An introduction..

Hello internets!

Welcome to "ten miles behind me", yet another in the vast sea of 'adoption blogs'.

I've waffled on starting this blog (I already have two personal ones on Livejournal), but I liked the idea of a stand alone space to ruminate on all things adoption. I've got a lot to say. ;)

Beyond adoption, I'm also drawn to the idea of using this space to chronicle James' early days as a person and my early days as a parent. Plus, J and I are still planning on adding another child to our family at some point in the not-so-distant future (maybe twoish years from now), so having an established space to write about that journey also appeals to me.

So, who *am* I? I'm Erin, a 28 year old woman partnered to another 28 year old woman (J) for the past six years and an adoptive mom to James (who celebrated his first birthday last month). J and I are white, James is black/mixed (more on this later). We share our home with a housemate (James' 'uncle'/godfather Stephen), four cats with multiple personalities, and one slightly neurotic lab, Noe. TMB will also be a child of color, with at least some African ancestry.

Adoption was our first choice re: babymakin'. I've been drawn to adoption for a long time... in fact my mother remembers me talking about adopting a daughter from China when I was in elementary school and one of my high school papers was on open adoption. J was also supportive of adoption as a family building option, so we didn't really put much energy past the researching stage into concieving a child.

We quickly chose domestic infant adoption, primarily because we wanted to be 'out' for the entire adoption process and because we wanted to start out with a young child with few special needs as first-time parents. We were also very welcoming of an open adoption, and liked the idea of welcoming our child's birthfamily into our life as extended family members.

Living where we do, we were initally hesitant about our ability to connect a child of color to a community of same race peers and adults. We never doubted our ability to love and care for a child of another race, but definitely wanted ensure that we were up for the extra challenges inherent with being a multiracial family in a predominantly white state. So J and I did a ton of talking and researching. We talked to someone local who had adopted transracially. We talked to our friends and family. We looked up resources in our community. We looked up resources online specific to white families adopting children of color.

And then there was James. :)

During the researching phase, I had discoved the wonderful world of online adoption advertising. This was about a month after we had made the official decision to start TTA (trying to adopt), and we hadn't begun a homestudy or created a profile or connected with an agency/attorney... nada. Nothing. All along we had been told how long it would probably take a youngish two-mom adoptive couple to be chosen by an expectant mom considering adoption, so I guess I felt safe throwing up a little two paragraph blurb about J and I on one of these adoption classified sites so early in the process.

My posting was added by the moderator on December 18th, 2004. J and I were in NYC around this time -- sitting on Santa's lap at the Marc Jacob's store in Greenwich Village and answering "a baby" to his query of what we wanted for Christmas in front of a line full of other shoppers.

Two days after Christmas, Santa came through. I checked my email that evening to find a response from a woman (S.) in her (late) 7th month of pregnancy.. a woman disenchanted for a multitude of reasons with the hopeful adoptive parents she had matched with who had liked our 'ad' and wanted to talk further. She wrote she was due in mid February with a biracial boy, and that all signs pointed to him being a healthy baby.

(!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

Thus began a number of gutwrenchingly difficult conversations between J and I. Was there any way we could be ready to be parents in six weeks? Could we afford to fund an adoption *right now*? Were we sure we were able to effectively parent a child of a different race? Could we get a homestudy done in time? What if this woman chose to parent after the baby was born... would we be emotionally and financially able to move on? What the hell were we thinking????

Eventually we came to a desicion. I wrote back to S and told her we were going to have to pass on talking further. I told her we were devastated with our response, but that we were only in the beginning stages of the adoption process and that we didn't want to string her along as she very obviously needed committed adoptive parents ASAP because of her coming due date.

I wrote this to her on the 31st of December, '04 and I sobbed the entire time.

A week later, J and I met with Judith, a local adoption attorney and adoptive mom who is highly regarded for her twenty plus years of adoption experience. We went over the preliminaries -- how she charges, how adoption works in different states, what services she provides, etc -- and at the end of the meeting she started talking about birthmothers. I brought up S's emails and situation and explained that we had told her we would have to pass for logistical reasons. Judith listened intently while we went over S's specific situation, and once I finished talking, she started outlining exactly how we could make things work to match with S.

Beyond logistics, there was also the issue of J being a very linear person who had been pretty freaked at the idea of becoming an insta-parent with a mere six weeks notice. So imagine my surprise when J turned to me after Judith had finished talking and said "I think we should write her back."

(!!)

And so, we did. I got back to work just before lunch and took my lunch hour to write back to S. About 2 hours (and 4,000 clicks to refresh my email) later I recieve the best news possible - S. had not matched with another hopeful adoptive person/couple yet and she wanted to talk to us on the phone the next morning! I almost passed out.

I'll make it short for now -- we did end up matching that next morning (January 8th, 05') following an easier than expected phone call. S. flew to our state (her strong preference) the following week for the remainder of her pregnancy and we all grew very close. James was born at 4:35am on Saturday February 12th, 2005 at our local hospital, about four weeks after his birthmom chose to match with us. :) His entrance into the world was shockingly quick -- S. had only about an hour's worth of contractions (which started at 25 seconds apart!) before James was born.

S. signed the TPR in front of a judge ten days later and flew home the same day. We had to advertise a notice of adoption in the community where James' birthfather's last known address was, and by late April (following no response) his rights were terminated as well.

We finalized James' adoption on my birthday, July 1st 05'. :) As per usual, I sobbed through the entire court procedure.


* * *

So, while this post is quite long, that's the incredibly abbrieviated version of our adoption story. The timeframe from our official decision to start paperchasing to adopt a child to James' birth spanned about two and a half months.

And life with James? It's blissful, even on the hardest parenting days. And trust me, you're going to hear all about it here.

So welcome!