Thirteen

Today Nghia and I went to an all day adoption education course. We spent the day with 4 other couples learning all of the complicated ins and outs of the adoption process, myths surrounding adopted children and birth mothers, specific state laws we may have to contend with, and important things to keep in mind when adopting outside of one's race. It was an informative day and it feels so good to have it behind us. This is one more thing we can check off the list.  The next step is our homestudy meeting, which will be in about a month. We're slowly getting closer to our last step, which will take place in February. Then we will just be waiting for the phone to ring telling us we have been matched.

The other couples in the group were so nice and we all hit it off immediately. The social worker leading the meeting told us that these classes aren't usually so energetic and talkative. We all just really got along and had similar senses of humor, so we laughed a lot today. I am excited about this because we are going to go through the rest of this process with this group. We will go to all of the remaining meetings together and maybe we'll even keep in touch after our babies arrive.

From the beginning I was concerned about this meeting because I knew it would be the first time we'd meet the other adoptive families in our group, and I had a feeling that we'd be the only couple who hadn't struggled with infertility. I figured that Nghia and I could just be secretive about it in order to be sensitive and that would be the end of it. And that would have all been fine today had I not liked the others in the group so much.  Throughout the day there was a lot of talk about infertility, loss, and grief surrounding the inability to conceive or carry a pregnancy to term. This talk was presented to the entire group and it made me feel like such an imposter, like we were being deceitful to these people that both of us liked so much. One couple talked very openly about how hard the road has been for them, how much they went through before they decided to pursue adoption. Everyone in the room nodded sympathetically and I just felt so conflicted.

Throughout the day I was so aware of how conscious I was of not talking about Khai and Avi. Over and over I felt myself starting to tell a story that involved them. One guy said that since he took the day off work he was able to sleep in a bit before the meeting. I was about to joke about how impossible it is to sleep in when you have young kids, but I caught myself. Another time a woman asked when our next meeting is and after I told her, I wanted to make a joke about how I had to schedule babysitters so far in advance, but I caught myself again. You don't realize how much you talk about your kids until you are actively trying not to.

When we took a break for lunch Nghia and I walked out to our car and suddenly felt self-conscious about the two carseats in the back. I joked that we should cover them with a blanket so our new best friends in the group wouldn't see. We talked at length about how bad we felt, like we were lying, and how it wouldn't matter at all if we were never going to see these people again, if we didn't actually want to keep in touch with them. But we do and I'm worried that once they find out we have kids and we didn't say it right away, they won't like us anymore. Maybe they'll feel like we lied. Nghia said we should talk to the social worker, Grace, about it and get her advice.

So when we adjourned for the day Nghia and I casually stuck around until everyone else had left. We told Grace the whole story and that we feel deceitful and secretive in a way we hadn't anticipated because we didn't know we'd like these people so much. Grace was so understanding and nice, and she also apologized for not phrasing her language more appropriately. (For example, instead of saying, "You all went through a lot of loss before coming here," she could have said, "Some of you may have experienced loss...") Grace said that at our next meeting we're going to delve more deeply into our personal lives and our reasons for adopting, so the cat will be out of the bag then. She told us not to worry, that it won't seem weird that we didn't mention it today and it might even be better to save it for the next meeting. I trust her and her judgment, so I'm no longer worried.

Mostly, I'm glad this meeting is done! There's still a lot more to do, but I really feel like we're getting there. I had moments today where I was somewhat astonished that we're actually doing this. After all these years of thinking about it and talking about it, I sometimes find it hard to believe that the time is really here.