Mine is in my sig but I'll rewrite it some.
Adoption was always pretty foreign to me. Where I come from, it's not done much, and kids often end up in foster care. We hear about adoption of course, but I've never met anyone who adopted/was adopted. All I knew was that it could take years, so I never even considered it.
Then I met dh, we got married and we started TTC 5 years ago. I knew I always wanted to be a mom, dh wasn't too young anymore, so we didn't wait. We started seeing a doctor 9 months later, and that's when we learned that we would probably not be able to get pregnant unless we tried IVF... and they gave us a paper showing the fees.
I spent the following week in tears, thinking there is no way we could afford it, and I'd probably never be a mom. I had always wanted kids, and I had always be convinced that I'd be a SAHM... During the fertility treatments we did, I looked up some bulletin boards about IVF... and came to the adoption forum. When I realized that it was actually possible to adopt in this country, it's like a huge weight lifted off my shoulders. Maybe I could be a mom after all... It wouldn't be cheap, but at least it would be a sure thing....
So, I started talking about it to dh, and after a few months and more fertility treatments that didn't work, and a meeting at a local adoption agency, he was on board.
We had a long wait. During the 'honeymoon' period, when we got on the list, 5 months after we turned in our application paperwork, I bought a lot of baby things, read all I could about parenting babies etc. I thought I would die if we were still waiting a year later but I was somehow convinced that it wouldn't happen. Sure, we had some things working against us, but I had hope.
By the time we actually got the call, I wasn't thinking much about adoption anymore. I had taken a break and we even had our profile removed from the book for a while because I wasn't sure I could take the wait anymore. I didn't read or post on adoption forums much anymore. I was trying to keep myself busy and not think about it at all.
Then one Monday afternoon, it was 3.30pm, I was at home, bored. It had been 2 years and 3 months since we submitted the application. As often, dh had forgotten his cellphone, and it was lying on the desk. It rang. I was sure it was a wrong number again, but it was our social worker. Her first words were 'How are you doing? I have good news... You have twins!'. Honestly the rest was a blur. I just balled. I wrote down all the information as well as I could (I wasn't even sure if they were born the day before or the same morning) and all I could think of while she was talking was 'I need to call dh!!!!'. Dh, if I remember correctly, screamed 'yeah!' on the phone, and had all his coworkers wondering if he had lost it.
We didn't sleep much that night. We were so excited but beyond nervous. We drove 2 hours to see them the next day... They were just one day old, and so tiny (she was 3lb 5oz and he was 4lb 12oz at birth)... The birthparents didn't want to see us, they only told the agency to pick the family who had been waiting the longest, so we came after they had left. They were both beautiful, but it was so overwhelming that it took us a few days just to have the time to look at them and see their differences...
We drove there most days for 2 weeks, while trying to sleep, get things ready, not feel too guilty for only being able to stay there 1 hour at a time so dh wouldn't lose too many vacation days before they were even with us, and trying not to stress out too much waiting for the birthparents to sign the TPR... They took two weeks to do it. I was a basketcase, and we were at the hotel by the time it happened. At some point I was so scared I didn't want to go back to the hospital to see them so I wouldn't attach too much (the birthparents were not returning the agency's calls), but I guess it was way too late by the second time we saw them.
We had a few paperwork problems down the road but finally finalized 7 months later...
It's still weird to this day. They're exactly what I wanted from the start, and I wanted it so much that even now I often have problems relating to twins moms. Yeah, some days it's really hard, but I just couldn't be happier with my two amazing children.
Here's a recent pictures of them... I'm one proud mama
