It’s almost here…

We only have FIVE more days before Noah officially becomes Noah James Thackrah.  Yay!  I just thought that I’d update the blog (I know, I know…FINALLY) and share that this coming Saturday, November 19th, is National Adoption Day and we will be going before a judge to finalize the adoption at 12:00.  We are ecstatic!

Because it is such a big day at the courthouse, there will be media present, free food and gifts, and many families going through the adoption process all throughout the day.  My parents (Shawna’s) get to come out from CA to be with us and our good friend, Jon Benzinger, will be with us also.  Fun! In addition, some friends from church who were blessed with their son about 2 months before we met Noah will be at the courthouse for their 1:00 appointment so we will get to see them on this special day, too!

We are thrilled that this day is coming so soon and are deeply thankful for all of the love, support, gifts and prayers that you all have showered on us throughout this incredible journey.  Obviously, none of this would have gone the same way without God using all of you so powerfully in our lives.

We’ll update you all after Saturday…  Can’t wait!

Top 10 List After Week 1

So I have been a father for just over a week and I have prepared the top ten things I have learned thus far about parenthood:

10. Pre-bottled baby formula may be the best product ever invented

9.  All nipples are not created equal (Um…I don’t need to explain this, right?)

8. Regardless of how “easy” the instructions promise it will be to assemble, it won’t be.

7. It really is quiet and still at 4:00 a.m.

6. Church Meals Ministries are extremely under-appreciated.

5. Even if you get him to burp, he may just puke on you anyway.

4. If you have natural adrenalin working, you don’t need sleep (good for about 3 days)…If you can’t sleep, you better have adrenalin of some kind (coffee, coke, etc.)

3. Mother-in-Laws can actually be a good thing (hehehehe)

2. My wife is selfless

1. God gives you instant love and places you in protective mode for any child you are parenting.

Adoption Story: Introducing Noah James Thackrah

Noah James Thackrah

Whew! The last few days have been a complete whirl-wind. But, even though I may be a bit blurry-eyed and mentally hazy, I thought I would attempt to update this blog with the completely wonderful news that we have a brand new baby boy in our home! Noah James Thackrah (that will become official later) was born on Sunday, May 22, 2011, in Phoenix, Arizona. Many have emailed or sent Shawna and I messages on Facebook asking how this went down – so here it goes:

May 23, 2011: It was like any other Monday – waking up thinking about the tasks of what needed to be completed at work, showering and heading in to the office to complete these tasks. Around 12:45 I got a call from Shawna asking me if I had heard a message we received from our adoption specialist. I told her that I hadn’t. Well, Shawna had just gotten off the phone with Summer (our AS) and we were presented an adoption scenario. My heart began to race, just a tad. Shawna, who was at her customary Monday afternoon Starbucks locale, said she was coming over to my office so we could call Summer back together.

Summer did indeed call us back and presented the situation to us. A baby boy had been born on Sunday. Without getting into the details here, I will say that the situation wasn’t exactly pristine or from the land of fairy-tales. But, our take on it was that God allowed us to be called, so we would continue down the road until he put up a road block. So we agreed to be “presented” to the birth mother, and our agency showed her our Match Letter, along with a few other Match Letters from other couples in the agency.

A couple hours passed and then we received the phone call that would change our lives forever – the birth mom had selected us from our Match Letter and wanted to meet us. Gulp. We got into our vehicle and made the 40 minute drive from our home in Queen Creek  to downtown Phoenix. That was an interesting ride filled with prayer for God’s direction and that he would also give us discernment. We had heard about Match Meetings from others and we new they could be incredibly awkward at best. Well we arrived at St. Joe’s in Phoenix and were greeted by the Case Worker – she filled us in a bit with the situation and we within minutes were sitting in a room with the birth mother, two of her daughters and this 1 day old infant, that we found out she was calling, Noah. We had a brief but open meeting and honestly, when we left the room, I had no idea what the birth mother was thinking. Would she want to meet another couple?

We got in our car to head home. Shawna was feeling a bit more optimistic than me. As we were driving our phone rang.  It was our the Case Worker notifying us that the birth mother wanted us to adopt her baby.  Joy, happiness, panic, fear and a numbness all hit at once. Could this really be happening? We had heard stories that we could be in the Match Book for a year or more (we were in there for a month or so). We were instructed to show up at the hospital at 1:00 the next day to pick up our son. Crazy. Not a lot of sleep that night.

Tuesday, May 24, 2011: I think both Shawna & I wouldn’t have been surprised to get a phone call from our agency telling us that the birth mom had changed her mind. We were guarding our hearts for sure. Well, that call never came. So, we loaded up the car seat (that story could be an illustration in a sermon one day) and began to head to the hospital. When we arrived, we met with another Case Worker briefly and were escorted into an empty hospital room, where the acting Ped/Dr. wanted to speak to us. Gulp. Was something wrong? Nope, he wanted to notify us that they were going to do a couple of precautionary tests to ensure they weren’t releasing the infant to us prematurely.

Side Bar:  Shawna and I had picked out names for a boy and a girl, not knowing which would come to us. For the boy, we picked out Joseph Paul. When we met with the birth mom and she told us that she was calling him Noah, both Shawna and I loved the name. Later that night we decided that if we indeed get the chance to bring him home we would call him Noah. Firstly, because we liked the name and secondly because we wanted to tell him one day that his birth mom had chosen the name. Our hope is that would give him a connection to her in some way.

Holding Noah in our Arms

After we met with the Dr. our case worker went in to see the birth mother to see if she was ready to give us the baby. Our hearts were breaking for this woman. We prayed for her and that God would reveal himself to her. After 20 minutes or so, the case worker was back telling us the birth mom was ready to see us. Surreal would be the only English word I know of that would set the mood for this scene. As we walked into her room, the birth mom was sitting on her bed with Noah. It was obvious that she had been crying and that she was struggling. Not knowing if we would ever see this woman again, Shawna asked if we could take a picture with her and Noah. She agreed. After that picture was taken, in one of the most painful and selfless acts I have ever witnessed, the birth mom handed Noah to me. Instinctively, I reached out for Noah, our son, and paused at the bed side to tell the birth mom that we would always be praying for her. After I said those words, I slowly turned and stepped into the hallway, waiting for her to say, wait, I’ve changed my mind. Those words didn’t come. I would have completely understood and honored that request if it did come, but there was nothing. Only the beating of my heart and this little 6 lb. 13 oz baby boy in my arms.

Shawna remained in the room for another minute, kneeling down to hug the birth mom and whispering in her ear that we loved her and that we would always pray for her. Heartbreaking and powerfully exciting moments, all wrapped up into the same moment of time.

After settling into another empty hospital room with our new son, we waited for the medical testing that needed to occur. After about 4 hours, we were told that we would be released, with our son getting a clean bill of health. Those moments in that hospital room and waiting for the testing to be completed will be moments I never forget. My heart began to bond to this baby boy; I began to be his father and Shawna began to be his mother. Surreal, again is the only word.

Leaving the Hospital

As we walked out (Shawna was wheeled out) to our vehicle with this baby called Noah, we knew our lives would never be the same. We were thankful for God’s providence and grace. We were now parents. The rest of the story is yet to be written, but we know that God will write it and that we will seek to trust Him in it. We thank God for Noah James Thackrah and we both are looking forward to getting know him and train him up in the way he should go. Please pray for us and his birth mom.

UPDATE: We are in the Matchbook

So, we just go this email from our Adoption Specialist:

Yeah!

You are officially in the book!

Blessings,
Summer

Generosity Abounds and A Hiccup

It’s been a while since I  have posted something here on the Thackrah Adoption Story, so, I thought I would chime in with some thoughts and an update.

We have been blown away by the generosity we have seen from our friends and family towards our future child. Without naming names, we have received everything from checks in the mail to put towards nursery items, to actual donated items as big as a crib and mattress. The notes, and comments we have received have been equally generous with their kindness and prayers. To say that we are humbled would be the biggest of understatements. God continues to bless us with his generosity and the bonus of his people expressing their love and excitement is icing on the cake! Thank you all.

We hit a bit of a hiccup in our process a few days ago – we knew that some trials and road-blocks were sure to come, so we are handling it just fine. Our adoption agency has an internal rule that adoptive parents can’t be on any type of assistance. Well as many of you know, Shawna has been out of work for a while, and though she has been faithful to pursue employment, God hasn’t opened up a job for her. Because Shawna has been receiving disbursements from her unemployment insurance, the agency has deemed that as assistance and has kept us from going into the matchbook. Though we have appealed their decision, and we have shown beyond a doubt that we are okay on my salary alone, we are in a holding pattern until we either 1) Stop receiving her rightful unemployment benefits 2) Choose a different agency or avenue for adoption. We are praying about what direction to take. To be clear, this doesn’t impact our certification from the state of Arizona to adopt, but will force us to decided which avenue we are going to take. Our official certification is not tied to our agencies internal policy. So we are all good on that front.

Thank you again to all of you who are praying for us – we could never truly express our gratitude and how much your prayers and encouragement mean to us. We thank God for each of you.

 

Our Match Letter

Here is the match letter that we created.  Well, SORT OF created.  It’s so awesome to see how God works through all of this.  See, Dale “Googled” “adoption match letter” and the very first link that popped up was for a pastor and wife who just so happen to live…guess where?…Gilbert, AZ!!!  Hello!  We LOVED their match letter (they now have a beautiful new adopted baby as of November) and Dale sent him a little message on FBook, asking if he would be willing to allow us to use their template.  Oh, and by the way, they adopted their child through the SAME agency we are using.  Yah.  Cool, huh?  Within a few MINUTES, Dale had a response back from this gentleman and the template was in Dale’s inbox immediately following.  Amazing!  So, last Saturday night we started playing with it and I (Shawna) had a BLAST adding our pictures and learning how to change fonts and colors, etc.

While we couldn’t include all of our friends and family, know that you will be represented in some way once we meet a birth mom and show her our family album. =-)  Oh, and the agency gave us guidelines as to what to include along with what not to include and how to keep things short and to-the-point.  So, some of you may wonder why we didn’t add this or that and, well, we just didn’t have room.  Enjoy…

View this document on Scribd

A few gulps and a deep breath

Two Mondays ago, we had our first Home Study meeting.  During the three hours,  we went over our genogram. In case you are not familiar with that term,  it is a fancy way of saying “family tree”.  We had to go back as far as Grandparents all the way down as far as our own generation (so, our brothers and sisters).  Boy, was THAT interesting to go through and explain our relationship with each person in our families.  It took over an hour for each of us and Summer wrote notes while we were sharing.  We joked that now that she knew so much about our families we FOR SURE weren’t going to be certified to adopt.  Ha!  (Sorry to all of our family members who are reading this…yes, we did include ourselves in the craziness.)

This past Monday, we had our second Home Study meeting.  During this meeting, we went over the TJTA personality test that we had completed a while back.  What’s fun with that test is that you first take it answering the questions for yourself and then you take it a second time and answer the questions according to how you see your spouse.  When it was all put together, it proved that Dale and I know each other VERY well and the test “hit the nail on the head” with our different personalities.  The only area where we were TOTALLY on opposite sides of the scale was in the “Structured vs. Impulsive” section.  I’ll let you guess where each of us landed.  Ha!

At the end of the meeting, I asked Summer what our next steps were going to be.  We have one more meeting, next Monday, as she has decided to “cram” two meetings into one that day.  We know that during part of the meeting she will walk through the house to inspect it and make sure there aren’t any glaring safety or health hazards.  Then, there is a part where she will talk to Dale and I individually.  Not sure what that will be about specifically but I’m sure it has to do with some personal questions that they’d like us to answer without the other in the room…maybe even about each other.  We’ll see…

But, then, after she explained all of this, Summer sort of dropped a surprise on us.  She said that next month, on the third Thursday (the 17^th), she will be presenting us to the entire CFCA staff.  She will give them her reports on us and share her “findings” about our eligibility and fit for adoption.  She said she  can not find one reason that we won’t go through with flying colors.  And then…the BIGGIE…

Once we are confirmed with the staff on the 17^th, our profile will be added to the Match Book THAT DAY!!!!!  That means that starting March 18^th, we will be available for a birth mom to meet with!!!!  Wow!  This is all happening so fast.  When those words came out of Summer’s mouth, I stepped back half a step and took a deep breath.  Wow!  Her next words just kept the emotions going.  She said, “So, you’ll want to make sure that you are ready with all the basics like a car seat, diapers, etc., so that you are ready to bring a child into your home at any time.”  GULP.  Did she jus say that there is a potential that in FOUR WEEKS we will need to be prepared for a child????  Another big GULP.

Now, I want to keep this in perspective for all of us.  Yes, the 18^th is when we are available.  But, it could be weeks, days or even more than a year before we are matched.  AND, it could be that we walk through a match with a birth mom and then she decides to parent her child so we would be placed back into the match book and start the waiting again.  There are SO many factors involved, not the least of which includes the necessity for pregnant moms who are deciding to relinquish their parental rights.

So, we will wait on God’s perfect timing and perfect will.  There is even a possibility that we will receive a “hospital call” where a birth mom has relinquished her rights at the hospital or just dropped off the baby at a “Safe Haven” location and we are called to go pick the child up.  We do have the right to say no if the child’s background, health issues, etc., are not within the parameters that we have set for ourselves.

That’s the latest.  It’s very exciting and very sobering and daunting all at the same time.  Excited to share what God does…

Sticks and Stones…

You know when you join a group, cause, or organization, there is always a certain amount of “Rah!  Rah!  Our organization/cause/group is the most important and everything about us totally involves the subject matter behind our organization/cause/group.”  Do you know what I mean when I write this?

Well, with adoption, I am finding that those who are REALLY into all the stats, research, psychologists, sociologists and issues, etc., are very serious about the topic and dissect it to its core.  Most of their conversations are about adoption and making sure everyone else knows all about it too.  Dale and I don’t really want to be that way.  Yes, we want to learn what we can but we don’t want our every thought and conversation to revolve around adoption.

Even so, we’ve come to learn a bit about adoption “language” and have realized just how much we don’t/didn’t know about adoption nor did we know that there are better ways to use adoption language and terminology.  In our class, we were given an article titled, “Speaking Positively: An Introduction to Positive Adoption Language” by Patricia Irwin Johnston.  Here are a few quotes from the article.  I’ll be totally honest, some of them made me laugh, some of them made my face contort and say, “What?  Is she for real?” and some of it was helpful.  Check it out for yourself…

“Positive Adoption Language (PAL) is vocabulary relating to adoption which reflects maximum respect, dignity, responsibility and objectivity about the decisions made by birthparents and adoptive parents in the family planning decisions they have made for their children who have been adopted.  …PAL helps to eliminate the emotional overcharging which for many years has served to perpetuate a societally-held myth that adoption is a second-best and lesser-than alternative for all involved- that in being part of an adoption one has somehow missed out on a “real” family experience.”

“Though in adoption a parent and child are linked by _____ (hole punch, word cut out) and by law, the fact that they are not connected by blood has often meant that some people are unwilling to acknowledge their relationship as genuine and permanent.  So they use qualifiers (“This is Bill’s adopted son”) in situations where they would not dream of doing so in a non-adoptive family (“This is Bill’s birth-control-failure son” or “This is Mary’s caesarean-section daughter.”)  They tend not to assign a full and permanent relationship to persons related through adoption (Do you have any children of your own?” or “Have you ever met your natural mother?” or “Are they real brothers and sisters?”)

“When it is appropriate to refer to the fact of adoption, it is correct to say “Kathy was adopted,” (referring to the way in which she arrived in her family in the past tense.)  Phrasing it in the present tense…implies that adoption is a disabling condition coloring all facets of one’s life.”

“Those who conceive and give birth to a child are his birthparents: his birthmother and birthfather.  All of us have birthparents, however not all of us live in the care of our birthparents.  Those who raise and nurture a child are his parents: his mother, father, mommy, daddy, etc.”

“In describing family relationships involving adoption it is best to AVOID such terms as real parent, real mother, real father, real family – terms which imply that adoptive relationships are artificial and tentative- as well as terms such as natural parent and natural child –terms which imply that in not being genetically linked we are less than whole or that our relationships are less important than our relationships by birth.”

“…well counseled birthparents who do not choose adoption do not keep their babies (children are not possessions) but instead choose to parent them (“After considering her options, Paula decided to parent her child herself.”)

Hopefully this has been food for thought.  I don’t want to go “gung ho” and start speaking PAL language everywhere and teaching everyone they have to be PAL speakers (that makes me laugh just thinking about it…and the fact that there is an acronym for this “language”) but, I do want to be sure I am more aware than I was before starting this process.  Just sharing what we learned…

Adoption Labor Pains?

My sweet friend, Alison, who is patiently waiting with her Hubby, Cheyenne, to become an adoptive parent any moment now, sent me the CUTEST message on Facebook the other day and I asked if I could share it with all of you (she shared it on her blog too).

“So excited that your homestudy will start soon!!!! The paperwork pregnancy is lots of work, but so worth it!! Kinda like your version of labor pains. You are going to be starting to have morning sickness, foot swelling, contractions, back pains, and lots of back labor!! It’s what us adoptive mommy’s DO get to labor over! Lots and lots of paperwork, heartache, paperwork, books to read, paperwork, social worker visits, paperwork, homestudy stuff, and more waiting than any mommy has waited!”

Thank you for the encouragement and perspective, Alison!  Praying God brings that sweet little one into your life quickly!

Learning New Things

Where to begin… Last night’s class was titled, “Healthy Adoption Experience.”  To be honest, up to this point we have not seemed to learn a lot during these classes we’ve been required to take.  Through the first three nights we felt like the teachers were doing more reading of the material than connecting with us about the realities of what we are actually about to go through in relation to adoption.

Renee took us through the material last night and was AWESOME which is sort of funny because when she started the class, she asked us to give her a break because she is “not a teacher.”  Little did we know…  She not only “taught” us but she shared such a great passion for the work she does (she is an adoption family counselor now but used to be a pregnancy counselor so she now knows both “sides”) and truly helped us to understand the realities of what we are “getting ourselves into” when it comes to the birth parents, our own emotions, and even what we should expect if the birth mom changes her mind and does not relinquish her child.

For this blog, I wanted to share some highlights that I/we have learned recently:

1.  At CFCA (our adoption agency), approximately 3 in 10 birth moms change their mind and decide not to relinquish their baby.  Renee was very up-front with the fact that there is a high probability some couples in the class will have two “failed” placements before they are finally blessed with a child.  Sobering but, of course, God is in control.

2. Our hearts truly break for our friends and family who have had miscarriages and/or who have suffered through infertility.  We can’t imagine the grief those issues bring, especially for those hopeful parents who desperately want to share in the experience of conceiving and birthing a child.  For Dale and I, this whole process and our experiences are very different.  We have yet to go to the doctor and have infertility declared as our diagnosis.  We assume it is the case because it’s been 8 years with no baby and we’re content to know that much at this point.  Neither one of us has a great longing to go through the conception/pregnancy/labor/birth process (No, Mom, not because I am afraid! Ha!) and thus there is not that strong emotional struggle for us when we think about not having the “experience” of a biological child.  It’s just not where we are at or how God wired us.

Anyway, the teachers and the books we read emphasize a lot about grief and loss for “the child you never had” and they include in that statement those of us who have never conceived.  Honestly, Dale and I simply don’t agree.  We’ve never conceived and we’ve never had a child growing inside me so we don’t feel we’ve lost anything/anyone…it’s simply been God’s good and perfect will that is for our good and His glory.  So, that has been a bit of an interesting part of the classes and, again, reading adoption books because we are simply coming from a different perspective. I can imagine us having some sadness about not having a true “blood line” or us not sharing our genes with a “mini me” but those thoughts quickly give way when we, again, rest in God’s sovereignty.  To quote my Brother’s oft used life statement, “It is what it is.”  =-)

3.  Typically, the adoptive parents-to-be are intimidated by the birth mom and feel self-conscious about possible rejection from her, etc.  What Renee shared with us was some of what the birth mom feels…and some of those feelings are just the same as the adoptive parents but simply from a different perspective.  Usually, the birth mom is assuming that the adoptive parents are going to look down on her for her life decisions, background, possible lack of education, possible lack of family support or a myriad of other reasons.  In addition, she can sometimes be afraid that the adoptive parents will reject HER and won’t want to love and care for her baby.  So, it was interesting to try to put ourselves in her shoes and realize we aren’t the only ones who are nervous going into those meetings, wondering what one side thinks of the other.

4.  One main point that Dale has noticed in the books and the classes is that talk about the adoptive dad is just pretty much non-existent.  Most of the conversations and information relate to bonding and attachment and those types of things that usually, we see the women/moms/wives do.  Last night, Renee shared something really powerful that made me so excited for Dale.  She specifically called out the men in the class (there are 6 couples all together) and told them that a huge role they can potentially play is in showing the birth mom what a godly marriage looks like with a godly husband who loves his wife, shows her appropriate touch and speaks kindly to her.  I think there was a collective “Huh!” in the room when she said that.  Renee shared that while it is not all, most of the girls coming into CFCA have never had a man treat them with respect or touch them appropriately or care for them with genuine love.  Since Renee has worked for so long as a pregnancy counselor, she knows what she’s talking about and it was so poignant that she shared that.  We so hope that we will have the opportunity to establish a relationship with our birth mom for God’s glory!

I’m going to leave it at that for this blog.  I’ll maybe add more later this week but don’t want to overwhelm anyone more than I already have. =-)  There’s so much to learn and thus so much to share!