Tuesday, October 5, 2010

She is just like my mother in law

Yesterday we met with the director of our adoption agency. A year after I had made the initial call to them. And 2.5 months after we had given them all our paperwork. A long awaited interview. We received the call Thursday to come ASAP on Monday at noon. If we could not make it it could be another 2 months more until she had another appointment open.

This meeting was crucial in our process and acceptance. She could deny us or stall the process until she tought we were ready. We were very, very nervous.

This woman is very famous for being a very strong personality, strict and very, very Catholic. She singlehandedly changed the adoption laws in Mexico 25 years ago and has helped over 20,000 women in crisis pregnancies and has asigned over 3,500 newborns to adoptive families in the last years.

She also has built over 20 shelters in as many cities. She is a force to be reckoned with. The most renowed person in my country for adoption and we had to meet with her for an hour.

Everybody had warned us: she is very strict, is looking 100% out for the baby and not the adoptive parents and the questions she asks can be very painful.

She wants you to have closed the biological part of IF and she could even ask if we had closed the grief from our miscarriage. Since we are still healing from our miscarriage and have certainly not closed the biological part I was very afraid not to lose it in the interview.

We are complelty convinced that adoption is a path for us and we feel that God is calling us to both adoption and biological parenthood. We do not know how He plans to build our family, specially since our suprise pregnancy and then our miscarriage, but we will forge ahead with both and see where He leads us.

This meeting was crucial.

A couple that is close friends of ours and an adoptive family currently in the process with her agency invited us on Saturday for dinner to coach us. They gave us the basic questions from the interview and went over what was the most important for the agency. We were in for a very difficult one hour.

We were so nervous that my DH stayed home from work as I and we rehearsed the questions. We also prayed very hard and called several friends to join us in prayer.

We arrived at the agency and she was late with other interviews. I could barely breath.

Then she received us in her office. From there we could see a window that opened to the nursery filled with babies. Filled. My heart stoped.

The interview began. As they had told us several difficult questions, but somehow we started to relax. I did not know why, but she reminded me of someone.

The interview went much better than anticipated. In the end she did not follow her normal script of questions, but rather opened her heart to us. How she felt the urgent need to promote older children adoptions, how they were opening the laws to make adoption legal for homosexuals and she had to fight this everyday, etc.

During all of this she kept staring at my DH and the last 10 minutes of the interview she only spoke to him. My DH was completly relaxed, talking to her like to an old friend and smiling brightly the whole time. I was so surprised.

She told us we were great candidates, that is was great that we had not done any IVF or such things (a rarity now), that she foresaw that our process would go very fast if we passed all the tests(9 to 10 months to a year) and even said that we were going to be parents before my brother who is now searching for a pregnancy. I could not believe my ears.

She smiled the whole time when saying this to my DH. This lady that was the terror to everybody.

We went out and my DH goes into the car. He is so happy and tells me he loved her. He really, really liked her. This woman that we were warned so much about.

I tell him she reminds me of someone. He says sure: "She is identical to my mother".

An indeed she was. I could not put my finger to it, but when he said it it was complelty right.


To my dear MIL that died almost to the date of this interview 3 years ago (October 9th) and that I was so scared of in the beginning, but that later grew to love. A very strong woman, with a keen sense of what was right, but so merciful. The one that had taught my DH his faith, a very, very strong faith.

God had given us a clear sign that He is with us and will help us build our family. Not sure the path, but HE is with us. I could not help to smile the whole day!

6 comments:

  1. What great news!!! I'm crying for you and your husband! God knows what great things he has in store for the both of you!

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  2. What an amazing story, I had chills! I'm so excited for you!
    Also, I can't remember if I already said this, but thanks for stopping by my blog the other day. :) I am going to add you to my blog roll, and I started following you!

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  3. What a great thing! So glad to hear good news for you:)

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  4. This is a great start. So excited for you.

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  5. Wow.. I'm tearing up! What a beautiful sign from God. And how wonderful that it sounds like you will be parents very soon! I hope the rest of the process goes just as smoothly :)

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