A Major Twist

Well, our adoption journey has taken a turn off the straight and narrow path it was on.

Last week, we were to meet E. to tour the hospital where she will be giving birth. She sent us directions the week before, and we emailed her the day before to tell her how to reach us if anything came up.

We got there, found the faceless classroom in mazelike halls in the basement, seated ourselves among a bunch of pregnant women and their support people, and began listening to a rather listless presentation about giving birth at the hospital. The leftist and the educator in me were both getting quite angry, because the women there seemed to be mostly working class, and the presenter had such very low expectations of them. After 45 minutes went by, I was sure that E, who has never been on time to any of our meetings, was not coming.

We continued the tour, feeling pretty out of place, and went home. (On the way home, my temporary crown, which had been put on the day before, fell out, making me feel even sorrier for myself).

The next day, we told our counselor what happened, and she urged us not to embrace the worst case scenario. After all, E is no model of organization or timeliness. She suggested we call and email E. That's what we did, and that's what our counselor did too. No answer.

A few days have gone by now, and I'm feeling reasonably sure that E has changed her mind, or at the very least that a large drama has erupted causing her to have second thoughts. The wild cards our counselor warned us about involved her 5 year old daughter, who hadn't been told about her pregnancy, and her ex, who wants to get back together (he's not the father of the current baby). But all in all, our counselor felt that this adoption was probably more likely to work out than most, so we were cautiously optimistic. Now we are not optimistic at all, and I for one am just starting to assume that we'll be moving on to a new period of waiting, matching, etc.

I imagine if it really happens, I'll be quite sad, because I really like E, and have felt like it's a good fit. On the other hand, liking E might make it easier in some respects, because I think I would find it hard to be truly mad at her (as things stand now, anyway). Also, I do think telling myself hundreds of times a day that the match could fall through may have been a wise policy after all, because I'm finding myself not all that shocked.

One thing I can say is that my faith that we'll adopt has not been shaken. In fact, it's been kind of strengthened by our experience so far. It's not terribly uncommon to match more than once before adopting, though it's not terribly lucky, either.

However, if we really do unmatch, I would not mind distracting amusements or extra-kind treatment at all. I may need some help getting back on the path.

Photo by Jenya, courtesy of Flickr creative commons.