Losing Control

Anytime a family welcomes a child into their home, whether that's through adoption, foster care, assisted reproduction, the "old fashioned way," or any other way that may exist, that family gives up a certain level of control over their lives. Midnight feedings, loss of sleep, planning a sitter before a night out, the list goes on and on. We knew all of this, we anticipated all of this going into this process. Quite frankly, we can't WAIT for all of this! We are so ready to open our home to our child and give up all the control that comes with having a new baby in the house. (The dogs are less sure about giving up control than Brian and I are, but we're working on it...)

I think to a certain extent, we had even come to terms with giving up control of various aspects of our "pregnancy." We will get matched when the right birth mother sees our profile book. We have no idea when that will be. We have no idea how far along into her pregnancy she will be when she firsts learns of us. We may get 8-9 months to cultivate a relationship with her, or we may meet her several hours after the baby is born, when we are signing papers in the hospital. We have little to no control over the timing of this whole process.

We also have very little control over her health and wellness during her pregnancy. This idea took us a little longer to come to terms with. Having a background in science and health, I know how I would take care of my body, and our child's, if I were pregnant. We would be able to control (as much as anyone can, anyway) our prenatal care, ideal birth plan, prenatal checks, etc. When we made the decision to adopt, one thing that we really had to think very carefully about was the level of care that our birth mother will receive during her pregnancy. We needed to be open to certain levels of smoking, drinking, and recreational drug use during her pregnancy. We needed to be open to caring for a child whose birth mother may have not seen a doctor until she showed up at the hospital in labor. One of the most grueling exercises during our home study paperwork was filling in a sort of check list of various medical conditions that our child could have. Which on the list were things we were willing to deal with, and which were "deal breakers" for us? It felt so slimy to do that, as in the back of my head, all I could think was that any parent has to give up control of their child's life, and if we were having this baby, we wouldn't be able to control for these various medical conditions, so why would we get to select this now?

I think we've come around to all of this loss of control. We've had many difficult discussions over the past few months about structuring work around a fall-in-your-lap placement, we've talked about dealing with recreational drug use during pregnancy, and we've discussed the potential for advanced medical care for our child. Just when we thought we had it all figured out, when we though we were controlling as much of the process as possible, life threw us another curveball.

I think many people know that I've accepted a new job and will be starting on Monday. I'm leaving Social Health Association after an amazing three years to work at Susan G. Komen of Central Indiana as their Mission Director. I'm excited for new challenges, but it's been an emotional few weeks transitioning out of an agency that I've grown to love so much.

In most families, when one person is looking at a new job, they may seek advice from their partner, their families, maybe a mentor or two. Throughout the application and interview process with Komen, I did all of those things. Brian and I had many serious conversations about what this change would mean for us as a couple and for our family moving forward. My parents weighed in with their thoughts, and I sought advice from a mentor of mine. When I received the offer from Komen, however, my first call wasn't to my husband, my parents, or my mentor. My first call was to our adoption social worker. I wanted to know how a change in career would impact our home study approval process. It was amazing to me how automatic this was for me to do; I didn't even think twice about clearing this decision with someone who I've only known for about 3 months and who, outside the realm of our adoption, has nothing to do with the decisions we make as a couple. 

But that's the thing, isn't it? Our entire lives right now are INSIDE the realm of the adoption. That means that not only did we give up control of the timing of our child's birth, the prenatal care and substance use of our child's biological mother, and the medical issues that our child could face (not to mention the possibility that we may never know what hereditary risk factors may exist for our child), we also gave up some level of control over our own decision making. It's all part of the process, but it's one of those things I never would have imagined before we began this journey.