WW Weigh In and Other Issues

I did pretty good on my diet all week. I ate very healthy with the exception of a few meals, mostly dinner. But I didn't go completely overboard, I think I just had spaghetti and hot dogs for two meals this week. Other than that I don't recall falling off my diet. The scale kept creeping down every day this week as I drank tons of water. I think at one point I even saw it at 196.2 lbs. Unfortunately this morning I weighed in at 196.8 so I didn't reach my goal. Not even close. I'm not thrilled but it's still a good weight loss. My downfall was the fact that I didn't visit the gym at all. I worked a bit of overtime this week, started going to acupuncture and just never found the time. This week I'm definitely going, starting today (even though it snowed again). My goal for next week is to get to the elusive Ten Pound Mark, which is 194.7 lbs.

On the adoption front, I had a fellow blog reader who had applied with our chosen agency send me The Big Packet to look through before I slap down $200 with them. She ended up not choosing this agency for personal reasons and I can understand why. There were a few things that bothered me and though I know it's going to be a very touchy subject, I will share them here, along with my concerns about the adoption process in general. I'm open to constructive criticism about these topics but please keep your comments civil and respectful. I won't tolerate asshole commenters on my blog. And please don't assume that because I have these thoughts and feelings that I'm not ready for adoption or that I don't really want to adopt. That would be a very inaccurate judgement.

1) Our agency requires adoptive parents to sign a clause stating they will not spank their children. This mostly came as a surprise to me and I wasn't sure how to feel about this at first. I know many many people are against spanking but I'm one of those people that feel that it can be an effective punishment in some cases when other forms of punishment are otherwise ineffective (in other words, I don't believe in spanking as the primary form of punishment and don't feel that it's ever effective on a very young child). So while I had planned to use spanking as an alternative form of punishment, because the agency says we can't we'll just have to find other methods (besides the obvious grounding, time-outs, and revoking of privileges I don't really know of any other forms of punishment). It seems a moot point to think about it now as each child is different but I'm sure Brandon and I can figure it out as we go along. But the situation still irked me a bit. After all, we're adopting, not becoming foster parents. This child is going to be our child and I just felt that we should be able to raise our child in the manner that we feel is best. Whether it's religion, schooling, punishments, or other aspects of life, I just always felt that those would be our decisions to make as parents, not being told what we can and can't do. I did a bit of research and found that this clause is actually quite common and even my friends who have their own children say they're afraid to use spanking as a punishment for fear of their kids reporting them. Maybe it's my ignorance of the parenting world but I guess spanking is becoming obsolete these days. Who knew. I guess that's what I get for being infertile.

2) Our agency has a questionnaire that I'm sure is similar to all adoption agencies that ask what your comfort level is with certain drug use by expectant mothers. They list all kinds of potential drugs, their side effects on babies, yadda yadda and state that we shouldn't select anything we don't feel comfortable with handling. Yet we must be open to expectant moms who smoke daily because it's such a common thing. Smoking was the one drug I was open to accepting as my mom smoked when she was pregnant with me and I still turned out okay. But what about drinking? Marijuana? Antidepressents? I think I'm going to have to see a pediatrician about this. The paperwork states that the second most common drug use is marijuana and that if we're not open to the use of this drug then we may be waiting a longer time than average. I don't want to wait forever but is it really that uncommon to have a birthmom that doesn't do drugs or drink during pregnancy?

After reading this paperwork I started to get the feeling that my notions about adoption were probably a little inaccurate. So while these issues aren't dealbreakers for us, I think I need to really adjust my expectations and assumptions about the adoption process. I'm hoping that once we get the process started that all the rules and everything will make more sense but because we're just starting out it's a little hard.

Another few issues I have has to do with the homestudy part and other aspects of The Big Packet.

1) We need employer letters. I don't know what it has to say or if it's a form or what but I hadn't planned on telling my employer till we got on the waiting list. They don't know I'm going through fertility treatments, all I tell them now is that I have doctor appointments and that I have to leave for a few days for medical treatment (when I go to NC for my FET's). I'm not sure how they'll take it but I'm going to have to find a way to broach this subject with my supervisors soon.

2) We're going to have to talk about our family and our childhood at some point which is going to be pretty difficult. Brandon and I both had less-than-stellar childhoods. I grew up with an abusive alcoholic stepfather for 11 years and Brandon grew up poor. Poorer than poor. He lived in a hotel room in Las Vegas at some point in his life and left at the age of 15 to go live with his older sister for various reasons. I endured all kinds of abuse that I'll never forget, from being nicknamed "Short Fat Chubby Girl" to being made to eat a cigarette at the age of 7 (and it wasn't because I was caught smoking. I don't even recall what I did wrong, all I remember was the punishment). So we don't have the fairytale childhoods that some of our friends had. Some of those things may have determined how we live our lives now (Brandon is a spender, not a saver, because now he has the money and the means to do all the things he couldn't before. But he doesn't care for Christmas because he never got presents as a kid so it really holds no meaning for him). But for the most part, it doesn't. Even though we had so many years of bad situations, we both came out of it pretty unscathed. And everything we have now isn't because someone helped us along the way. Brandon and I are self-made people. We earned everything we have right now. And because of our past we don't really have excellent relationships with family members like we should. We each have our own close relationships within our family (mine is with my grandparents, Brandon's is with his sister and niece) but it still isn't the huge happy family that an expectant mom is probably going to want to see.

**I should point out that I do still have contact with everyone in my family, I just don't talk to them or visit on a regular basis. I sort of feel like an outsider, so to speak. Brandon doesn't talk to anyone in his family except his sister and niece and though he has 14 (I think) brothers and sisters, I've only met a handful of them.

So as you can see, I'm struggling with these feelings of inadequency. Like we're not going to be good enough to be parents. Because who is going to pick us with our crappy childhoods and strained family ties? And how in the world could I explain those situations on our profile without 1) lying by omission or 2) scaring away all the expectant moms?

I know that not all adoptive parents have a huge family circle or whatever but all my life I've been misunderstood and I just don't want that to happen again in this situation. We want to be parents more than anything and even though some say that it takes a village to raise a child, I think that Brandon and I could do a damn fine job on our own without a ton of family members around us. I just hope that there's an expectant mom out there who feels the same way.