Thought I ought to give you girls a bit of an update. As you know, we had dinner last week with my friends who adopted a daughter from China after having two biological sons. It also happens that my friend is the daughter of our town's biggest adoption lawyer, and they are both lawyers themselves who have worked with her dad at least a bit. So they know a lot about adoption, from the personal side and the legal side.
They were so incredibly positive and encouraging, with so many good things to say about their own experience. Even though we won't follow their same road (Mr. J feels strongly about domestic versus international), they gave me a lot of comfort that although this will be a difficult process, someday it will be over and we will have a child of our own even if not a biological child. So although we are still working through the process, we are getting some traction. Planning to contact the adoption-lawyer-dad next week when he returns to town from vacation, and maybe also the local non-profit agency.
Meanwhile, we are continuing to lay ground work. We dropped something off at Mr. J's parents' house last weekend and took the opportunity to broach the subject with his folks. Of course my own mom has been in the loop the whole time, but evidently Mr. J had been somewhat less forthcoming ... no surprise there. Mr-Mama was sort of aware that we had gone to see the fertility doctor but that is all she knew. So we gave them the details on the lack of success, and explained that we were turning our attention to adoption.
They were pretty quiet, mostly, and what little they did say was supportive. Mr-Papa was all "however it happens, it will be a good thing." Mr-Mama referred to a good friend of hers whom I did not realize has two adopted children, and I was glad to hear that because I think it will give her a helpful frame of reference. And then she asked me in a concerned voice, "What does your mom think about this?"
I said something vague about how my mom thinks we should do whatever we need to do, but it struck me as odd ... not that she asked, but the sort of ominous tone she used. I asked Mr. J later what he thought she was getting at, and he said, "She's so different from your mom, it's hard for her to know what your mom thinks about anything. I'm sure she was just curious." Well, maybe.
What I think is that Mr-Mama wanted someone to give her an opening. What with Mr-Papa being all power-of-positive-thinking, she didn't want to head out on the limb as the naysayer. She was hoping my mom would have already voiced some concerns, so that she could get on board and start throwing out her own issues. But my mother's parenting credo is: "whatever makes my kid happy is great with me." As I said to Mr. J, we could tell my mother we are never having kids - great! we are doing IVF and hoping for triplets - great! we are adopting an alien baby - great!
I'm expecting Mr-Mama to have all sorts of things to say once she gets warmed up. I just hope she decides to land on our side ... Mr. J doesn't need any more stress.
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