Kindle Fire giveaway!

Go look at our other blog for info on a fundraiser we're doing.  We are giving away a Kindle Fire.  You get one entry for every $5 donated.  At $25 the number goes up.  Click here for details.  You don't have to be local to enter!!!  Please share with your friends too!  If you share on your blog, facebook or twitter you get an extra entry.

Parenting Class

Tonight is our parenting class that we have to attend for our agency.  It's done by a local hospital and is for women and their partners who are about to give birth.  There are four classes in the series with the last one being about newborn care.  We are only taking the last class since we don't need to know about labor and delivery, tour the hospital, etc, etc.  We'll be surrounded by big old pregnant bellies.  That should be a blast.

All joking aside, this is the last thing we have to do before our homestudy.  Speaking of which, it's on Saturday.  Ack!  We've got to do some major cleaning!

Now for a rant: About two months ago we got an email at work saying that our company was going to announce a new maternity/family leave policy at the end of the quarter (March).  Our company has no maternity leave.  Only FMLA which guarantees up to 12 weeks off with no pay.  If you want to be paid you have to use up all of your vacation and sick time.  We can't afford to go three months without my paycheck so I was excited when they announced this.

We got the details about the program yesterday, and honestly, it's more of an insult than anything.  Women who give birth are given two weeks of pregnancy leave followed by one week of parental leave paid at 100%.  After that, she will have access to 100% of her accrued sick pay balance up to 6 weeks for vaginal birth or 8 weeks for a caesarean section.  Following that period, new birth mothers may also use up to 50% of their remaining accrued sick time balance.

Since this is based on giving birth, adoptive mothers are only allowed the one week of parental leave and then 50% of accrued sick days.  That's right.  Whenever we have a baby, my company is SO GENEROUS, that they are going to give me a whole 5 days of pay.  I hope you can read the sarcasm there.  I know that a lot of companies in the U.S. don't have any maternity policy at all, but really.  Five days?  The funny part is that the description of the five day parental leave is for parents to be able to bond with a newborn or newly adopted child under the age of 18.  All of this is in response to feedback from employees wanting a better work/life balance.  Give me a break.  Right now I have about 20 sick days accrued.  So if we had a baby right now, I would get 5 days paid, then I would have 10 more days of sick time that I could use.  Wow a whole three weeks.  Daycares won't even take a baby until they are 6 weeks old.

Besides which, I'm taking the full 12 weeks off.  I have no choice in going back to work, but I'm going to delay it as long as possible.  Under FMLA, I can use all of my sick time and vacation days, which is what will happen.  All of the discussions around this new policy are in response to people complaining about going on maternity leave and exhausting all of their vacation and sick time.  When they come back to work with a 3 month old baby they no longer have any sick days that they can use if the baby gets sick and they have to stay home with him/her.  This new policy doesn't do much to alleviate that problem, especially for adoptive parents.  It blows, but there's not much I can do about it.

I did the calculations and if I don't use any sick days for the next 18 months, I will have exactly 12 weeks paid time off after which I'll be tapped out.

Can someone find me a job in Canada???

The issue of race

I am hesitant to write this post, but it has been on my mind so here I am.  

When we were filling out all of the paperwork for our agency there was a section where we had to talk about what sort of child we desired.  This included things like race, gender, prenatal drug or alcohol use by the birth mother, medical conditions, birth defects, etc.  It was hard to go down this long list of different possibilities and decide what we could and couldn't handle.  

One sticking point for us was race.  At our agency, approximately 1/3 of the babies that come to them are black, 1/3 are bi-racial (black-white) and 1/3 are white.  We were told that the wait time for a caucasian baby is 12-18 months.  If we were willing to accept any race, the wait time would only be around 6 months.  We decided that at this time we are only willing to accept a white baby (both of us are white).  

After typing that out my instinct is to hurriedly tell you that we are not racist by any means.  There are so many factors that play into our decision and I don't know if I can even verbalize all of them.  I've done so much research on trans-racial adoption, on whether or not it hurts the child to not be raised by someone of the same race.  In a perfect world it shouldn't matter, but we don't live in a perfect world.  So many people have told me that it doesn't matter what color a baby is.  They all need love.  And yes, that's true.  But that baby grows up into a child and then an adult.  An individual with thoughts and feelings.  Love does not conquer all as some people would like to think.  I feel that many people see adoption as this wonderful, warm, fuzzy thing and just gloss over all of the challenges that come with it.  You're "saving a child" after all!  

Adopting a child out of your race has additional challenges and additional responsibilities (over and above the challenges of adoption by itself).  I'm not saying that it's not worth it to do this.  Just that I feel people should really think hard about it and be sure that they want to open themselves up to those challenges.  

And let's face it.  My husband and I are as white as white can be.  The blog Stuff White People Like is us 100%.  All of the reading I have done says that you should seek out communities and events where the child's race is the majority.  We live in the deep south and as awful as it sounds, it's still pretty segregated around here.  My high school was about 96% white.  When I went there, they were actually still busing students in as part of a desegregation order.  There is also my family to consider.  As much as I hate to say it, a lot of my extended family is pretty openly racist.  I don't keep in contact with them because of this, but they are at family gatherings during the holidays.  And then there's my dad.  He's said some pretty awful things too when it comes to race.  Sure, I could just avoid these people all together, but it's really not that easy.

Who knows?  In the end, we might change our minds and end up with a child of another race.  If that happens, I will do everything in my power to help that child feel loved, like they belong and that there is nothing wrong with them or their family because it is different from the norm.  But as of right now we are not there.

I haven't written much since our decision to adopt.  I keep telling myself I need to post something, but then I can't think of anything to talk about.

I feel like I'm getting into unfriendly waters when I think about my feelings on adoption.  Like people will be so much more critical of what we're doing/how we're doing it.  I don't know why I feel that way.  Maybe it's just a hangup that I have and nobody else would even think of.

We have been working on all of our paperwork to submit to our agency.  Once that is all done then I think we can start the homestudy.  All that is left is our financial statement and our autobiographies.  I'm almost done with mine and DH is working on his.  I need to get on it and finish it this week.

Our fundraising is going well.  You can visit the other blog to check it out.  www.newsonnix.blogspot.com.  If you're an amazon shopper, click on the banner at the top of that blog and shop through that.  We get a portion of the purchase price.

I'm also thinking about getting a second job to help come up with some of the money.  I worked retail all throughout high school and college.  I won't say the name of the store, but it had three B's.  I'm sure you can guess.  Anyway, my old manager is now the manager of another 3 B store, but one that deals in baby stuff.  Again, you can probably figure it out.  I don't know why I'm being so obscure about it.  Anyway, I'm going to check with him and see if he'd be willing to hire me to work nights and weekends.  I'm thinking one night a week and Saturday and Sunday.  It would suck, but it would be extra cash going straight into savings, plus a discount on baby stuff which would come in handy.

So that's where we stand right now.

4 months

My laparoscopy was in October, 4 months ago.  In the time between then and now I had miraculously pain-free periods.  Then this weekend happened.  We were out of town with my in-laws for a wedding shower.  I woke up in the middle of the night with some horrible cramps.  Luckily I found some advil in the bathroom medicine cabinet and was able to go back to sleep.

When I woke up the next morning the cramps were back.  Took some more ibuprofen and after about two hours they calmed down enough for me to feel kind of normal.  I had one lor.tab left from an old prescription in my purse and I took it that night so that I could sleep.  The next morning I was still crampy, although not as bad as the day before.

This blows.  Maybe it was just a fluke and next month will be fine.  Either way I have a follow-up with my doctor next week and I'll talk to him about it.

I'm waffling on the going private thing.  I know it's so much easier for people when a blog is public.  I know it is for me since I rely on my google reader so much.  I just forget to check the ones where I actually have to go to the blog link.  Maybe I'll keep this one public, but just edit it to make it more anonymous.  I love that this is my space to lay it all out there where family and "real life" friends don't know.  That sounds awful, but a lot of the stuff I'm feeling would just hurt their feelings because in the end, they don't get it.

So where are we on adoption stuff?  We've turned in our application and are working on the rest of the paperwork.  I've been working on an autobiography for over a week now.  That shit is hard.  I have all of these questions to answer and it's tough.  DH and I both went today for our physicals.  Our doctor was really happy for us and said he thought it was great that we are adopting.  Then he said something that sat kind of funny with me.  He said that we're getting a baby, but we're also saving a life.  I'm not really sure in what context he meant that, like a pro-life thing, or that the baby would have a better lifestyle with us or what.  But it still just felt weird and I didn't quite know how to respond to it.  We want a baby.  We're not doing this to "save a life" as selfish as that sounds.  I'm probably just reading too much into it.  I do that a lot.

We've got fundraising ideas going on the other blog (www.newsonnix.blogspot.com).  I met a friend today and got a carful of stuff for our yard sale.  And she said she has more!!!  So that's all good.

I have lots of other things rolling around in my head, but not quite sure that I'm ready to post about yet.  All of this adoption stuff is so new to us.  It's still kind of sinking in.

I can say that DH has been awesome about this process.  Once we decided that this is what we were doing and we picked our agency, he kind of took over.  He's been organizing all of the paperwork, getting stuff mailed, etc.  He's way more organized than I am, so it's probably a good thing that he's handling all of that.

We're heading down to a wedding shower for one of DH's cousins this weekend.  Who wants to bet that they're going to have a kid before us???  :)

Did you miss me?

I'm thinking of making this blog private, as in invite only.  We have started a new public blog for our adoption stuff and that one will be open for everyone.  Here is the link:  www.newsonnix.blogspot.com.

I'll keep this one open for a week or so and then will go private, so email me if you want in.  brandyshea @ gmail.  Let me know who you are, how you found this blog, blog address if you have one, etc.