What Next?

Conleigh has continued to make great strides in adjusting.  The jury is still out on if I like how sassy and spunky she's turning out to be but I suppose she's just a smidge like her mother and it's all part of the giant circle of parenting kharma where you must have a child who repays you for all of the behaviors you had as a child.  She's sleeping soooo much better.  We did end up seeing a child psychologist who specialized in sleep problems.  She basically gave us two suggestions to try and either those little change worked or Conleigh's body/heart worked it out on her own.  She's actually started sucking her thumb less and less too.  That thumb is such an indicator of her anxiety level and while it's definitely her nighttime comfort, her daytime usage has decreased.

So now that Conleigh's adjustment has slid towards the "life is back to normal" end of the spectrum, what's next?   When Conleigh first came home, it was a weird feeling to not be waiting for someone.  Between her and Kenson, we had been paper pregnant for 3 years and 4 months.  (Wow!  As I write that, it seems incredible to believe that I have spent that much of my life continually waiting for children.  Crazy!)  We've now been wait free for almost ten months.  And I'm left wondering, "what's next?"  We came to adoption over five years ago because we believed it was what God desired for us, not really feeling a push from God to have biological kids.  During the past five plus years, we've explored a variety of things including domestic adoption, fos adoption, foster care, international adoption, and biological kids.  Obviously, at this moment in time, only one of those options has actually grown our family.  But neither D or I feel as if our family is complete.  So now what? 

D always teases me that maybe we should just get another pet.  And for a brief moment, we considered getting the kids goldfish for Christmas.  But he knows it's more than that. 

I think for me the real indecision is that I have never had a real desire to adopt from anywhere other than Haiti.  I don't want Haiti to simply be a "supplier country" who brought me my children.  I want to be connected to Haiti and her people.  I want my kids to be able to go back.  I want our family to be able to go back.  And I worry that if we pursue another country, that it will be difficult to maintain the ties to two countries, that it will be difficult for our family to be connected in meaningful ways to two places.  As of right now, Haiti is out for us.  Previously, the laws were adjusted by whomever was in office to allow for a greater number of adoptions.  However, due to the chaos that exists in Haiti right now, most agencies/orphanages have decided to only work with families who meet the strict 1974 requirements which include the age requirement of being 35 (which we are not).  And even if we did find someone who would work with us, I don't know that we would jump on it simply because the government has a lot of instability right now.  (Earthquake, cholera, elections which were just held but supposedly corrupt.)  But that doesn't mean we shouldn't consider another country.

Doing a domestic adoption would eliminate the worries about another culture/country but there are several things abou domestic adoption that I haven't quite worked out my feelings on.  (It doesn't mean I wouldn't consider it, just that D and I have a lot of thinking to do if we go that route.)  Most people don't realize that a domestic adoption can cost as much or more than an international one; I have a hard time with that.   In a domestic adoption, you also have to face a birth family choosing you to parent, a birth parenting choosing you to parent but then deciding to parent the child, and negotiating a relationship with the birth family.  Not things that are impossible just things that are unknowns.

As I mentioned before, we have looked in foster parenting, specifically with the goal of adoption, and what we learned was that the children whom we felt like we could successfully parent (based on age and needs) were often not available in the foster care system.  We also learned that straight up foster care was not a good fit for us.  That said, we only worked with our local HHS department rather than private agencies and if we did decide to explore that option again, we'd probaby do so through the private agencies that work in our state.

 And then someone shared this with me...



I was amazed and started researching HIV positive children a bit more.  Even if we never pursue anything down that road, the information I've learned from what I've found is amazing.  Did you know that many specialists consider HIV to be easier to manage than diabetes?  It's amazing, I tell you.

I think one of the big issues for us in the "what next" question is money.  We paid cash for both of our previous adoptions.  Money that other people might have used to invest or pay down a mortgage or to put into savings, we used to bring home two wonderful blessings.  That money was a available because we were two childless professionals who were working two full time jobs.  We are now a one income family, a family living on one teacher's salary.  We do our best to live within our means and tried to plan our lives so I would have the option of staying home.  But as I've said before, it's still tight.  (Especially since we've had a bunch of large bills in the last year.)  Regardless of what path we take to build a family, it will require money.  Money that we just don't have.

In all of the situations, I've mentioned, it's a lot about faith and believing that God can do immeasurably more than we can imagine.  But it's hard to reconcile God's faithfulness and provision with the realities of life.  And I think that's where I'm stuck right now-trying to see what God has for us next, what choice best fits are family, and what steps of faith we'll be asked to take.  It's being on the edge of somehing good, but knowing there are fears and obstacles that will have to be dealt with.  Would you pray for us, believing that God has great things in store?