waiting

It has been a long, often frustrating road of red tape; however, our house was officially licensed for fostering in October. We held off on actually activating our profile as foster parents until I had healed more fully from my surgery. As I have been feeling great these past few weeks, the other day we decided to tell our case worker that we were ready to take in a baby.

And now it’s time to wait.

Five weeks? Two days? Three months? We have no idea how long it will be until we receive a placement. Even though we are hoping to receive a child into our home, it is with the grim understanding that it will only happen through an awful circumstance that surely will be traumatic for the child.

Ryan has detailed a little of his journey to our decision to foster. I suppose this is the time to explain mine. Like he said, both fostering and adoption have been on my heart for a very long time, since I was a young child, in fact. During our engagement, Ryan and I discussed adoption, even specifically foster-to-adopt. However, getting pregnant two months after we got married put that idea to the side for awhile.

It didn’t return to my heart for a couple more years. I have a distinct memory a few weeks after our miscarriage in which I was rocking Philomena to sleep and praying fervently for the future of our family. Very clearly on my heart I sensed God telling me that there was a bigger plan at work in our lives, specifically adoption. Immediately I told God that I would be open to the idea, but I needed a year to try have another natural child before we could take any concrete steps to pursue this route.

The year that followed was certainly a spiritual and emotional roller coaster. Doctors, fertility treatments, painful let-downs every month. And yet, there was something profound happening in my soul. It is hard to explain, but it was deeper than all of the disappointment and tears. I was heart-broken, but I sensed God using the brokenness to build something beautiful. [Does that sound corny? Sorry.]

We were experiencing it differently, but God was working similarly in Ryan. He was so strong, so certain that all of this was for a purpose.

Around November of last year, Ryan and I started talking seriously about adoption. I remember a specific Sunday morning we were just talking about the possibility at the table after breakfast, and both of our eyes filled with tears. They were the kind of tears that aren’t out of sadness, but rather a sign that we knew this moment was of utmost [eternal?] significance. Ryan took my hand and said, “I’m all in, Sarah. If this is what God wants of us, I’m in.”

We looked into a few different adoption options, but honestly we only ever seriously considered foster-to-adopt. Many people pursue this route, because it is a lot less expensive than traditional adoptions. Of course that was a factor for us, but even more we knew we wanted to take in a child that may be overlooked by others. We wanted to take on an innocent person’s sufferings as our own.

Finally in May we began the classes and the mounds of paperwork to be certified as foster parents. It was during this process in May and June that God worked on my heart once again. At first, I only wanted to be open to children who were already free to be adopted. However, the Lord used some circumstances beyond our control to change me. It’s a long and ridiculous story, but basically the odd layout of our house meant that we only could be certified to take children two years old and younger; they actually would prefer us to take children under 12 months. [Originally we hoped to take in children four years and younger.] Because the process to be free for adoption is so long and drawn out in the foster system, very few babies [maybe none?] are already free for adoption before they are 12 months old.

Basically, if we wanted to continue this process, we would have to be open to just-fostering, which means we would take in babies whom we may or may not be able to adopt some day. Ryan was completely open to this, and it was through his witness that I too became open.

I remember talking in the car after one of the classes, and he said something like, “even if we only have a child for one month or six months or whatever, we can still show him unconditional love. He won’t be old enough to remember it later, but it is still objectively good for him.” Then on another evening, I made some whiney-selfish comment to Ryan like, “but, after having a child in my home, I couldn’t bear to give him back!” And Ryan immediately responded, “It’s not about you! It’s about the child. He is not yours. The child is ultimately the Lord’s, and he is still someone else’s son or daughter. It is not about what you want; it is about what is best for him or her.”

He was right, sooooo right.

We went from “we feel called to adoption” to “we feel called to foster, and maybe God will allow us to adopt one day.”

One thing that I always knew for certain was that I didn’t want adoption to be a “consolation prize” for us, a “lesser” choice to having natural children. I wanted to be certain that we were called to this, regardless of our infertility. I can honestly say that we are in that place right now. I am certain God used our inability to have another child to bring us here, but He did, indeed, bring us here. I am certain that even if I found out tomorrow that I was pregnant, we would still take in a foster child if we received the phone call that very same day.

When a baby is placed in our home, we have no idea how long s/he will be with us. He or she could be part of our family for two weeks, two months, even two years, and then returned to the birth family [which is always the preference of the foster system]. Or, we could have him or her forever. Accepting this precarious unknown has taken much surrender on our part. This surrender is only in theory now. God only knows the difficulty of the reality of it.

And thus, here we are. Waiting.

“The” Surgery: Part Three

[Click for Part One and Part Two.]

I am glad I am writing these posts now, because I think if I would  have written all of this when I was “in” it, I would have probably been fairly despondent and cranky. Like I said at the beginning, I am feeling *great* right now. Of course, I am still “recovering.” I can’t lift Philomena or push a shopping cart, and I get sore and tired easily. Nevertheless, I feel so much better than I did even last week that it gives me hope for a full recovery. Not going to lie, there were moments in which I felt I would never get better.

While I was “in” the suffering, I kept hearing about truly difficult situations: a friend’s baby having his second heart surgery in his 8 months of life; someone diagnosed with cancer; a relative close to dying; a friend’s brother dying; and many more. Of course, hearing about these situations gave me “perspective” on my own little difficulties. And yet, it provoked something greater in me. I talk quite a bit about the “beauty” in suffering, but when you’re in it, the suffering feels pretty darn ugly. Truly. But, I guess that’s the point. So much of our existence is lived trying to rid ourselves of any suffering, pain, or inconvenience, be it physical, emotional, spiritual. However, we can never totally eradicate it. Suffering is part of our human experience. We are fallen; we are broken. We need to accept that in order to accept the answer to it.

And not to get too preachy, but the beauty comes in the reality that we have a God who took on all of our humanity, even the brokenness. I mean, Christ’s passion and death was probably pretty ugly, right? During my “lowest” moments this past month when I really struggled to have hope, that is when I encountered Him most profoundly…because I had to. That is the most beautiful of all needs.

And beauty? It was there. It was so there. I have never felt more loved by friends and family than I did in these weeks.  As I said before, I was inundated with cards, phone calls, emails, texts that were incredibly sincere, supportive, and prayerful. Friends invited Ryan over for food and company during his lonely days in Wichita. Someone at our parish mowed our lawn without being asked. People sent up gifts for Philomena. A priest friend offered a novena of Masses for me. We received giftcards for gas and other expenses. My household sisters from college actually filmed a succession of videos that told an intricate story to entertain me in the hospital. My aunt and uncle were the most gracious of hosts for the five weeks. My mother-in-law took off a whole week of work for when we were supposed to return. We received a moving “spiritual bouquet” from friends at our church. Now that we’re home, people are bringing us meals, helping watch Mena, and being my “personal shopper” [that would be my sister]. The list goes on.

And yet, the gold star for generosity goes to my mother. She lovingly took care of Philomena and me without ever once complaining. Where they were staying was 20-30 minutes from the hospital, but she still made the drive with Mena twice every. single. day, so I could have a few precious hours with my daughter. And she still cooked and cleaned and took care of all of us. She and my dad had to cancel a vacation to Boston, which they did without a second thought.

I already wrote about how extraordinary Philomena was during this time. My heart was so moved by her witness to me.

Then there’s Ryan, who drove to/from Omaha five (!!!) times, all while balancing a full-time job and two classes. He never complained either. Seriously. I think I was the only one doing all the complaining.

I suppose this is my way of saying thank you for all of the kindness and prayers. My body was broken, but my heart is full.

The End.

Nurse Philomena advanced quickly in her skills.

“The” Surgery: Part Two

[Click for Part One.]

Well, the surgery ended up being more serious than anticipated. I think it took around eight hours? They had to remove *eight inches* of my small intestine. That first stay in the hospital ended up being seven days. I wasn’t allowed to eat or drink anything, and I had a catheter along with an NG tube for quite a few days. Truthfully, that week was kind of a blur of morphine, ice chips, and HGTV. That said, my clearest memory is of Ryan being absolutely extraordinary. It is humbling needing help with *everything*, but he was right there with me every step. It was his encouragement that got me out of bed and moving around a bit, even though I was so uncomfortable. And I was able to receive the sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick.

I received *so* many calls, texts, emails, flowers, and cards from friends and family. Even though this was one of the roughest weeks of my life, I do not know if I’ve ever felt more loved. More on that later.

gratuitous picture of Nurse Philomena #2

My birthday was Day Six in the hospital, and it was particularly tough. I was finally allowed to drink liquids, but with the return of bowel function came a whole host of other absolutely awful issues I will not detail here [you’re welcome]. It was also the day Ryan had to return to Wichita, so I was left alone. Not to be dramatic, but I do not think I have ever seen the cross more clearly than in that afternoon.

Anyway, so I ended up being released to my aunt’s house, where I was able to stay for a couple days. Another aunt from Denver came to help out, which was another blessing. I thought I was starting to recover, albeit slowly. However, a routine blood test the day before my second surgery revealed an elevated white blood cell count. As soon as I returned to my aunt’s from the blood draw, the doctors called me and told me to return to the hospital where I was to be re-admitted.

Ryan had already planned on returning to Omaha later that night, but when he got word of the issues, he left work right away to drive the five hours to be with me.

After more blood draws, an X-ray, and an IV-contrast CT scan, it was discovered that I had a very large abscess in my abdomen. Basically, it was a significant collection of infected fluid from a bacteria that somehow found its way into the abdominal cavity [is that the right word? I know I’m hacking all of this medical-speak.] The next day the “short” surgery ended up being a few hours, in which they drained the abscess as much as possible and tried to fix some of the extensive damage it caused. They put a drain in my abdomen, so I was able to see all the lovely secretions myself for days to come [yay!], and I was put on serious IV antibiotics. Once again I was in the hospital for an undetermined amount of time. Ryan had to return home that Monday, but as I will talk about later, my mom and Philomena came up twice a day for many hours.

A week later they removed the drain and were talking about releasing me. However, Dr. Hilgers decided as a precaution to order one more IV-contrast CT scan to make sure everything was alright. Sadly, the scan revealed that the abdominal abscess had returned, and two more abscesses on my liver had formed. The next day I had a “procedure” in which interventional radiologists used the CT scan images to place another drain in my abdomen and a second on my liver.

Yet again, I had drains coming from me, ridiculous amounts of antibiotics (now given to me in my new-and-improved picc line), and an undetermined amount of days in the hospital.

After five days, I had another CT scan, and it was determined they could take out my liver drain. [Sidenote: can we talk about how ironic it is that the woman who doesn’t allow a microwave in her kitchen for fear of residual radiation had five CT scans in the course of three weeks? Yeah. The doctors jokingly called me a “glow-worm.”] However, because I was on medication to prevent blood clotting, when they pulled out the drain, I bled and bled and bled. In hindsight, this probably wasn’t the most serious of issues, but just seeing all that blood soaking gown after gown of mine was unbelievably frightening. Finally, they were able to get the bleeding under control, and I had to receive some platelets.

Nurse Philomena taking a break from her duties to color.

A couple days later (at the end of week three in the hospital), they were ready to release me to my aunt’s house, but I wasn’t allowed to return to Wichita until my abdominal drain could be removed. I had a home health nurse come every day to take care of the drain. And (you’re not going to believe this) a doctor who is doing her fellowship with Dr. Hilgers came to my aunt’s house *every day* to check on me. Talk about compassionate care.

Anyway, I ended up staying at my aunt’s for another 10 (long!!!) days. Other than a possible blood clot in my lung that landed me in the ER one afternoon [it ended up being nothing, thank God!], these days were fairly uneventful. I was on two types of oral antibiotics that left me incredibly nauseous and listless. I really tried playing and interacting with Philomena as much as possible, but that proved to be difficult at times.

Finally, my drain was pulled last Monday (October 13), and we were able to come home on Tuesday. I was definitely crying tears of joy [and pain! Five hours on the road post-surgery is no joke] as I walked into our house, where Mena and I were greeted by signs, streamers, balloons, and presents. Oh, and Ryan was there too. ;)

Part Three will be much happier, I promise!

“The” Surgery: Part One

I didn’t mean to be cryptic when I alluded to my recent hospital stay, but it is just such a looooooong story without many pictures. I didn’t want to bore you with the details until the time was right. And I suppose now will suffice. I also decided to break this into a few parts, because I am quite ramble-y. My apologies.

[I’ll start with a spoiler: I doing very well and recovering incredibly. There were some scary moments in the past six weeks, but I am okay. Praise the Lord.]

As I’ve mentioned before, Ryan and I are experiencing secondary infertility; there is a high likelihood we will not be able to have any more natural children. There has been a lot of heartache over the past year-and-a-half, but I can honestly say we are moving to a place of peace with the struggle. I plan to write a lot more about it in the future; however, as many of you know, we truly think God is using this cross to lead us into the world of fostering and, God-willing, adoption some day. Ryan wrote beautifully about this journey, and I encourage you to read his words…not just because he says lots of kind things about me. ;) [Incidentally, he wrote that post while I was in the hospital.]

That said, even though we thought God was using our infertility to make us open to life in other ways, namely fostering and adoption, we still weren’t ready to close the door to natural children. So, in June we had a couple weeks of appointments with Dr. Hilgers at the Pope Paul VI Institute in Omaha. I had an investigative laparoscopic surgery at that time. The surgery revealed extremely extensive endometriosis all over my reproductive organs, appendix, bladder, and most notably my small intestine. It was recommended that I return in a few months for a more extensive surgery to remove the endometriosis, which would most likely involve a bowel resection.

gratuitous picture of Nurse Philomena #1

I will admit that Ryan and I agonized over this decision. Quite frankly, I don’t have a lot of the outward symptoms of endometriosis, so it’s not as if I was living with pain on a daily basis. Furthermore, the surgery is pretty expensive, and there was no guarantee (obviously) of being able to get pregnant afterwards. However, through a lot of discussions and prayer we came to the conclusion that we would do it simply for my health, and if by some miracle I’d be able to get pregnant again, then that would be an extra blessing. I say “my health,” in that there are women in my family who have had to have hysterectomies at young ages, so our hope was that this surgery would prevent the same for me. Also, the endometriosis was so insidious on my small intestine that there was a high probability of future problems. And we both agreed that if I was going to have a surgery like this, we might as well do it with one of the most experienced endometriosis-removal doctors in the nation, even if it mean the inconvenience of being five hours from Wichita.

[Before any naysayers show up here and tell me things like, “endometriosis can be fixed by diet and hormone therapy alone. Surgery is unnecessary.” Maybe you are right. However, I spent well over a year making major adjustments to how I was eating and taking ridiculous amounts of supplements. I went to regular doctors, a naturopath, and NaPro doctors. We really felt like we did everything we could have. So there’s that.]

The major surgery was scheduled for September 9, with a second (smaller) surgery on September 19 to removed some protective coating they placed in the first one. My mom and Philomena stayed with my aunt and uncle who lived in the area, and Ryan took a week off of work and class to be in the hospital with me. In terms of the actual procedure, Dr. Hilgers was going to focus on the removal of endometriosis on my reproductive organs; another general surgeon was going to focus on my small intestine and the removal of my appendix. No one was exactly sure as to how long I would be in the hospital, but they said something along the lines of “maximum five days.”

Ha.

See what happens next in Part Two.

past, present, future

“What I am doing, you do not understand now, but you will understand later.” John 13:7

This morning I woke up at 5:15 to do some work. [I know! On a Saturday no less.] About an hour later, I heard Philomena crying through the monitor. This was definitely too early for her to be up. Then I heard Ryan going to her and comforting her only to be met with a screeching, “Moooooommmmmy! Moooooommmmmy! Moooooommmmmy!” I considered just ignoring it and letting him deal with her [and he gladly would have], but it was Ryan’s first morning to sleep past 6:00 in months, and I felt a twinge of wifely guilt. So, I closed the computer and went upstairs.

When I picked her up, Mena immediately quieted, and I decided to bring her to our bed to cuddle. Quickly she fell back asleep in my arms. Since I was wide awake, I definitely contemplated sneaking away to get some more work done, but then I decided this was one of those soak-up-the-moment-because-your-baby-is-getting-so-big times. And so, I just held my sleeping toddler and prayed in the early morning light.

I will admit I’ve been having a lot more of these moments lately. And it goes deeper than the cliche “oh, they grow up so fast!” kind of mentalities. Since Ryan and I have been dealing with secondary infertility [we’ve actively been trying to have a baby since our miscarriage almost a year ago], there is a very distinct possibility she may be our only child. I don’t mean this in a pessimistic or pity-seeking way; it is just the reality of the situation.

Lately, I’ve made comments to Ryan like, “sometimes I wish I would have known in that first year she might be our only baby. Maybe I would have been more present. Maybe I would have approached those months differently.”

However, the more I think and pray about it, it is probably good that the Lord shielded us from that knowledge. An example that comes to mind was when I was studying abroad in Europe for a semester in college. Every weekend I went to a different country for a new adventure. I remember someone giving me the advice, “you should go to each new city with the mentality that you will be coming back someday.” At first, I thought that notion was ludicrous. I figured I should be doing the opposite. I should be going to each city as if I would never be back, so as to do and see everything that I could. However, I quickly learned that there is a lot to take in when traveling in a new place. And the times I tried to do and see “everything,” I wouldn’t be having a good time, and I just ended up stressed out.

I think the same would have happened if I knew Philomena may be our only child. I was already pretty emotional about milestones and having her “grow up.” If I would have known this may be the only time I experienced it, I think I would have been almost paralyzed with stress and anxiety about “experiencing” it perfectly.

And if I look deep inside myself, I really don’t have any major regrets regarding those early months. Indeed, I did soak up her newborn-ness, just gazing at her for hours and hours on end. I did appreciate those hundreds [thousands?] hours of nursing. And we took an absolutely ridiculous amount of pictures and videos. I am sure we were distracted at times, but overall we were present, probably more so than we had ever been in our former lives. If I would have known she may be our “only,” I would have been accompanied by a constant fear of “missing this moment.”

Yes, it is true that she may be our only child. Or maybe God will, indeed, grant us another baby. Or perhaps He will open the door to adoption. And maybe that door will be for an older child, not a newborn. Or maybe it will be for a baby. Your prediction is as good as mine at this point.

Regardless, this post is not really about the “what if” of our future. Rather, I am starting to realize that we need to find that balance in embracing the present moment, because there never will be another one just like “the now.” On the other hand, if I live my life with the fear of each of these moments leaving, then I am never truly “in” them. Christ said, “do not worry about tomorrow; tomorrow will take care of itself” (Matthew 6:34). This is true, of course, but I also think it applies to yesterday: He has already taken care of the past too, so we need to learn to let go.

“My past, O Lord, to Your mercy; my present, to Your love; my future to Your providence.” St. Padre Pio

soaking up her newborn-ness