This was not our baby.

UPDATE: I just spoke with the social worker, and this is not going to be our baby. It turns out they were off an entire month on her due date, and that confirms that her ex-boyfriend is the father of the baby. So she is going to keep the baby since s/he has a full biological sibling as well.

I'm okay. Honestly, we were preparing ourselves for this, and hadn't gotten too emotionally attached to the particular situation since we had ample warning that this could happen. I'm happy for her though, that she's going to be able to keep her baby.

Limbo land

I was contacted last week by T's assistant to see if we wanted to be presented for a situation. The PBM is 19 and from Honduras, and she is in the US illegally trying to raise money to send home to her daughter. Anyhow, she found herself pregnant again and wanted to place the baby for adoption. This situation is through an agency in NJ that T works a lot with. Initially we were the only couple in the running, and the case worker really liked us. She called us last Friday for a phone interview and we learned there was another couple in the running. That got us rather disheartened and we decided it probably wouldn't work out. She met with the PBM today and was going to make a selection. So all day today I have been going out of my mind waiting for the phone to ring.

The case worker (CW) called me this afternoon, and told us that we have been chosen to be the parents - IF the PBM decides to place. This girl has been very detached from her pregnancy and firm on her adoption plan, but now that her due date is imminent (she is due on Sunday) and she is feeling all hormonal, she is fantasizing about parenting. She is going to ask her ex-boyfriend (who is not the father of this child, but is the father of her daughter) if he is willing to help her. The CW is not sure which way this will turn at the moment, so we are taking it on a day by day basis. The PBM will be talking to the ex today or tomorrow and we will be updated as soon as there is more information.

So here we are in limbo land, not yet off the ride, waiting to see what unfolds in the next week or so.

A true mensch

I have a friend at synagogue, a man who taught me how to read the Torah and has been my mentor as a Torah reader for the last several years. He and his wife have grown children my age, and four grandchildren, and have been very supportive to David and I during our infertility and adoption. After services on Friday, he pulled me aside and said "I imagine that this adoption business must be terribly expensive," and I said yes it was. He asked me how much, and I gave him a ballpark estimate. He said he would like to loan me money to help pay for the adoption, a no-interest, indefinite time period loan of up to $10K. I started crying, which is what I usually do when people are kind to me. That is more than either of our families has offered to us (not that I expected them to offer, but still).

So thank you, D, for being a true mensch and a very kind-hearted person. I love that you offered.

The world works in mysterious ways

I've had a pretty shitty week this week (see last post). And to top things off, my beloved Linus was missing for about 15 hours yesterday. I let him out in the morning, and normally he goes and pees and comes right back in. Yesterday he felt like wandering. I saw him out front of the house as I was pulling out of the driveway and briefly thought of stopping to let him in, but figured David would let him in when he got up. When David got to work, he told me that he hadn't seen Linus, and when I got home, David and the girls were out looking for him. I started to worry a bit at this point, he is almost 16 and arthritic and his vision is starting to deteriorate.

By the time it got dark and we'd had dinner, I was starting to get pretty hysterical, so we got leashes on the girls and went to go look for him. As we were walking out, my cell phone rang and it was T calling. I spoke with her as we were walking. She has a woman with a 10-week old little boy in Texas, half Hispanic and half Caucasian, and she has decided to place him for adoption. T wasn't sure how "newborn" I wanted in a baby so called us, and we told her to send our profile. So it's going out today for delivery tomorrow. I feel excited about this one, as I do every time our profile goes out, wondering if this is our baby. We are the only family that T is submitting (I'm not sure if there are others from other sources).

We continued on our walk, and met the neighbors who live behind us. We were thinking Linus might have gotten in someone's yard and couldn't get out. We got back to our house, and David went to check out front again and I went out back, and the little bastard was sitting there waiting for us. He seemed rather put out, and I wonder if he spent the day trapped in a garage or yard somewhere. But thankfully my kitty is home.

Oh, and my best friend out of that gang of women did email me and reassure me that she likes me better than them anyhow and that we are most definitely still friends.

And T had just a little news on the twins. The PBM has not called her back, and T heard that she requested additional profiles, so we are probably not the family.

Something very painful has happened to me

I came in to work on Monday to find an email from one of my friends, letting me know that another of our friends lurks on my adoption buddy group. She recently became pregnant, and I am thrilled for her, but I expressed on this adoption group that I was feeling a twinge of jealousy. During the days leading up to her ultrasound, there was a lot of talk of ultrasounds and heartbeats, and it brought up some bad memories for me. So I also said in my adoption group that "I wish she'd just shut up about it." I never expected that she, who is uninterested in adoption, would be lurking my buddy group.

Well, everyone in my buddy group apparently thinks I am the absolute worst person in the world. We all posted on a blog together, and I got banned from the blog on Monday. When I got to work on Tuesday, I found the blog had been moved elsewhere. Not one person has written me or acknowledged what happened to me. I am still feeling shell-shocked over it. You have to know that I have spent over a year posting daily with this group of women, and I thought we were friends. I can't believe grown women could act so childish, and I can't believe that they all hate me enough to just kick me out without warning. I feel as though I have been tried, convicted, and executed, all without even knowing why I was on trial. IF causes jealousy, even if it is a close friend. The degree of jealousy is much less than for, say, some fertile myrtle, but it's still there.

There is only one girl that I really truly care about remaining friends with, and I did email her after I first found out I'd been spied on, and she said "you still have me," which helps a lot. But I haven't heard from her since the blog moved, I think she's out of town, but it still sucksass.

It seems wrong to me to be lurking in my adoption group, and read something that I wrote in what I thought was a safe place, and then to have that used against me. Surely it has to be something more than just that? And why on earth was she even reading my adoption thread in the first place? My paranoid self says that she was looking for an excuse to cut me off, but it's hard to believe that she would be so malicious. But after seeing the swift reaction to what happened, maybe she is just that malicious.

I have a very heavy heart over this.