't work out (though a few of them are going to offer insights later on this blog from their perspective and why they looked at adoption, chose to parent, etc.). I kept on with the online networking. We were contacted by our agency again at 3:30 in the afternoon on June 2, 2011. They had a match for us. Not only a match - a PLACEMENT! A little girl, not a newborn, but she was just 4 months old (and for those who adopt older babies & kids, I commend you but before I tell you this didn't work out I'll tell you how thankful I am that it didn't because I absolutely cannot fathom not having had that first 4 months with my precious babies!)... Anyway, we were to drive 1 hour away and be there at 6 to take the baby with us and meet her birthmom. We threw stuff together and got in the car, not even sure how to connect the carseat, figuring we'd do it there with the help of the social workers. We talked names. We came up with one we agreed upon: Olivia. (Another thankful moment since we've got friends now with kids with this name & a WHOLE LOT of them around here!) We got to the agency location 5 minutes late. The birthmom wasn't there yet. In my gut, I knew. I knew it wasn't happening and I had already resigned myself to it. After all, 2 1/2 hours wasn't long enough to fall in love with this child in our minds or hearts.... or was it. We got the call about 20 minutes later. She wasn't coming. Her aunt wanted to care for the child for 2 weeks, and then she'd be placing her with us (sure, right, uh huh... buh bye....). We drove home in silence. I was fine. Truly I was. But when I woke up the next morning and realized I'd have to go to work... the work I'd rushed out of the evening before saying "we're going to get a baby!!!!!!!" and explain why I was back, I cried. A lot. Then I took a deep breath, and went out the door to my job.
Therein started up more networking efforts. Fortunately, a young girl who was an admin on a well-traversed Facebook page saw our website and fell in love with us.. She started sharing our site on their wall - once - 1000 hits in an hour! WOW! We had never seen that kind of traffic! A few weeks later - again - 1000 hits in 10 minutes! The next day, I woke up in a hotel while traveling for work - three weeks to the day from the last disaster with our agency- and there was a single-lined email in my inbox of my email, and a similar one in my FB messages. "I think you might be the ones God had planned for me" and "I have an 8 month old and am 18 weeks pregnant with my second, and am considering.. ADOPTION...." Here it was. Again. Was this one legit? Was she really interested in us? Did I want to trust that I'd ever be a mommy? Well, if I was ever going to, I did with her. A lot went into it, and we became very close over the course of the next 5 months, but on Tuesday, November 22, 2011, she made me the one thing I could never make myself: a mother. She gave birth to an absolutely PERFECT little 7 pound 12.5 oz, 20" blonde haired, blue eyed baby boy that we named Chance. He is now throwing balls at me while I type this and laughing like a monster.... Ahhhh, the joys of toddlerhood! But, I'd take EVERY SINGLE MOMENT of his crazy monkey-boy antics to be his mother over and over again. He is a precious angel and my grandma was right: ADOPTION. It was what I was always meant to do; who I was meant to be; and what I was meant to help others with.
So, in late August 2012, we started up again. Chance needed a baby sibling, of course! (He does have an older birth brother who is being raised by his incredible birth mom... who will ALSO be offering written insights for this blog in the future, too!). We went through a lot in a short time with our networking, culminating in an emotional scammer contacting us the day after Chance turned one (on Thanksgiving that year). It only took 4 days to put the pieces together and to find out who she was (she was the subject of Dateline many years before and had an ongoing "issue" with this kind of thing.. almost always just after a holiday - nothing like making someone's dreams be crushed in the most horrible of ways at a time that should otherwise be happy!). So, I made it my mission to find her and take her down. I did, with the help of a special friend who was also hoping to adopt (and still does). We tracked her down in Ohio. She was staying at a shelter there under false pretenses. We also found out she was on parole and had absconded (skipped out). So, I contacted her parole office and the police and gave them everything I knew (following my preface of "I know this sounds completely crazy, but......"). We played along for a few days to keep tabs. She didn't know we were onto her. On Friday, she disappeared. On Tuesday, I got the call from her parole officer: I had been right. It was who I thought it was (Amy Slanina - Google her - she's a "peach" haha). They had her. She had, in fact, been at a shelter...... For some reason still a mystery to me, I picked up the phone and called the shelter. I don't know what I wanted. I don't know what I wanted to find out. But, I called. And the woman who answered and I talked like we had been friends for years - for well over an hour. That was that. A few weeks later, we packed up ship (about to be a "pun intended" moment) and headed to Florida with our 12 month old to board the Carnival Liberty! It was time for some Caribbean sun.. and maybe a tropical drink or two ;-) It was definitely time to leave adoption behind for a week! We sailed out on December 15th. We returned to port on December 22, 2012, Chance's 13th month "birthday." We were notified that day that the woman who answered the phone at the shelter? Her daughter's lifelong best friend was almost 18 weeks pregnant and considering adoption, and had been shown our page and wanted to talk..... That began another relationship we'll have for life. On May 15, 2013, our second son was placed in our arms by another incredibly special young lady. Rhys (pronounced "Reece" - not "rice" or "rise" like everyone realllllly wants to say when they read it) was the name my husband chose for him. It was unconventional: he got it from The Terminator. Kyle Reece, to be specific (Sarah Connor's future son's father who comes back to save her from The Terminator, sent back to kill her before she ever becomes pregnant with her son..... Um, if you haven't seen it yet, you've been living in a protective bubble far too long. Go rent it. NOW! It might even be on netflix for free!) Anyway, it was his way of giving him a "super hero" name without being too obvious. Now I tease him about it.. A lot. But, I suppose it was a cool way to come up with a name (don't tell him I said that!!!).
So, here we are, 8 months and 6 days after Rhys was born; 1 day shy of 26 months after Chance was born, and we're the parents to two special little boys. ADOPTION. Yep, my grandma was right. I'd give up my eggs every day for the rest of my life to have these boys, and their birth families, in my life. They ARE my life. I'm their mommy. I have succeeded at something in life. No more baby dolls! Well, okay... maybe... if one of them wanted one or, some day, there was a little girl added to the mix.. SOME DAY. NOT TODAY!!!!! ;-) ADOPTION. To adopt or not to adopt. That was the question. And, now you have the answer.
Aww. This is amazing! :)
ReplyDelete