En mi última actualización, en septiembre del año pasado, todavía con heridas abiertas por nuestro intento fallido para tener un bebé a través de in vitro y con una madre portadora, escribí que no había descubierto nada nuevo acerca de mí misma o de mi lucha por ser madre a través de ese proceso. Por supuesto que estaba equivocada, pero uno sólo ve las cosas con nitidez cuando está preparado para dar vuelta la página. Lo que descubrí es que me había librado de esa añoranza profunda de llevar a mi hijo biológico en mi vientre, lo que sin querer me preparó para ir al siguiente paso: la adopción.
Aprendí que estoy preparada para convertirme en madre de un niño a través de amor, dedicación y mucho esfuerzo – ¡incluso burocracia! Que no necesito vomitar a diario por 3 meses, subirme varios kilos, sumar más estrías a las que ya tengo ni sentir al bebé moverse dentro de mí para sentir que un niño es hijo mío. Sí, requerirá de mucho trabajo y sí, tendremos que hacer duelo, tanto nosotros como nuestro hijo para superar las pérdidas que los tres habremos vivido para formar una familia, pero lo haremos juntos, los tres. Y Lucas también nos ayudará.
Desde mi última actualización, Andrés y yo hemos avanzado bastante en este nuevo y último capítulo de nuestra historia. Hemos asistido a seminarios, leído mucho material sobre la adopción, completado nuestra capacitación obligatoria (un curso llamado P.R.I.D.E. en inglés, que consta de 27 horas de clase); hemos reunido certificados de nacimiento, matrimonio, cambio de nombre, cartas de referencia de algunos parientes, amigos y doctores, cartas de no antecedentes policiales, huellas digitales, información financiera y estamos a la espera de los resultados de los análisis de tuberculosis y VIH/SIDA para poder completar el último formulario: el informe médico. Además nos hemos encontrado 4 veces con nuestra trabajadora social, dos de las cuales fueron reuniones individuales y la última, el sábado recién pasado, fue en nuestra casa donde le presentamos a Lucas y le hicimos el tour por la casa. No, no abrió armarios o cajones ni anduvo por la casa con un guante blanco para ver si estaba limpia. Pero nuestra querida Gloria igual vino el día antes para dejar la casa impecable, por si acaso.
En dos o tres semanas habremos completado el proceso de evaluación y estaremos listos para enviar todos nuestros papeles al Ministerio de Servicios al Menor para obtener aprobación de nuestra solicitud y comenzar la siguiente etapa: enviar el expediente al país que hemos elegido, donde dentro de aproximadamente un año encontrarán al niño que será nuestro hijo.
Paralelo al proceso de adopción internacional, armaremos un libro que acá se llama “Perfil”, en el que contaremos nuestra historia con texto y fotos para luego distribuirlo a las agencias de adopción que se lo mostrarán a mujeres embarazadas que desean hacer un plan de adopción para su hijo (nonato o recién nacido) aquí, en Ontario. Esencialmente, el minuto en que uno de estos dos procesos – internacional o local – resulte, el otro se suspenderá para ser retomado quizá en el futuro, cuando queramos adoptar un hermanito. La razón por la que estamos haciendo ambos procesos es que las adopciones locales son bastante impredecibles en cuanto a plazos, ya que es la madre biológica quien elige a la pareja y luego tiene un plazo de cerca de un mes para arrepentirse, aún cuando el bebé haya estado con nosotros desde el momento de nacer. Puede ser un proceso bastante rápido y demorar días, semanas o meses. O puede ser un proceso que nunca nos dará un hijo. Así que al solicitar una adopción internacional en paralelo estamos básicamente ampliando nuestras opciones.
De momento, el país que nos está “llamando” es Perú, el país donde nací. La suerte es que sólo se tramitan adopciones con Perú si uno de los dos padres es peruano. ¡Por fin algo bueno sale de tener ciudadanía peruana, además de mi destreza en la cocina a la hora de preparar un ceviche o pisco sour! Pero igualmente estamos estudiando otras opciones, entre las que se encuentran Rusia y Etiopía. Hablaré más de estos dos países en actualizaciones futuras del blog.
Y hasta aquí no más hemos llegado. Quería actualizar el blog para ponerlos a todos al día con el tema. Además he cambiado un poco el estilo gráfico del blog, y creo que tienen ahora la opción de inscribirse para recibir notificaciones cada vez que lo actualice. Ah, y la foto en la parte superior de la página fue tomada en 1999, por si se estaban preguntando cómo lo hacemos para vernos tan jóvenes (incluido Lucas). En ese entonces vivíamos en un departamentito tipo caja de fósforos casi esquina de Broadview con Danforth, estábamos recién casados y acabábamos de adoptar a Lucas, los tres sumidos en la dicha de nuestra ignorancia. ¡Juventud, divino tesoro!
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
A New Direction
Back in September, while still licking my wounds after our failed attempt at a baby through in vitro and surrogacy, I posted that I had not discovered anything new about myself or my quest for motherhood during that process. I was wrong, of course, but one only sees things clearly when one is ready to move on. What I learned is that I had let go of my deep desire to carry my biological child in my womb, thus fortuitously helping me to move on to the next step: adoption.
I learned that I am ready to become the mother of a child through love, dedication and hard work – even red tape! That I don’t need to puke my guts out for 3 months and then gain a lot of weight and stretch marks, or feel the baby move inside of me to feel that a child is my own. Yes, it will be hard work, and yes, there will be many feelings of loss both for us and for the child, but we will work through these together, the three of us. And Lucas will help too.
Since I last updated the blog, Andrés and I have done a lot towards this new and final phase of our journey. We’ve attended seminars and read a lot of literature on adoption; we’ve completed our P.R.I.D.E. training (a mandatory 27 hour course called Parenting Resources Information Development Education); we’ve gathered birth, marriage and name change certificates, letters of reference from some family members, friends and doctors, police and other law enforcement agency letters of clearance, fingerprinting, financial information, and are currently waiting for results of TB and HIV tests to hand in our final documentation: the medical report. We’ve also met 4 times with our adoption practitioner; two of those meetings were individual and the last one, this past Saturday, was at our house, where she got to meet Lucas and tour our place. No, she didn’t open cabinets or drawers and she didn’t wear a white glove to see if the place was clean. However, our beloved Gloria did come the day before and worked feverishly to leave the place spotless, just in case.
Within two or three weeks we will have a completed homestudy and will be ready to send out our paperwork to the Ministry of Children and Youth Services to get approval of our dossier and begin the next stage: sending our file to the country that we have chosen, where within a year they will find the child who will be our son or daughter.
Parallel to the international adoption process, we will also put together a book, called a “Profile” that will tell our story through text and photos and will be distributed to adoption agencies that will show the book to women wanting to make adoption plans for their babies (unborn or already born) here, in Ontario. Essentially, the minute one of these two fronts – international or domestic – pans out, the other will be put on hold to maybe pick up once again in the future, when we apply for a sibling. The reason we’re doing both is that domestic adoptions are quite unpredictable in terms of timing, since it is the birth mother who picks the couple and then there is the matter of her having about a month after giving birth where she can change her mind, even after the child comes home with us. It can be a really fast process and take a few days or weeks or months. Or it can be a process that never yields a child for us. So, we’re basically hedging our bets by going abroad too.
The country that is tugging at our hearts right now is Peru, the country where I was born. Lucky for us that adoptions between Ontario and Peru are only processed if one of the two parents is Peruvian. Finally something good has come from having Peruvian citizenship, aside from my skill at preparing ceviche and pisco sours! But we’re still studying other options, among which are Russia and Ethiopia. More on this in later posts.
That’s it up to this point. Just wanted to get the blog up again. I’ve updated its “look and feel”, so now I believe you can subscribe to it if you’re interested in getting update notifications. Oh, the picture at the top right of this page was taken in 1999, in case you’re marvelling at how young we all look (including Lucas). We lived in a teensy bachelor apartment on Broadview and Danforth back then, were just married, had just adopted Lucas and lived in total blissful ignorance of hardship. Aaah, youth!
I learned that I am ready to become the mother of a child through love, dedication and hard work – even red tape! That I don’t need to puke my guts out for 3 months and then gain a lot of weight and stretch marks, or feel the baby move inside of me to feel that a child is my own. Yes, it will be hard work, and yes, there will be many feelings of loss both for us and for the child, but we will work through these together, the three of us. And Lucas will help too.
Since I last updated the blog, Andrés and I have done a lot towards this new and final phase of our journey. We’ve attended seminars and read a lot of literature on adoption; we’ve completed our P.R.I.D.E. training (a mandatory 27 hour course called Parenting Resources Information Development Education); we’ve gathered birth, marriage and name change certificates, letters of reference from some family members, friends and doctors, police and other law enforcement agency letters of clearance, fingerprinting, financial information, and are currently waiting for results of TB and HIV tests to hand in our final documentation: the medical report. We’ve also met 4 times with our adoption practitioner; two of those meetings were individual and the last one, this past Saturday, was at our house, where she got to meet Lucas and tour our place. No, she didn’t open cabinets or drawers and she didn’t wear a white glove to see if the place was clean. However, our beloved Gloria did come the day before and worked feverishly to leave the place spotless, just in case.
Within two or three weeks we will have a completed homestudy and will be ready to send out our paperwork to the Ministry of Children and Youth Services to get approval of our dossier and begin the next stage: sending our file to the country that we have chosen, where within a year they will find the child who will be our son or daughter.
Parallel to the international adoption process, we will also put together a book, called a “Profile” that will tell our story through text and photos and will be distributed to adoption agencies that will show the book to women wanting to make adoption plans for their babies (unborn or already born) here, in Ontario. Essentially, the minute one of these two fronts – international or domestic – pans out, the other will be put on hold to maybe pick up once again in the future, when we apply for a sibling. The reason we’re doing both is that domestic adoptions are quite unpredictable in terms of timing, since it is the birth mother who picks the couple and then there is the matter of her having about a month after giving birth where she can change her mind, even after the child comes home with us. It can be a really fast process and take a few days or weeks or months. Or it can be a process that never yields a child for us. So, we’re basically hedging our bets by going abroad too.
The country that is tugging at our hearts right now is Peru, the country where I was born. Lucky for us that adoptions between Ontario and Peru are only processed if one of the two parents is Peruvian. Finally something good has come from having Peruvian citizenship, aside from my skill at preparing ceviche and pisco sours! But we’re still studying other options, among which are Russia and Ethiopia. More on this in later posts.
That’s it up to this point. Just wanted to get the blog up again. I’ve updated its “look and feel”, so now I believe you can subscribe to it if you’re interested in getting update notifications. Oh, the picture at the top right of this page was taken in 1999, in case you’re marvelling at how young we all look (including Lucas). We lived in a teensy bachelor apartment on Broadview and Danforth back then, were just married, had just adopted Lucas and lived in total blissful ignorance of hardship. Aaah, youth!
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