The first dip in the track, building speed heading through our first spiral loop and Darren's forgotten his Dramamine.
Ok, so Darren and I had talked about kids before we got married. We knew we wanted some, 3, 4, maybe 5. We were both a little older when we got married, had been married before and in general just weren't idiots when we got married, so although we didn't want to have a baby immediately, we didn't want to wait forever either.
We knew coming into it that I had some sub-fertility issues. We decided that we would not do anything to prevent, since pregnancy would be unlikely to happen without help, and if it did, woo-hoo-surprise! We'd decided that if we were not pregnant after a year we'd pursue testing, which would include Darren as well. At least that way it wouldn't be years of work/tests/procedures on me to find out in the end it was him too.
It only took one test to find out that it was very much Darren as well. A couple more tests made it pretty conclusive that between the two of us it was more likely that we'd grow wings and fly than we'd make a baby, well at least naturally. We'd be great ICSI Invitro candidates, where they actually put the sperm in the egg, then put them in. Of course you're still running the risk that the embryo doesn't implant and all that. So when we weighed the costs, all the costs-emotional, time, financial etc.- we decided it wasn't what we were prepared to pursue.
Of course it was extremely hard. We cried, prayed and had a lot of talking to do. We had to completely reevaluate what a "family" really is and what having a 'family' really meant to us. I guess all I can say is that we went through all the options, keep trying, get fertility help, invitro, adopting from other countries, domestically, doing a Fos/Adopt (adopting a foster child with no chance they'll be reunited because their parent's right have already been terminated) and doing foster care as a family open to adoption. In the end money, of course, because a big determining factor.
We considered Invitro, but since we live in the 3rd most expensive housing market in the entire United States, we can hardly afford to buy a house let alone spend $30,000 on an 'attempt' to "make a baby"; and our desire to "make" a baby was heavily out weighed by the fact that we were not willing to let the costs of the process and potential failure rule/ruin our lives.
As genetics became less and less important we tried to figure out what really was important. What about the baby's time in utero? What about labor and delivery? What about infancy, sleepless nights, diapers, and everything else relating to a newborn? It seemed like every choice eliminated so much from the experience.
One by one we eliminated possibilities and eventually came to the conclusion that no matter where they'd been, how they got to us, how old they were, ethnic back ground, God makes families and some how it would work and He wouldn't give us what we couldn't handle.
We were at Fishfest (same christian festival we got engaged at, but 3 years later) when we walked by a booth for a Foster Family Agency, called Advantage. We talked for a while to the owner/director Mark and his wife Pam. All about what they do, how they/their agency works hard to reunify families and what it's like to be a foster parent. We filled out a questionnaire and within a week or so they'd sent us some more information.
After a lot of prayer and a lot more talking we decided that we really felt like God was leading us to become foster parents. We knew the risks, we knew that most of these kids don't stay forever and we knew it was going to be gut wrenching and painful to fall in love with these kids and have them go 'home' after a while. Our conclusion was that life is full of risks, I married Darren not knowing if he'd live another 50 years or not, and if he died 6 months, 6 years or 60 years after we'd married, no matter what, it would be worth it. No one is ever promised forever with their kids, ours was just going to be nearly the opposite, just short of being promised our kids would not stay forever.
We started our training with Advantage. It was great that at the time Darren and I both had work schedules that gave us Thursday mornings off, so it was then that Mark came to our home to do our trainings, all the regular required stuff to be a foster parents. Mark talked a lot about how Advantage as and agency really believes in working with the Bio-Parent to help them as much as possible to be reunified. They believe that the first goal should be to heal the family and avoid broken homes. He'd said that any family who does foster care long enough will eventually have an opportunity to adopt, but that it's not the norm for their agency and it should not be expected with in the first few years. The training went pretty fast (going through the county can take longer than 6 months just to do training, ours was about 6 weeks). (Towards the end we had to fill out a form stating what ethnicity/issues/ages we'd accept and with only a couple of exceptions regarding reasons for removal we were pretty open, any ethnicity, we'd prefer an infant but were open to zero-4 years and open to siblings). We'd started training in the beginning of September and finished in mid October. We handed in all our paper work, had our final walk through and were certified as foster parents on October 31, 2007.
At this point we're becoming slightly aware of the fact that there is another hill coming and our roller coaster car is charging forward.
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