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
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