What's It Gonna Take To Put This Baby In Your Family Today?

This just came across my desk: I have a 1/2 Caucasian, 1/2 African American baby girl due December 11, 2012. Her birth mother has continued to smoke a pack a day throughout the pregnancy and smoked marijuana 2-3 times per week during the first two months of pregnancy. Birth father smokes marijuana 4-5 times a week. If you know anyone who may be interested please contact me at...

Is that typical of the messages adoption agencies and social workers receive?  

First off, you don't have a baby girl, and there is no birth mother in what you're saying. There is a pregnant woman and the baby inside her.

And this: "If you know anyone who may be interested..." Seriously?  Pull up your PAP spreadsheet and see who checked off "open to mixed race" and "will consider drug history."  

Is that how we were "matched?" What about all the warmandfuzzy be-patient-your-baby-will-find-you crooning whitewash?  

Seeing it laid out like that... I feel like I'm going to retch. What is the matter with people?

Click here to purchase Sally's adoption book, What I Want My Adopted Child to Know: An Adoptive Parent's Perspective.

Sally Bacchetta
The Adoptive Parent
My Google Profile+

How To Jump Start Your Adoption

Oversleep and run late all day.
Skip your morning shower.
Skip breakfast.
Leave your family's dirty breakfast dishes in the sink.
Put more on your daily To Do list than you can possibly accomplish in a month of Sundays. Cram a few more in the margins of the paper.
Land a great new client and take on a massive writing assignment with an impossible deadline and zero margin of error.
Begin spring cleaning - empty every closet and most of the drawers in the house. Sort everything into piles. Distribute piles between the kitchen, the family room, the dining room, the laundry room, the playroom, and your bedroom. Add "finish piles" to your To Do list.
Spend an hour and a half making a complex, multi-pan dinner. Watch your family eat it in 7 minutes.
Start to wash the dinner dishes, muttering to yourself about your schedule, your fatigue, your missed shower, and the breakfast dishes you had forgotten.
Hear the phone ring. Say you can't answer it because your hands are soapy.
Hear it ring again. Shout that you can't answer the phone with wet hands.
Hear it ring again. Stomp across the kitchen dripping soap and water and wondering where your husband went and why he doesn't hear the phone.
Hear the caller answer your prayers. "A birth mother has chosen you." And suddenly the only thing you need to do is not on your To Do list.
Go meet your baby.

Sally Bacchetta
The Adoptive Parent
My Google Profile+
Sally Bacchetta's YouTube Channel

Adopting Snowflakes

People often ask if waiting for our second child is easier than waiting for our first. Absolutely. And no way. It's just different.

I had no frame of reference the first time. I knew I wanted a child, but the want was a general feeling of wanting to grow my family. I wanted a baby to hold, a toddler to play with, a child to teach about faith and integrity.

Now I know the intimacy and intricacy I was missing. Now I know that I want a baby with spring-loaded fingers and translucent eyelids. I want chub-a-licious drumstick thighs and a sweet-smelling head. Now I know that I want a toddler to pee all over the bathroom and mop it up with my pillow and proudly announce "It's OK, Mama. I cweaned it all by myself!" Now I know that I want a child to say "Even when I'm upset, Mama, I always love you."

Now I know what I was missing, and that makes the second wait more painful. At the same time, it's much, much easier waiting for my second child, because I have been blessed with my first. By turns captivating, aggravating, inspiring, and tiring, she will always be My First.

Every adoption experience is different. Every one is unique and beautiful in its way. Just like snowflakes.

Sally Bacchetta
The Adoptive Parent
My Google Profile+
Sally Bacchetta's YouTube Channel