Jenny, Ayden's Birthmother

          So sitting in Red Robin talking to Jenny was a never to be forgotten time. The restaurant is mildly dark with this overhead lighting that casts a strange glow over everything. And the acoustics in that place are just awful. So we are battling a bit with just being heard and the whole thing was just a little over-the-top stressful.
          Jenny and Paul are having this conversation which, every once in a while he turns to us and condenses for us. We try to ask some questions, such as how was your flight and what is life like in the Marshall islands. Rather stilted responses. Then Jared asks Jenny to teach us some Marshallese, and hilarity results. She tried to teach us the word for fish, but we could not say it right and apparently we keep saying crazy instead. Jenny thinks we are hilarious and the ice is broken a bit. We talked for a bit more and then it was time to go.
          My desire to learn more about the Marshall Islands then spurred a great search of the internet for more information where I stumbled upon several articles talking about the questionable legality of bringing Marshallese women to the US for the purpose of placing their unborn children for adoption. Uh-oh. I was a bit freaked out by this point and when i shared my concerns with Jared, he was all, we better talk to Paul.
          Later that week we met Jenny and Paul for a doctors appointment to have her first ultra-sound, and what should have been an exciting special moment was a bit overshadowed with worry and doubt. Paul, however, glib smooth talker that he is! was able to reassure us and smooth over all of our doubts for the moment. So continued several weeks of meeting Jenny for lunches and dinners and she and I also went shopping together a few times and we had plans to go to the movies as well. Jenny was not due for another month, so we were taking it slow getting ready for the baby...very slow. I had this block like if i actually bought something for the baby (we didn't know Ayden was a he at this point) Jenny would change her mind.
          Monday September 26 around noon, however, we got a call from Paul that Ayden had been born....Apparently Jenny, who was intimidated by hospitals, decided that she would rather have Ayden at home. The family she was staying with went to check on her that morning, and when they saw she was in labor, quickly rushed her to the car. Ayden was almost born in the car, but instead was born in the hospital entrance. He was not breathing, and as it was a small hospital, they life-flighted him to a bigger hospital nearby. He was whisked away from Jenny so quickly she did not even have a chance to see him.

           We immediately rushed to the hospital to see Ayden, but as we were not his legal guardians yet and Jenny was not there we were unable to see him for three days while we waited for Jenny to sign the paperwork. So we went to visit Jenny who was very tired and not much up for visitors. Three agonizing days later, Jenny signed the adoption paperwork and we were finally able to meet Ayden!  He was only 3lb, 10oz. He had wires running all over him and he was in an incubator to keep him warm. We spent as much time there with him as we could, but we also had to get ready for him to come home!  Jenny accompanied us for these fun baby shopping expeditions, and that is where we really got to know her. We had so much fun together.

          We also took Jenny to the Temple because she had promised her daughter that she would go there and take pictures for her. We laughed and "talked" working through the language barrier and just had fun together. I am really grateful for those special days together getting to know each other. Especially because now I know just how like Jenny Ayden is.  I see so much of her in him. He is like a mini male version of Jenny.
        Jenny did not want to see Ayden in the hospital, so the first time she met him was actually in our home after the hospital finally released him three weeks later. Talk about a crazy emotional evening. Especially because Jenny had decided to return home to the Marshall Islands and was leaving the next day. It was a heart-wrenching evening filled with laughter and tears. When Jenny left, i just sat in a chair and held Ayden and cried. What else was there to do?  My wish is that someday we can see Jenny again and she can see the incredible individual Ayden is growing up to be.

Years have passed

Ok, so i had very good intentions when i started this blog, but sometimes life just gets in the way. I just read through what i had written, and it made me think of a conversation i had with some friends yesterday. They were talking about their many miscarriages and how hard it was. At the time i just murmured sympathetically thinking i had nothing to offer the conversation. Today, however, i was thinking about the feelings i had learning that i would most likely never get to experience pregnancy. The feeling is rather like every child i never will have died at that moment. Is it strange to envy someone who at least got to experience that even if it ended in tragedy?  It is hard not to think of how strange i am for these feelings, but i also don't like to dismiss them altogether.

I find i have a strange fascination for books that have pregnant heroines in them. As if reading about it, even vicariously, will somehow bring it closer to me. And i am now the mother of three wonderful children!!

It is strange how it all happened. Not the way i ever thought it would or could. So we had signed up for adoption through lds family services, attended all of the seminars and anything that was offered to help us in our quest. There was a lot of advice for finding your own birth mother, because apparently that is the hard part as lds doesn't have a lot of b-moms willing to place with random people!  So thus armed with this information, jared and i tentatively told people we knew we were trying to adopt and then   just basically sat on our hands for a long time. I am just not that person who runs around accosting strangers and placing ads at local doctors...an honest suggestion given to us!!  It all seemed rather hopeless.

While thus waiting, however, a miracle was happening with jareds much more gregarious brother. He knew someone who had recently adopted a child and asked him how they did it. The friend was more than happy to share their story, and soon we were given the contact information of a lawyer who lived quite close to us who helped find birthmothers. Jared and i, after having met the lawyer and finding out a little of what he did, felt really good about working with him. He had served an lds mission to the marshall islands and knew quite a lot of people there. He worked with another lady who talked with women over there who were interested in placing their children up for adoption with nice  american families.

Now, you have to understand our ignorance here to get the rest of the story. Our first thoughts were "where in the world is the marshall islands?"  So, of course, being me, the first thing i did was rush to the library to get every book about the marshall islands i could, and trying to find out what i could on the internet. And, to be quite honest, i didn't find much!  So, going in pretty blind, we steamed forward full speed ahead.

A few days after contacting the lawyer, i was teaching at the library, when i got a call. There were 2 b-moms who liked us, and which one did we want to choose. Ok, WHAT?  We had been waiting for over a year without a peep from lds, and then 2 choose us in as many days?!!! It was crazy fast. We said, um i guess the first lady, and bam! Jenny was on her way from the marshalls to arizona.

Now, to anyone who has ever had a meeting with a person who you hope will be giving you their unborn child....um, yea, pretty much the most amazingly stressful hyped up moment ever. Except maybe the feelings of the b-mom meeting the total strangers she is thinking of placing her child with. Imagine all of these incredible emotions....think about it.....ok, now add a language barrier.   Yea, so we met Jenny for the fist time outside a restaurant we were planning on taking her to with the help of the lawyer, aka the translator. We had a brief conversation, enough to learn that she hated the food they served there, and was dying for a hamburger. And that is how we ended up across the street at red robin. Our, now, favorite burger place!

To be continued.....

In the Beginning...

When we first found out we could not have biological children, there was of course all of the usual emotions attendant upon a wish long hoped for and utterly denied.  We went through a lot of pain and anguish there in the beginning.  And then there is the hope that the doctors could be wrong....and that is when people start telling you of all of these miracles that have happened to some mystical "other people"  who were able to get pregnant despite all of the odds.

So many well intentioned people told us these stories about couples who were just like us and then had children anyway!  Every month became harder and harder as the hoped for miracle was looked for and hoped for.  And it never happened.  Looking back on it, I think it would have been far easier just to know that it was never going to happen, then I could have stopped being depressed every month and I could have moved forward with the healing a lot sooner. 

It is amazing to me how incredibly insensitive people can be about infertility.  I remember going out with one of my, then, pregnant friends and she was telling me that she understood exactly how I felt because they had tried for almost 3 whole months to get pregnant!  Wow!  That long!  I tried not to let comments like this bother me. 

And of course just at the time that we found out about our inability to have biological children everyone around us was pregnant.  And when I say everyone, you have to understand that I belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormon), and we were in a young ward where about 1/3 of the women in the ward were either pregnant or had just had a baby.  Most of my friends were pregnant.  My sister was pregnant.  3 of my sister-in-laws were pregnant.  And our calling right then was in the nursery.  Well, this last one might have actually helped.  There were about 15 children under the age of 3 in there, and some of them were holy terrors! 

At the time life seemed unutterably unfair.  Looking back on it, knowing what I know now about how our family would be created, I wish that I just would have enjoyed those 5 years my husband and I had to enjoy each other and our carefree lifestyle.  I definitely would have spent more time enjoying my husband and maybe forced him to take me on more trips!  Well, would have, should have, could have...  I was too lost in sorrow to enjoy it at the time. 

We actually thought of adoption right off the bat.  I think it was on the way home from the doctors office that we first discussed it.  I believe we touched briefly on sperm donor, but this was quickly brushed off of the table.  It somehow didn't feel *right* to us. 

We were pretty new to adoption.  As a reader of Anne of Green Gables, I think my first thoughts about adoption were of orphanages where you just go and pick up a kid.  Was I that naive?  lol!  It's funny to think about now.  =) 

After going to the library and reading pretty nearly every book there on the subject, I felt a little better prepared.  We didn't really know much about adoption agencies, and so we naturally turned to our church and signed up with LDS Family Services. 

Well, I actually have children to attend to now...