Adult temper-tantrum in 3...2......

Don't mind me...I'm having a moment.

A moment where I want to slam doors and throw things around.  I want to be loud and obnoxious.  I want to grab a sledgehammer and start demolishing the nearest wall.  I want to stomp my feet defiantly and stick my tongue out at the world.  I want everyone within the sound of my voice (or, errrr, within sight of this blog?) to know that I Am Here...and I. Am. IMPATIENT!!!

We got the quarterly "Review" email from our case worker this week.  I haven't responded yet, because I know I'm going to ask (as I always do) whether anyone has looked at our portfolio, and I'm just not in the mood right now to hear that no one has looked at it lately.  I could respond that there is absolutely positively nothing new with us and just skip the part where I ask if any has looked at "us"...yeah, no I couldn't.  I have to ask.  So I will.  Soon.

I'm also thinking that, perhaps joining a couple of adoption support groups on FB wasn't such a good idea; it is getting frustrating (and I hate to say that, but it is what it is) hearing about people who got matched in, like, thirty milliseconds after completing their homestudies.  Believe me when I say that I am really, really, really, really, really trying not to let things like this upset me...and most of the time, they don't.  But something snapped inside of me last night and now, I just really, really, really, really, really need to vent.

See?  I feel better already.

Sort of.

I've just never been a patient sort of person.  When I make up my mind that something needs to happen, I need it to happen NOW.  I was in labor with DS for all of two hours, and it still felt like forever to me.  As a kid, I used to get positively sick on Christmas Eve and the night before my birthday, because I could not tolerate sitting by and doing nothing (or even worse, trying to sleep!) on the cusp of such important, meaningful events.  If I had only known then that waiting to be chosen by an expectant mom would be just like 2am on Christmas morning (when it's way too early to get up but probably too late to fall back asleep), day after day after month after year...

I don't know what "then" I was going for with that "if".  It just sounded good in my head.

Anyway...I know this is all happening according to God's plan, and in His time and according to His will, and not ours.  I know that one day this will all make sense, and that His timing is perfect, and of course all the old cliche's like good things come to those who wait and patience is a virtue and all that.  But I'm only human.  I'm impatient, I want to know when things are going to happen and how they're going to happen and when they're going to happen so I can make the appropriate plans and provisions and get everything ready so things will just fall into place when they actually do happen.  I feel like a nervous racehorse crammed into the starting gate...I'm just waiting for that bell to ring and those doors to fly open so I can take off and make things happen.  But the bell isn't in my control, and this endless period of waiting and waiting and waiting can really mess with your mind sometimes!

And, if you know me, I don't have much of my mind left to be messed with...I need to preserve as much of it as I possibly can!  Ha, ha, ha.

Alright.  Time to get out of the house and do something.  DH is working today, so I think I will take the boy to get his hair cut (since it's almost longer than mine, again, and he just looooves hearing about how much he looks like his Mom when he has long hair!) and then I think we'll head into the Cities for a horse show.  Because that makes sense.  :D

Please pray for us...especially for patience, strength, and guidance.  Pray for the other waiting families, as well; especially those who have had failed matches.  Pray for the expectant parents who aren't sure what to do, and pray that whatever decisions they make are the best for their unborn babies, because that's really what it's all about.  I guess I could be glad that we haven't been matched yet, because that means there are fewer expectant parents out there who feel like the best thing they could do for their child is to have them raised by another family...but...yeah.  I'll leave it at that.

Until next time...

90 weeks...

636 days.  Nearly 21 months.  90 weeks.  15,000+ hours.  and counting...

Nothing new to report here.  Our next review is due this month, so I expect to hear from our case worker in the next week or two, and I will ask her if there's been any activity on our portfolio in the last few months.  I'm half expecting her to come back with some response like, "I'm sorry; who are you again?"
I paged through our copy of our portfolio the other day, just to make sure it still speaks from my heart.  (Well, our hearts, but since I did 98% of the actual work putting it together -- not to discredit DH and DS, who were very helpful in picking out pictures since I wanted to include every.single.one...)  It does.  I thought maybe looking at it with fresh eyes would help me see something I could change to make it "better"; other than maybe updating a few pictures since DS has grown about another two feet since the portfolio was put together (slight exaggeration!), I couldn't find anything that jumped out as needing to be changed.  I was kind of hoping to find something big that I'd previously missed, something that will make an expectant parent drop everything and say Oh my gosh, yes, THIS is The Family for my unborn baby!  Yeah, but it doesn't work that way.  It was a gentle reminder that everything happens in God's time and according to His plan.  Our portfolio is as perfect as it can be, and when "our" expectant mom sees it, it will be perfect in her eyes, as well.

But, until that happens...

:)

I guess I could back up a second and tell you how I almost had something to report. About a month or so ago, we got an email from our caseworker about an expectant mom from another region of our agency's service area, who was looking for a specific kind of family for her unborn baby.  I won't go into details, but we did fit the basic requirements specified in the email, and our caseworker asked if it was alright to show her our info.  (The email went out to many different families, I'm almost sure; it was BCC'ed so I don't know how many.  But that's irrelevant.)  I'll admit it -- my hopes were up.  I just felt that this was going to be It, that we were going to meet "our" birthmom.  There were some issues, but nothing we felt we couldn't handle -- in fact, the details we were given made me even more positive that this was going to be It, because there were some very personal circumstances to which I could relate.

Alas, we haven't heard a thing since then.  Le sigh.  DH tried to warn me not to get my hopes up, but I did.  At least they weren't dashed, just sort of...deflated.  Like a balloon.  Slowly, over time.  That's the way the cookie crumbles.

* * * * *

You know, or maybe you don't, for the longest time I was convinced that the one area I never wanted to work in as a nurse was OB.  Given my personal history of several failed pregnancies, it was something I wanted to avoid for my own emotional well-being.  From the early days of my nursing school adventure, there were girls in my classes who were going on and on about how they wanted to work in OB someday because they loved babies and blah blah blah, while I rolled my eyes and firmly maintained that I did NOT want to work with screaming moms and crying babes.  Not then, not ever.  I absolutely dreaded our OB clinical rotations; on one level I was afraid of inducing an emotionally-instigated anxiety attack, and for another, I didn't ever want to work in OB, so why bother?!

Even when I survived my first day of OB clinicals (during which I got to be there from admission to delivery, holding the mom's leg while she pushed and being one of the first people on earth to see this brand-new person make their entrance into the world) without even the faintest sign of a breakdown, I stood firm.  I remember that passing phrase, "I could see myself doing this!", going through my head at one point.  (Disclaimer: in nursing school, I had that thought at some point in EVERY clinical rotation!)  Yet I still stood firm: OB wasn't for me.  Moms yelling their heads off, nervous new parents, fragile and totally dependent newborn people...nope.  Not my cup of tea.  Not even when I practically aced all of the exams in those chapters with VERY little studying.  Nope.  Not gonna do it.

So, when I got hired as an RN at my hospital, I still maintained that I would do med-surg, and eventually one day, ER.  But not OB.  I was a part-time nurse working full-time hours and waiting (im)patiently for a full-time position to open up.  It took about a year and a half, but then a full-time position opened up: nights in OB.  I'd never worked an overnight shift before then, and you might already have an idea about my aspirations to work in OB.  But I did want a full-time position, so I searched my heart and soul and decided, OK; I'll try OB, since it's apparently my ticket to a full-time position.  It can't be that bad!  And I did ace all those exams, probably for a good reason, so...

Here I am, 2 years later, still working in OB.  (Well, I mainly work in med-surg and recently started working in the ER as well, but that's only because our little hospital doesn't get many deliveries.)  I love OB!  Not in that starry-eyed, "oh I get to work with babies and babies are the cutest things ever" kind of way.  It's difficult to explain; I just feel like that is where I belong.  And other people have told me the same thing.  It's kind of weird.  But, I digress; there is a point to all of this.

Just over two years ago, I started working in OB.  Our two-year "wait" anniversary will be in September.  See what I'm getting at?  If I thought working in OB would be a challenge after going through so many failed pregnancies, I wouldn't be lying to say I was terrified to see what it would be like while waiting to be matched with an expectant mom.  It was hard enough seeing all these healthy people repeatedly doing what I could only do once out of seven tries, and making it look easy.  Actually, it wasn't even that hard, because when I'm at work with a patient, I get in the RN zone and my personal life and experiences don't play into that at all.  Because I'm a professional, yo.  :)  And that about sums up why it hasn't been nearly the challenge I thought it would be.  I found a strength in myself I didn't know I had: the ability to put my own heartache and pain aside and take care of others.

The same holds true now that we're doing the Big Wait.  I see happy couples become new parents, and there is so much love and confidence in their situations that it genuinely warms my heart.  I was afraid I'd be struck by jealousy, but I'm not.  I was afraid I'd just want to take every single baby home, but I don't, because I know they are born into loving homes and are in the best possible place they could be.

Except when they're not.  When there is even the slightest doubt that everyone is not "on board" with the daunting task of parenthood, it is a little more difficult.  When you are leery of sending a brand-new defenseless human out of your grasp and into a world of utmost uncertainty, and you have that nagging gut feeling that won't leave you alone...it is a little more difficult.  When you hear in the news about the horrible things that some parents (or friends and family of parents) can do in a moment of anger to a brand-new defenseless human, and you realize that there is no way at all to predict who is going to snap...or when...it makes being an OB nurse a little more difficult, and being a mom-waiting-to-be-matched a LOT more difficult.

I consider myself extremely fortunate that, 99% of the time, it's not difficult.  :)

Alright, time for me to fly.  The dogs are whining to be fed, and I've got to take my "little" (6ft 3in) boy out to get some shorts that actually fit him and his too-tall self.

Thanks for reading, and for keeping us in your thoughts and prayers.  <3