Catching Up

Apologies are first in order..... last blog posting, August 2012!

Sorry for being silent here.  Nothing was going on, and then so much happens once the ball gets rolling.  So I started a making a list of significant things that have happened since the last my last postings, considering we are already into the second month of 2013.  So here's what's happened:

• After sitting on our adoption paperwork for months, we finally submitted the paperwork for international adoption for the Republic of Marshall Islands (RMI) in September.    I have to say that this was a lot harder than I thought it would be.  My initial plan was to just sit down, suck it up and just push through all the paperwork quickly.  However, the hardest part was answering all the personal questions.  My hubby and I had quite a few fights about it.  I think he had the hardest time with it.  After trying so hard and long for a child, now the adoption process interrogates you on all the things that most biological parents never have to even think about. Its like putting salt in the wound. 
• After thinking about embryo adoption for months, we finally submitted our application to be an embryo adoption recipient with the National Embryo Donation Center (NEDC) out in Tennessee.  This was done by submitting an online application and paying the $300 registration fee.  One reason it took us so long to get that done was we had to write a letter to the donor couple as part of the online application.  I was not emotionally ready for to write the leter until now.  So we have officially applied to adopt embryos!
• We met with our social worker twice in November for our home study.  But in December we found out that we were being reassigned a new social worker because our original one went on leave because her sister went missing.  That was quite shocking.  I can't imagine what it would be like to have a loved one go missing.  They have yet to find her.  On January 24th, we met our new social worker, Ms. J during our home visit.  It was quite nerve wrecking.  I spent the few weeks before de-cluttering our house, cleaning and turning our "junk room" back to the future nursery.  You know how that happens, when over the years of hoping to fill your nursery with a baby turns into filling the nursery with junk.  Anyway, the home visit part went well and was very brief.  She just really wanted to see where we live and to make sure it was safe (no wires sticking out, have running water and heat, etc).  We really like our new social worker.  She is really easy to talk to.  This was when we dropped the "bomb" - that we wanted to pursue embryo adoption.  We struggled with when to tell our adoption agency that we are want to do embryo adoption.  We finally decided it is best to just be upfront and honest with them from the get go.  To adopt embryos from NEDC, we would still need to have a home study completed, so we would continue to have our adoption agency complete it.  Ms. J has never heard of adopting embryos, so she is in the process of trying to figure out how to complete our home study.  Most international programs will not let you continue if they know you are pregnant, or are actively trying to get pregnant.  Ms. J is in the process of checking with the program managers for both the domestic and international programs on how we should proceed with our home study.  It does not matter to NEDC what kind of home study it is, whether domestic or international.  We just need a completed home study.
• We received a packet from NEDC with more forms and some instructions.   We returned some notarized forms, 3 photos of the two of us, an updated letter to the donor couple, got some lab work done, and forwarded our medical records from our previous IVF clinic.  On Tuesday, I received an email that they received our packet, and will be getting back to us within a week to schedule our first appointment at NEDC.  It could be months before our first appointment, but I am hoping that we can get in soon!
• A while back, I wrote about my dear friends Jack & Ellie (not their real names).  Jack was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer two and a half years ago.  After going through surgery and multiple rounds of chemo, he went into hospice care last fall.  Sadly, he succumbed to cancer in December.  He was only 45 and left behind a wife and two little kids, ages 3 and 5.  Please pray for Ellie and the kids.
• I have not been working since December 2011.  It's been more than a year now.  Right before Christmas I had a job interview with a large multinational corporation.  It went really well, and everything looked really good.  I was very hopeful that I would be back in the job market.  Unfortunately, I was not offered the position.  I found out later that the manager wanted to hire me to replace a consultant, but due to office politics (contracts with the large consulting firm), he was not able to replace the consultant.  So, I am staying unemployed for now.  During my home study meetings, I found out that once a home study has been approved, we would need to update our home study if we have a 10% change in income.  10%!  That's not much at all.  So, that means we would need to pay a $500 fee to update our home study.  So for now, I will continue to live my "life of leisure".
• To celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary this year, Babe (the hubs) and I went on a Caribbean cruise for a week. Unfortunately, we got caught in the tail end of Hurricane Sandy, but we got to extend our cruise one extra day to wait out the storm, courtesy of Carnival Cruise.  The extra day would have been great, if we didn't spend it rocking and rolling in the high seas of Florida, going around in circles, waiting for the Hurricane to pass.

Here's a small treat, a couple of pictures from our cruise, taken as we were leaving the Bahamas.

Beautiful blue waters of the Bahamas

View from our balcony