Exhale.

We got the news today. There was no match for Lianne's biological father on the Texas registry. If you feel a warm breeze blowing by you, that's me, finally exhaling. Now we just await our court date (likely in August) to finalize the adoption and it will all become official -- we will be parents and Lia will be our daughter, forever and ever, amen.

The last month has been hard with this wait. While I have doted on Lia in every possible way -- giving her endless love and affection, reading her books, singing to her and dancing with her, holding her tight -- I'd be lying if I said I haven't had a curtain (albeit sheer) up while we awaited this news. After everything we've been through, it's impossible not to feel like we are cursed and that this path to parenthood might also be thwarted. So I know that I've operated on more reserve than I would ever want to, just to keep my heart from breaking if her biological father decided he wanted to be her parent.

And while I, of course, didn't want that to happen, I felt selfish even thinking it. Because while Lia's birth dad staying out of the picture is easier for us, it isn't necessarily easier for her. She loses a link to her biological story, and her origin story, and her family history. Sure, I know that we'll provide her with as wonderful a life as we can -- full of as many rich opportunities as we can make possible and as much love as two people (plus an enormous extended family of relatives and friends) could ever give to a person. But how do I know that her biological father couldn't have given her all that and more?

So while I'm relieved beyond words that we have gotten past this "hurdle," I simultaneously grieve for what my daughter won't have in knowing her birth father. And I pledge to always do my best to support her in finding out what she can about both of her first parents. A day doesn't go by that I am not grateful to them for making this profound decision for Lia and giving us the opportunity to be a mom and a dad.

I love you forever, Lia.

My little angel

I know I've long been absent from this blog. I haven't recently felt like I had anything to add to Julie's excellent posts and, true to form, I think she has done a great job telling the story of how Lianne came into out lives. But now I feel like writing a bit about how it feels to become a father. More than anything else I write this so Lianne can read this and know how much she means to me already.

In just three short weeks this little girl has brought me (and us) such joy and happiness. It is a little amazing to me that this little person could have such an effect - I find it hard to not hold her constantly even, or maybe especially, when she is sleeping (she looks like a little angel). But my absolute favorite times so far have been cradling her in the (very) early morning. It is during this time, post-feeding, when she is calm and will just look at me and smile. Yes, I know it is not really a smile but I'm gonna go ahead and take it as such because that is my prerogative as a father. I think I especially treasure these moments because I know that very soon she'll be constantly moving.

Even knowing what to expect, I wasn't fully prepared for any of being a parent. The joy, the exhaustion, the moments of terror (is she breathing?)... As someone who is pretty dependent upon getting 7-8 hours of sleep a night, I think I have adjusted pretty well to getting a lot less than that though it helps that I can sleep through just about anything (earthquake proof up to a 5.0). I also wasn't prepared for the emotional ups and downs - I mean as worried as her perceived lack of breathing or even her poop (sorry Lianne) can make me, I can't even begin to imagine how I'll feel the first time she drives off in a car alone or goes on a date. I think I need to start really developing good relationships with the folks in charge of the Reaper program (surveillance and strike capability - what more could you ask for?). And of course I am so looking forward to all the milestones - first word, first steps, etc. as well as being able to share things with her that I love to do like reading, music (already getting her listening to the greatest radio station in the country - KFOG), working in the garden (yeah I know this one is a long shot) and photography. So much to look forward to and more to come...

Lianne's Story

Because inquiring minds want to know, and because there just isn't the space in a facebook post or email, Bill and I want to share more about Lianne and how she came to us. It is divine, really, in every sense of that word.

I don't have to go all the way back -- you've likely read this blog and know where we've been. So I'll set the stage from the end of May. It was Memorial Day weekend. I was working on feeling whole and happy, trying to practice better self-care and mindfulness after all that we've been through. Bill and I spent a day out at Antietam on a hot Sunday, spending much-needed time together and getting out of the fray of the city.

Still happy with our local agency, we were tiring of the long wait for a baby. We decided to get through June before exploring working with other agencies that might have shorter wait times. My 20th high school reunion was coming up (and still is -- June 25) and the July 4 weekend, along with numerous work-related deadlines and events. We also knew that our agency was working with a few potential birth mothers and we could be a match. So we decided to get through another month and see where things were before making a change.

The long weekend came to an end. I returned to work on Tuesday, May 31 ready to tackle things for the big work event on June 8. It was a busy, productive day and I headed out at the end of it for a session with my fabulous therapist, Ginny. We had a good session and I went home to wait for Bill to come home from his bocce league game. I picked up Bill around 10:00 PM, came home, logged onto email. And saw the following forwarded note from a friend of mine:

Adoption Covenant needs a HOMESTUDY READY family immediately for placement of a female child born May 30, 2011, 6 lbs 3 oz, Apgar 9/9, Hispanic, reportedly eating and pooping and healthy as can be. email xxx@xxx immediately.

Let's step back a minute. Who was this friend?! Well, Carrie and I knew each other in high school. We were friendly and, as I recall, both on the track team. We lost touch after high school, but reconnected thanks to the miracle that is facebook. She had recently adopted her first child (through the agency who sent the note above) and we had bonded over our struggles and joys on the road to be adoptive parents. I was grateful to be connected with her before she shared this information -- it meant so much to have her support and share in her joy with her son. And now, she has changed our lives forever!

So back to the story. Bill was outside, watering the veggies in his nice garden. Should I consult him before sending an email to the agency? Naaah. I'll just send a note. So I did. I shared that we were homestudy-approved, lived in DC, friends of Carrie and that we could be there in another day. I let Bill know that I sent the note. And I had some exchanges back/forth with the head of the agency that night. How soon could we get there? They wanted us there asap. While I could have figured out getting us there the very next day, that felt insane. There was work to wrap up, documents to collect, packing to do. So Bill and I agreed that we could be there on Thursday. I sent that response and went to bed, unable to sleep.

On Wednesday, I got up and contacted our local agency, asking them to send our completed homestudy documents to the agency in Texas, which they did immediately. Then, I went about my day, albeit distracted. I had a few morning meetings and had an off-site afternoon meeting. I arrived at that meeting and shared that I was awaiting some important news. Just as we got the meeting underway, the phone rang. It was the Texas agency's director, Merinda. She shared more about the situation, and asked how quickly we could get there. I said we could travel the next day. She said that the hospital had agreed to care for the baby one more night and that we were the couple chosen to parent this baby. I about fell over. I called Bill, who had more questions. He called Merinda so he could get a sense of her and the agency. And he called me back. It was an easy decision -- this baby had come into our lives for a reason. We had to go.

So we spent the afternoon and evening wrapping things up, buying plane tickets, booking our hotel, renting a car, and packing things for us and for baby. Our flight was scheduled for 7:00 AM the next morning.

Around 6:00 PM, we learned that baby's birth mom, in an act of love so profound it overwhelms me, terminated her parental rights. She is baby's first mom forever -- who cared for her and herself so she would be healthy and know love from the start and I am grateful for the rest of my life to her for her selfless love of this baby.

We were up at 4:00 AM on Thursday, showered and got ourselves out the door, car seat in hand, unsure of what awaited us in Lubbock, Texas. A city that I had heard of (go Texas Tech!) but had to find on a map to know exactly where it was. We spent the flight sleeping, daydreaming, and coming up with a list of names for this baby. We'd always had a boys name, but never had one for a girl. Amazingly, we both agreed on our top two first names and a set of possible middle names.

We arrived in Lubbock around 1:00 central time, picked up our car, and headed to the agency. We were prepared to get there and then go with the women from the agency to the hospital. But when we called the agency, they had already picked up the baby. We were just a short drive from uniting with her!

We arrived at the agency about 10 minutes later, walked in the door to almost the entire staff, just waiting for us. Merinda handed the baby to me. It was surreal. She was - and is - the most gorgeous baby I have ever laid eyes on.

We spent several hours at the agency, finding kindred spirits of these amazing women at Adoption Covenant in Lubbock. After so much research and challenge in finding an agency that we felt comfortable with, here was this incredible agency that came to us out of the clear blue sky. We felt right away that we shared a common bond with these women and incredibly grateful for their caring, compassion and kindness. They are now an extended family for us and for baby.

After a few hours, we signed paperwork, packed up the baby and headed to the hotel. The days at the hotel are already a blur; there were many sleepless nights (is she still breathing?! is that poop the right color?!) and just odd days. I can honestly say that I don't know how single parents do this; having two of us there to trade off time with baby so the other could nap, pick up lunch, run to Target, etc. was essential.

We spent a good two days figuring out her name. But, in the end, she chose it herself. She seemed so much a little Lianne Elizabeth. It suits her so well. We call her Lianne or Lia. Her name has roots in our families -- my maternal grandmother and my aunt are both named Leatha (or Lea for short), we have close friends (including my oldest friend who was also adopted) named Lea or Leah, my middle name is Anne and Bill's sister and Nana have the middle name Ann. Elizabeth is my mom's and sister's middle name, and is the middle name given to her by her birth mama. So Lianne Elizabeth. As soon as we decided, it just felt right and has ever since. And we have to give credit to Auntie Caroline, who suggested the name.

On Wednesday, June 8, after spending a long lunch with the whole Adoption Covenant team and enjoying time together, we got word that both Texas and DC had approved our paperwork to take Lianne out of state. We were allowed to bring her home! We got her in for a doctor's visit on Thursday, June 9, shipped a bunch of stuff back, and got ourselves packed up. She was an angel on the flight back -- not a peep, she slept through both flights. We got to our doorstep around 5:00 PM.

So now, here we are. A family of three. Is the adoption final? Not yet. There is one date we need to get through from here; Lianne's birth father (who is unknown to us) has 31 days from her birth to claim paternity. While this happens only rarely, we may not exhale until we have word that he has not done so. While I believe in my heart that he (and all birth fathers) are entitled to this right, I don't want her to have any more disruption in her life. I want to be her forever mama, and for Bill to be her forever daddy. I feel selfish saying it, but we've been through enough. And we love her with every grain of our being. And she is meant to be in our family.

So as if this post isn't long enough, it isn't complete if I don't tell you about the dream. About three and a half years ago, I had the most vivid, powerful dream of my life. It was October, and about eight months after I'd had a miscarriage. In the dream, I had had a baby and was in the hospital, but I couldn't get to the baby. I was in a hospital gown, and spent what felt like hours walking down long corridors, through the basement, past check-in desks. After what seemed an eternity, I finally got to my room and the baby. There were (as is so often the case in dreams) an odd assortment of friends and colleagues in the room. And there was the baby -- a girl with dark hair in a bassinet or car seat. She had a beautiful and sweet face. And it was only as I got closer that I saw that her little hands and feet were malformed. What was wrong with the baby? I began to cry in the dream and asked the nurse -- she'll get better, won't she? But the nurse said "no," that she was born this way and would not get better. Her hands and feet would never be normal. And I cried and cried in my dream and woke up at 3:00 AM bawling. Through my tears, though, I had a very profound feeling that this baby was sending me a message. "I'm coming, but I'm not ready," she was saying. I got up and wrote down every detail of the dream and it, and this baby's message, have stayed with me all this time.

When we had Stephen in January, I thought, "oh, well. I guess that was just a dream." And when things fell apart with that adoption, I thought that maybe it was because that baby wasn't the one from the dream. Our dark-haired girl hadn't come yet.

So imagine my response when on Wednesday, June 1, the agency sent me our first picture of Lianne (the picture you see above). She is sitting in a car seat (the hospital was doing her "car seat" test to make sure she can breathe okay sitting up) and has her perfectly-formed little hand under her chin, as if to say, "look, mommy! I am ready!"

Do I believe in fate? More now than ever. Stephen's role in our lives feels crystal clear -- had we not had him, and every possible thing we could ever need for a baby, we might not have been in a position to travel on a moment's notice for Lianne. This dream feels like prophecy. Dreams really do come true.

The Bag.

No, not the purse. I never did get one. My fabulous sister-in-law got me a really fun satin leopard print bag which I love. So I can skip the splurge. For now. (Though this Tory Burch has me drooling!)

OK, back to topic.

I'm going to be honest here. I've been really struggling lately. The last few months have been really intense at work and life has been super busy. Not enough time for me. And I feel like my life is flying before my eyes and I'm not slowing down to enjoy it. But in processing how I'm feeling, I realized that much of my current angst comes from The Bag.

Envision that all those years back, when we started down the path of trying to start our family, I carried around The Bag. Every roadblock, hurdle, loss and frustration along the way has wound up in The Bag. All those fertility shots? Yeah, they're in The Bag. The doctors? Yup, they're in there -- and they aren't small. Stephen and his birth mom? You better believe it. The Bag keeps getting bigger and the load just gets heavier. Yeah, I mourned not having kids biologically and am completely committed to adoption. But that doesn't mean that all of what we've been through is forgotten.

What I recently realized is making The Bag extra heavy, though, is that at every turn, I add another smiley face button onto the outside of The Bag. So with our first miscarriage came the "Hey, this happens to lots of people! Let's try again!" smiley face button. And with the fertility treatments came the "Check out our home science experiment! I'm so lucky that my husband is good at administering shots!" smiley face button. And with the loss of Stephen from our lives came the "He wasn't meant to be ours and our baby is still coming!" smiley face button. These buttons are becoming as heavy as The Bag itself.

It's not that I should buck my nature; I'm always inclined toward the positive. And when it comes to the adoption process, on most days, hope is all I have, so I need to muster up some sunshine to get through. But I also have to allow myself to feel the full range of emotions related to this journey so far. It's been exhausting, sad, frustrating, heartbreaking. And I think I do myself a disservice by always pinning on another smiley face instead of feeling what I need to feel. I wonder if I'd really let myself grieve along the way if The Bag might be a bit lighter now.

So I'm going to try and honor my feelings and unload some of The Bag's contents. I probably won't stop adding smiley face buttons, but hopefully I can balance them out with really processing some of the emotional weight of the last several years.

I'm going to end this post on a happy note. I learned today that friends may be a bit closer to being parents on their adoption journey and may have a little one within the next six months. You know who you are -- know that we love you and can't wait for you to be a family. It's a beautiful thing!

Define "A Few"...

Is "a few" two? three? 'Cause it's been two months since this post and my phone is awfully quiet.

The (Maternal) Grandparents

After several months of work that had me at an all-new level of exhaustion, I took a long weekend up in Massachusetts (aka "The 413" or "No Ad") with my parents. As always, it was great to be with them and to spend time in the idyllic Berkshires, particularly now that it is finally all thawed out.

I'm lucky to live close enough to my parents that I get to see them with some regularity. It's about eight hours by car, or less than 90 minutes by plane. And we are conveniently located mid-way between them and my sister, so we get to see more of my parents and my sister than they see of one another. Despite the fact that I see them fairly often, I've been struck on the last few visits by the fact that, well, they are getting older.

My parents had me fashionably late for the era -- my mom was 33 and my dad 35 when they had me, putting them a good 8-10 years older than most of my friends' parents. And while we had planned to have bambinos long ago, I'm now 38 and Bill is 41. So we're even more "fashionable" than my folks were when they had me.

This year, my mom turns 71 and my dad turns 73. I'm grateful that they are in reasonably good health. They walk, they travel, they are active in the community. They are funny and fun to be around and it has been a joy to see them enjoy retirement. But they're definitely getting older. On this last visit, I was struck by how my dad got short of breath on walks. He has been such an avid walker for the last 20+ years that he's known around town for walking. But even a small hill had him puffing. He didn't seem overly winded and didn't stop talking, but it was hard not to notice that change from other walks we've taken in the past. My mom, on the other hand, had a hard time hearing. Again, nothing serious, but if she was in the next room and turned away, I could be talking in full voice and she might not hear me.

While these small issues are just parts of getting older, and no cause for alarm, it reminds me of their mortality. And reminds me that whenever baby arrives, they won't have the same kind of spryness that younger grandparents have. They will love and dote and care about our little person, and they may be able to keep up until he or she is two, but then they'll be just too fast. I teased my mom that I'd have to train our child: "Speak up for grandma, honey!"

My sister and I often say that we got dealt the best parents out there. We are incredibly lucky to have been raised by parents who love us unconditionally, taught us to feel and experience life, and modeled how to give back to others. I know that I'm lucky to have them to lean on, and I hope I can do as well in raising my own children as they did in raising us.

What's the point of this post? I'm not sure. I guess I am sad that that while we feel deprived of parenthood, my own parents are in their own holding pattern, awaiting the arrival of their first grandchild. When Stephen arrived, it was hard to contain my parents' joy. And when he left our lives, the hole was there for all of us. I want to bring that joy back, and I want my parents to have as much time in their lives as possible to experience grandparenthood. Because I know how much I will enjoy seeing them in that role. And because I look forward to a time when we can revel together in what it means to be parents and grandparents. And because they're going to be amazing.

Mother's Day

How is he? How is she? Is her heart soaring from her first Mother's Day as a mom? Does she celebrate Mother's Day at all, or is that not something that the Thai community here does? Does she ever think about how close she came to deciding not to be a mother to him? Will he ever know? Does she look at him every day and feel grateful that she made this decision? Is she happy? Is he well cared for? Is it more comforting for him to smell the smells of Thai cooking and hear Thai spoken all around him, as he did in her womb? Is he spoiled? Is he healthy? Will he ever know that some white woman about 10 miles away thinks about him and loves him all the time? That she has stopped mourning his loss on the day to day, but that on THIS day, it's impossible not to have an ache in her heart so painful that she can't bring herself to even think of it.

She can only keep on living if she believes that there will be another and this other will be the one that was meant to be. Because if she loses all hope, what will be left of her?