Ready To Be Parents

I know, I know - it's been FOREVER since I blogged, and SOOO much has happened since my last entry. But hey, at least I'm writing now - that counts for something, right?!

So the last time I wrote we had just discovered that our health insurance was not going to cover any sort of fertility treatment and we were crossing our fingers that whatever new job I found would give us health insurance that did offer coverage for fertility. I had no new job, we still lived in Arizona, and we were completely unaware of how drastically our lives were about to change :). I have a lot of catching up to do and I'll try to be succinct, but I've never been good at being concise, so here goes nothing, lol.

After Christmas I had the opportunity to interview for a management training position with Enterprise Rent-a-car in Las Vegas. For some time Jeremy and I had been trying to figure out a way to get him out of the medical field and get me into a career where I could really grow and be happy, and applying for the job with Enterprise seemed too good to be true by the looks of the job description online. But, I applied nonetheless, not expecting anything to come of it. Little did I know that within months I would be starting on a new career path - with Enterprise - in Las Vegas. It really was an easy decision for our family - everything I had learned about Enterprise through the interview process and my own research made me incredibly excited to work for the company, and Jeremy and I were very quickly falling in love with Las Vegas. Lake Havasu will always hold a special place in our hearts, but Vegas has so much more to offer us in so many ways. So, Jeremy and I both resigned from our positions in Havasu and the last weekend of January we moved to Las Vegas. We were very blessed to find an awesome house to rent close to my office, and on Feb. 6 I started my new job. That same week Jeremy was offered a job with Alamo (which is owned by Enterprise) and everything in life seemed to be falling into place perfectly. We were living in a great new city, both had jobs we liked, and we had good health insurance. There was only one kink in our plan - our health insurance, yet again, had no fertility treatment coverage.

It's interesting how my emotions about motherhood have changed over time. I've gone from one end of the spectrum to the other - wanting nothing more than to have my own baby, then deciding I'd be ok adopting a baby instead, and then deciding that having a baby wasn't even a priority anymore - I just wanted a child, whether it's mine biologically or not. I'd experienced that spectrum of emotional changes before we ever started going through our fertility testing when we moved to Arizona, but the testing made me revert back to how I originally felt - I wanted to have my own baby again, and although adopting was always in the back of my mind, I didn't think I would have to go back to that option again. I assumed any fertility treatments we tried would work and before long we would be expecting. So when our insurance changed, as I mentioned in a previous post, I was devastated. I felt like our dream of being parents was just within reach and it was snatched from our hands. Life seemed cruel and unfair.

Once we got to Vegas and I learned the details of my job's health insurance - and what it didn't cover - I knew I couldn't sit around and sulk. And honestly, I didn't. I'm ready to be a mother, and I surprised myself by how quickly my emotions changed from wanting a child of my own to only caring about being a mom - I don't have to have a biological child to be a mom, and that was an option I wasn't going to "count on" anymore. It was seriously like a lightbulb switched on in my brain, and I went to work figuring out what we needed to do to adopt from the foster care system in Nevada. I'll admit we were a little nervous about pursuing that option again since it didn't turn out well when we began to pursue that option in Maryland, but it has honestly been one of the BEST decisions we have ever made. We learned about how things work in Nevada, and have been pleasantly surprised and reassured along the way that this state is different than Maryland, and what we plan to do is completely feasible and in no way an inconvenience (Maryland made us feel like we had unrealistic expectations and that we would receive no help in what we wanted to do). We also learned what Nevada required us to do, and we started doing it.

Our first step was to attend an orientation class to learn some basic information about foster care and foster-adopt in Clark County (where we live). That was on Valentine's Day - Feb. 14, 2012. At that meeting we had to fill out some basic paperwork, and then we had to wait to see if we were cleared to go ahead and get fingerprinted and submit extensive paperwork for probably the most in-depth background checks we would ever go through. At the start of March we got the go-ahead, and on my birthday - March 10, 2012 - we completed that second step (I planned that on my birthday purposely - it was an awesome birthday present to know we were doing something that would eventually lead us to being parents!). A few weeks later we were informed that we had been cleared to attend a 10-week training class to become licensed foster care parents (you have to become licensed as foster-care parents before you can adopt from the state). The classes are on the weeknights and are 3 hours each, and because Jeremy works a night shift and I have crazy hours, we were really concerned about how we would be able to attend the classes. But, yet again, everything ended up working out with our schedules and we started our classes on Wednesday, April 18, 2012.

As of this post we have completed 5 out of 10 classes, and we have had our first in-home consultation. I could write pages and pages about everything we have learned in just 5 classes - we have learned soooo much, and each week we learn more and more. We feel like sponges, soaking everything up as fast as we can and competely enthralled with what we are learning. The classes are not a piece of cake though, that's for sure. The 3rd and 4th classes were quite depressing, but still very enlightening. These kids have been through SO much, and these classes lay it all out there. The classes can be emotionally draining, but I love the conversations Jeremy and I have about what we are learning and how we plan to apply it to our parenting techniques once we have a child in our home. Oh, and the in-home consultation - totally not scary at all. We actually had it on Mother's Day - May 13, 2012. We were both nervous about what it would entail, but we were both pleasantly surprised at how easy it was - roughly 3 hours of questions about our childhoods, how we felt about certain aspects of parenting, and a short inspection to make sure our home was safe for a child to live in. Piece of cake :).

So, here's where we stand now: we have 5 more classes to attend, 1 more in-home consultation (a shorter one this time), an in-office final consultation, and then we should be licensed as foster care parents and we will be able to adopt from the foster care system when we find a child who is a good match for our family and more importantly, who we will be a good match for. We're a little nervous about things getting held up though. Remember those intense background checks we had to submit paperwork for that I mentioned earlier? Yeah well at our first in-home consultation one of the people working with us mentioned that they are still waiting to get those background checks back from 5 states - we've only lived in 6 (the 6th being Nevada!). She also mentioned that she once had a woman who ended up waiting a year and a half to get her background check completed from 1 state! Talk about a good way to make a girl anxious and concerned!! Anyways, I'm hoping that the states Jeremy and I have lived in will be quick with the checks, but I'm not too sure about that considering we submitted the paperwork for them back at the beginning of March and it's now almost June and we're still waiting - ugh. We shall see how long it takes, but if all this other stuff is done and we are just waiting on the background checks I'm gonna have to start making some calls of my own to see that it gets done!!

Anyways, we are both very excited about everything and can hardly wait until this whole process is over and we can just be parents! I never imagined that I would be soooo ready to adopt - but I am! I truely feel like I have grieved for myself for not being able to have children of my own, and that I have coped with all the emotions that come with that realization. Jeremy and I have waited long enough to be called mommy and daddy, and we could not be more thrilled about what the future holds for us - we're ready to be parents.