Journey to Same-Sex Parenthood. Eric Rosswood

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ on us that day and they all seemed to be pointing towards Stephanie being the one.

      The following day, we had another long conversation with Stephanie over video chat and met the birthfather, Josh. We all seemed to get on well, cracking jokes and laughing and getting to know each other. We gave Stephanie the number for our adoption agency and e-mailed our adoption coordinator to tell her about the contact, hoping we were not in fact seeing stars and that this was for real.

      Eric and I spent much of Sunday discussing everything we had learned about Stephanie and Josh. We counted the weeks from thirteen to thirty-nine and tried not to think about the twenty-six weeks during which she could change her mind. We also tried to fathom how a non-hospital birth would work. Stephanie told us she had recently separated from her husband (not Josh) and was currently living in a shelter with her two children. Even though her living situation was complex, Stephanie did not want a hospital birth, which left us with the big overhanging question: “How do you have a home birth without a home?”

      Monday came around and we called the agency to fill them in. Stephanie called them later that week and started the intake process and pregnancy validation. Like I said, the agency doesn’t pull any punches when it comes to ensuring their families are not being scammed.

      Eric and I had agreed not to tell anyone about the call until we knew for certain that we were going to move forward—it was the hardest secret we’ve ever kept. Every call to our respective parents (and to everyone who knew of our family plans, for that matter) always included some reference or question about the adoption and whether there was any news. We told them not to ask, but couldn’t blame them for asking, either. We appreciated everyone’s questions and concerns, particularly our parents, who tried very hard to understand how the whole process was going to work. After all, they were as novice to this journey as we were, despite being grandparents already. We didn’t want to jinx anything, so we waited until the match meeting was confirmed before we told them about the call.

      Our first meeting was scheduled for February 13 in Stephanie’s hometown, which was a good 1,800 miles away from us. We flew in the day before and she met us at the airport at 10:45 P.M.—you may note that she’s a night owl. We had spoken a number of times since that first call and texted incessantly, but we were still nervous as all hell when we met in person for the first time. Before us was the impossible dream and it could have been shattered in a heartbeat if we had done something wrong. And there was no way of really knowing what “wrong” might have been. We made our way through checking into a hotel and having dinner without her leaving, so we hoped we were on the right track as we arranged to meet again in the morning.

      I never expected to feel pregnant as part of the adoption and had no idea what that would even feel like. I don’t mean cravings (even though I’ve now tried pickles with whipped cream and it’s totally gross), morning sickness, backaches or sleepless nights, although somehow Eric and I managed to gain a sympathetic fifteen pounds each and we have been working it off ever since. I mean the pre-natal journey itself. We had expected to match with someone much more advanced in her pregnancy—maybe six months along—and really not be that involved. But there we were, standing in an ultrasound technician’s laboratory at the hospital, watching the monitor and learning we were having a baby boy. I had never expected to have that experience.

      The match meeting took place at our hotel later that morning. It was facilitated by not one, but two adoption agencies: one from our home state of California and one from Stephanie’s home state of Illinois. Together, we all started to talk about a birth plan and post-adoption contact. There were a lot of forms to be filled out and the “transactional” feeling in those moments still makes me uncomfortable. The end result, though, was a successful match! And all too soon, it was time to fly back to California. We were elated and scared to death.

      We spoke with Stephanie about once a week after that and swapped endless text messages. We’ve printed many of the early ones so our son can read them for himself one day. It was difficult to know just how much contact we should have with Stephanie at that point. We didn’t want to overwhelm her by texting, calling or e-mailing too much, but on the other hand, we didn’t want her to feel like we weren’t very interested. Sometimes a day or two passed between messages and we silently hoped that the pause was just another day in the busy life of a single mom of two, rather than a change of heart. Then another message from her came, along with a deep sigh of relief.

      I had buried my head in the sand about the home birth for three months, hoping that Stephanie might change her mind or the agency would require a hospital so I wouldn’t have to think about it again. That ostrich syndrome was accompanied by a deep-seated fear that, if I couldn’t get my head around it and we couldn’t make it work, our journey would come to an untimely and unhappy ending. We had to find a way. But how do you arrange a home birth when you don’t have a home?

      To add to the complexity of the home birth situation, certified nurse midwives are required to have a signed collaborative agreement with an obstetrician in order to practice in Illinois. For some reason, that is extremely difficult to get and doesn’t happen often. The result is an underground group of midwives unofficially performing home births, which doesn’t really work for an adoption where everything needs to be official.

      Quite the dilemma! So two months before the due date, we got on a plane to figure everything out together. Stephanie had already solved the midwife challenge: Kathleen Devine, a fitting name for the person who was to deliver our gift from the heavens. Kathy lived about an hour from Stephanie in the neighboring state of Iowa and was thrilled to be a part of our journey. The only catch was that we now had to cross the state line to give birth—not that this was getting complicated or anything.

      We also still had to solve the “where” of the actual delivery. First we looked at some vacation home rentals, but the neighboring towns were not exactly big vacation destinations. There wasn’t much in the way of corporate housing either and we were starting to despair when a friend of Stephanie’s suggested the hotel we stayed at when we first visited, which had two-bedroom suites. Stephanie could stay in one bedroom while Eric and I stayed in the other. We toured the rooms that afternoon and booked before we left.

      After our rooms were secured, we met up with Julie, our Illinois adoption coordinator, to finalize the birth plan. We went over who was going to be in the room at the time of birth and who was going to hold the baby first. Eric was mostly worried about the noise and mess of the whole thing, since Stephanie was giving birth in a hotel room. But Stephanie reassured us that actual births are less messy than the ones portrayed in movies and on TV. She also said that Kathy would lay out puppy pads to absorb everything and make the clean-up easy. We laughed at the thought of a fully pregnant Stephanie crowning while squatting over puppy pads in a hotel bathroom. It sounded like a comedy series waiting to happen.

      “What about the placenta?” Eric asked. It seemed like an odd question, but seeing as the placenta couldn’t really be absorbed in a puppy pad, I guess it was a fair one to ask.

      “We’ll put it in the freezer,” Stephanie replied.

      “For what?” Eric quipped. “A snack later?”

      “Yes,” she said matter-of-factly. “We’ll dry it out in the oven and use a coffee grinder to grind it into pills.” Our eyes widened and our jaws dropped when we realized she wasn’t joking. “The nutrients are really good for your body. We can even bake it into a lasagna.”

      “You mean plasagna?” Eric joked. We all broke up laughing at the table.

      Everything was coming together. It was all very real and only two months away. Eric and I owned nothing baby-related at that point. We’d been told all we needed was a change of clothes and a car seat to leave the hospital, but as there was no hospital involved, we had to make up our own rules. We took our first baby-shopping СКАЧАТЬ