A Mommy: Adoption; Lydia becomes Mikaela…

It’s been awhile since I posted anything but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been writing or thinking. I’ve had a difficult time moving forward, because some of the roadblocks coming up soon in my story are not only very painful to think about, but have been made fodder of by those who “think” they know my story. God reminded me that this is MY story. No one but He and I have lived it. No one can say, “A HA”! with a pointing finger because He will at some point in THEIR life show them the 3 fingers pointing back at themselves.  As I’ve spent this last week thinking and writing things down, God made clear to me that what’s important is that I do what HE has spoken in sweet whispers to my ear to do. And so I move forward.

I’ve been deciding which order to tell my story in. There are so many twists and turns! If you want the whole story, you’ll have to be sure to keep your eyes open! My daughter told me that I simply HAD to post something soon because she’s hanging on to the edge of her seat with anticipation! And so, although I almost put aside “A Mommy” for a bit, I changed my mind so that I could tell her story. This is the story about how Mikaela became my daughter.

In 1997, after 2 years of infertility treatments and a miscarriage, I was very sad about the notion that I’d never have a child to raise with my husband Joe. We each had our 2 kids from our first marriages and love them all DEARLY, but they weren’t there all the time. They spent part of their lives with their other parents who had very different values and ideas than us. We longed to have a child to raise together! Right after the miscarriage, Joe was hired to work on a website for http://www.precious.org/ . This is a website that helps interested families learn how adoption works and has photos of kids available. They aren’t an adoption agency, just a liaison. He kept telling me I should look at some of the kids on it. Well I was bound and determined that my body was GOING to produce another baby! So for about 2 weeks I resisted. But I kept thinking about my Polish heritage. I remembered how I’d thought it was so incredible when I heard about Russia allowing Americans to adopt and so one day, I took a glimpse. God melted my heart. I ran across this one little girl with big brown eyes sitting in an old fashioned buggy type stroller. That was when I KNEW we were going to adopt from Eastern Europe. We were flat broke and lived in a 2 bedroom apartment with 4 kids. I had no idea how god was going to remove this little roadblock!

But I knew God was in it so I started researching. I learned everything there was to know about adopting from Russia. We used the money Joe made from his side job working for the “precious”  website to move into a 4 bedroom house. We were moving along in the right direction. I was drawn to an agency that turned out to be close to home: http://www.godsfamilies.org . We were very wet behind the ears and still had NO MONEY to start the process, but I felt that we had to meet them and find out what we needed to do. The day of our meeting it was stormy… in Southern California! I LOVE storms! I took it to be a good sign. It was raining hard, but we turned this one corner and the sky cleared and we saw a triple rainbow! I knew then that we were going to use this agency. I just didn’t know when. When we met with them, we learned that the country they had good relations with at the time was Ukraine.

Hmm.. I’d thought God said Russia. But we felt strongly that we were in the right hands, and after researching the differences in the adoption process, I fell in love with the way Ukraine handles the adoption process. Instead of deciding on a child based on a photo or a video, you wait until you’re in country and visit with the child to commit. I loved this idea. The only downfall was you were there for a much longer time. We started out on this journey in February of 1998. Every single time there was money due for one thing or another, somehow we had it! Either a garage sale made exactly what we needed, or a donation for the exact amount came in. Usually it was that Joe got a computer related project that just covered the current need. From the very beginning I prayed that this would be done before the end of the year… kinda like the time frame of an actual pregnancy. Our agency kept saying no way! Well, they didn’t know how my brain worked! I worked tirelessly on the paperwork and the fundraising. It was all coming together nicely.

I waited anxiously for word that our paperwork had been approved by Ukraine and that we had a date to travel. It did and we got ready to go. We still didn’t have all the money we needed for the travel, but figured god had financed the whole venture from the start, so… About a month before we were to go, a couple at our church who were from Eastern Europe, told us our airfare was covered! What! Awesome! My biological kids who were in 6^th and 7^th grade wanted to come and they raised their own airfare money. Very impressive! I busily ironed my money as instructed. (Ukraine is fearful of counterfeit money and wants all bills to be as new and crisp as possible!) We got our travel date. We were going to be gone for Christmas. I was getting my wish… an adoption before the end of the year!

You’re thinking, “Where are the roadblocks?” “She always talks about roadblocks!” Oh my! The roadblocks were waiting in Ukraine! But we aren’t there yet! First, smooth sailing across the ocean to Germany for a one night lay over. We discovered that my son Matt cannot go without food and sleep. WOW! He was one cranky guy trying to cope with jet lag. Once we fed him Pizza he was a bit better though. We weren’t in Germany for very long though. Just long enough for me to be able to better visualize some of the books I’d read about WWII better. And to realize that not everyone sets the table the way we do in America.

We landed just outside of Kiev and were met by our driver and translator. They couldn’t get over how much luggage we brought! We knew we’d be gone for at least 5 weeks. There were 4 of us. I needed my Charmin toilet paper. We needed to be sure the kids would be properly nourished. Oh, and there was the secret bag that contained “Christmas”! 12 large suitcases and 4 carryon’s... We needed a separate car just to drive the luggage to our cozy flat in the heart of Kiev. Oh that flat! I could spend hours writing about the fun we had in there! The things we saw out that window! THE DOOR! I’m lost in the memories!

We unpacked and tried to sleep, but we were so excited to go to the Adoption Center to find out about the girls they were sending us to visit with. I knew Mikaela was out there and I just had to find her! Morning couldn’t come fast enough (and I wasn’t use to the time change anyhow). We finally visit the Center. There were many phone calls on an old fashioned rotary phone and quick speech with lots of “Da, Da, Da’s” being said. I wished I’d have learned my Russian better! Through our translator they told us about 5 girls. I was bound and determined to get an infant under 1 although I’d been told that was impossible. But I was an RN and was willing to see children with medical issues. We were told about a 10 month old with a cleft lip and palate.  Was sure that was Mikaela and wanted to see her first. But all 5 girls were on the far East side of Ukraine… a 12 hour train ride away. And the 10 month old was at an orphanage that was the furthest away. We were to visit a little girl getting ready to turn 2 first.

The whole train ride I lamented the waste of time we were taking going to the Kramators’k Baby House first. I complained to God who surely KNEW we should be going to the furthest one first! We could always work our way back and see this other one if the baby didn’t work out! But I was putting my own roadblock in the way of God’s plan. He had ordered the path of my feet. I just didn’t know it yet! I had other things to fascinate myself with to keep my mind busy on the train. You could see the railroad ties under the train when you flushed the smelly toilet. That explained why they locked the bathrooms as we approached the sleepy towns along the way! The hot tea that was served to our little compartment came in cute glasses in silver holders. The temperature in the old pre WWII train in the dead of winter well exceeded 85 degrees. There were gypsy type people that came on the train at a few stops to sell their wares who would throw open the compartment door that I thought was locked. (We discovered why bungee cords were on our packing list!) On that very first train, we’d had to split into 3 groups because we’d gotten the tickets at the last second. Our facilitator, Laura (my daughter) and I were in one compartment with an older peasant woman while our translator was somewhere unknown. But poor Matt (my son) and Joe! They were in an 85 degree compartment with some very nice peasant women who apparently did not have running water wherever they were from or money for deodorant or laundry facilities. We are SO spoiled in America! We finally made it to Kramators’k in one piece (although id kept my eye out the window for flying demons like in the movie Anastasia).

After a few stops, we arrived at the first orphanage… the one I thought was a waste of time. We were ushered into the orphanage director’s room and served hot tea. He was a very nice man who clearly loved the children in his care. We waited for “Lydia” to arrive. Well you already saw the title to this entry so you already know what happens, but hear me out… We hear this woman talking like how you speak to a small child coming from the hallway and she enters the room. In walks the tiniest thing I’d ever seen walking on 2 legs! Seriously! She was 2 and was only 19” tall. She kept looking at her feet and had this giant bow the size of her head on top of her very sparse hair. She looked up at us finally and smiled…. And melt our hearts. I knew I was looking at Mikaela… the girl I’d prayed for since February that year. The girl we were giving the feminine form of my husband’s middle name, Michaele.

There are so many stories of that trip I wish I had time to tell right now. We hit many roadblocks before we made it home… We were there at Christmas and New Year. Ukraine practically closes down for a week between New Year and their Christmas on January 7^th. Although our adoption was processed and finalized on December 31^st, we had lots of paperwork to finish up that we couldn’t take care of until the government offices opened back up. Then in Poland where we had to travel for Mikaela’s visa, we were stuck because Warsaw’s international airport does not have the ability to allow airplanes to take off in Fog. What was to be a 5 week trip took 7 and we came home with 1 dollar and our credit cards maxed out.

What I want you to take away from this story is that God ALWAYS makes a way for His plans to succeed. No man can stand in the way. You may end up with only a dollar in your pocket and really hungry pre-teens, but His plans will prosper!

A final story: Remember how I said Mikaela was looking down at her feet the day we met her? Well, I asked about that. I was told the children never got to wear shoes because there weren’t enough to go around and she was very happy having them on. This we child who is now 14 still loves SHOES! If she had to choose between a hundred dollar outing or a 20.00 pair of new shoes, she’ll pick the shoes every time!

Next: The roll-over car accident that changed my life.

A Mommy… Bio kids and miscarriages

I’ve had many, many different jobs in my life. I’ve been a cashier at a meat market and worked in the school cafeteria. I was the premier babysitter for Huntington Beach residents. I worked at a florist making corsages, boutonnieres and running deliveries. I was a nursing assistant, a school bus driver. I was a prison guard at the men’s maximum security prison in Oklahoma and even worked on death row. I went back as a prison nurse after I became an RN. I was a nursing administrator at an old folk’s home. I was a NICU nurse, a pediatric nurse, and a labor and delivery nurse. But the hardest job I’ve ever had was being a mom.

This story will take several blogs about many different adventures on my road to motherhood.  I have 2 biological kids, 2 step-kids, 2 adopted kids, and 2 babies in heaven waiting for me. Today I’ll just talk about my 4 pregnancies.

The plan was to start our family after I graduated. But, I found out I was pregnant my second year of nursing school. Graduation was to be in the beginning of May and the baby was due in June. It was a bit early, but I was so excited! I started dreaming about all the things I would see during this baby’s life. I imagined the sleepless nights, the joy of the first smile, and the feel of the baby’s skin. I imagined the first crawl, the first upright moment without my help, and her first step. (I always felt it was a girl although I don’t have data on THIS pregnancy.) I imagined the first day of kindergarten all the way through high school graduation. I dreamed about her wedding and eventually my grandbabies.

Once the first trimester ended, I felt safe. But during my 13^th week, I began to bleed and it never stopped. At week 15 the doctor finally convinced me there was no longer a heartbeat and I allowed him to do a D & C. It was the first big hurt of my life. I felt like my soul had been removed, trampled over, and then put back into my body. If you’ve never had a miscarriage, you cannot begin to understand the pain. People wanted me to just go back to normal. The pregnancy was an accident after all. These things happen. Now I could focus on graduation, the NCLEX-RN, and finding my first nursing job. But to me it was the end of a dream. It didn’t matter if I had 20 other baby’s after that. THIS one was dead. People just don’t get how this was a family member who died, but you don’t even get to have a funeral and a burial site to visit the baby at. Only my faith in God could bring my joy back and He did but it took months... It took until I was pregnant again and made it past 13 weeks! She’s still dead on earth but I know I’ll see her in heaven and that gives me hope.

Right about her due date, I found out I was pregnant again. This one was planned. I’d been trying  since graduation. It was amazing! I LOVED being pregnant. Some people don’t. I thought it was the best feeling in the world. The thing I kept thinking about was that if I hadn’t lost the other baby, this one would never have been. I’m now living all those dreams I had. I named him Matthew… it means “God’s Greatest Gift” and he is. He’s getting married in 6.5 weeks and I love his fiancé. I couldn’t have dreamed up a better mate for him! Now don’t think it’s all been butterflies and bubble gum because there have been many roadblocks I’ve walked through with him. That’s for another day though. Today I celebrate his life! Thank you God for your great gift to me!

When he was about a year old, I started thinking about the next one. We wanted them close together so they could be close friends growing up. Their dad was close in age to his siblings and he’d loved it. I have a 6 and 8 year gap between myself and my siblings and it made me feel like I was from a whole different family at times. I got pregnant the second month I tried. This made them 17 months apart. My dreams came true when I had a little girl. I’d always prayed for a boy and then a girl. It happened. We named her Laura. I’d always loved the stories of Laura Ingalls Wilder and imagined this child having her adventurous spirit and joyfulness about life. From the very beginning she was adventurous and curious! She had questions about everything and loved to talk. I loved listening to her. It was amazing to see how the 2 were so alike and yet so different. And again, there are roadblocks there too. But today I celebrate her life! Thank you God for this second great blessing!

I loved watching those 2 grow! I loved doing everything I’d ever imagined with or for them. Girl Scouts, boy scouts, ice skating lessons, karate lessons. We went camping, hiking, on vacations and explored together. During all of this, the next most painful thing that ever happened to me occurred in my marriage. That’s for another time. I only bring it up now to be able to talk about my 4^th pregnancy.

With my second husband we tried almost from the beginning to have a baby together. We loved raising all 4 our kids with our first spouses together, but they we’re only there half the time. So we wanted a child we could raise together who could be a part of our big blended family but would be ours alone to raise . With how fast I’d gotten pregnant the previous 3 times, I thought there’d be no problem. After a year we started looking into what could be stopping us. To my surprise I found that my right fallopian tube was practically nonexistent and the ovary on that side was misshaped. The ovary on the left side was further away from the fallopian tube than it should have been. HUGE ROADBLOCK! The doctor said it was a true miracle that my previous babies had been conceived without medical intervention. Matt and Laura are true miracles! Did you know that there’s only a 15% chance of getting pregnant each time you ovulate and that’s only if you have no medical issues, know what you’re doing and do everything right. I’d had many medical issues before then, had been grossly obese most of my life, and this time I was in my late 30’s.

I will tell you all about my experience with infertility issues and medically assisted attempts at becoming pregnant another time. What’s important for today is that we tried that and it didn’t work. We gave up. About 3 months after I stopped taking hormones, I found out I was pregnant. Well I was incredibly surprised and excited! I figured NOTHING would possibly go wrong because this was another miracle! I again made it to week 13 and started bleeding. I again found there was no longer a heartbeat and had a D&C. This time I got the report back on that baby. It was a girl (I knew it!) and she had one extra chromosome. She didn’t have a chance. Well if I thought the first miscarriage was bad I was wrong. This one took all the wind out of my sails! I went into a deep depression. I couldn’t understand where God was during all of this. I felt like this was a roadblock I couldn’t figure a way around. I know I have 2 babies in heaven waiting for me, but dang!

NOW I see where God was leading me. What I thought was an insurmountable roadblock turned out to be a fork in the road. That a long story but I’ll give you a teaser today… My husband got a gig working on an internet adoption site for overseas adoptions… and ever since that first baby had come over from Russia, (you remember the headlines… “From Russia With Love!”) I’d wanted to do that. I’m half Polish! I’d always loved Eastern European history! It lifted me out of my depression. But that’s for next time! But know this… God puts forks in the road when you think you’ve hit the end of the road. You just have to know how to look for them! I’m hoping eventually to help you find answers to your roadblocks as I work through my own.

Till next time,

Tink

(Note from Tink: If you’re reading my blogs, could you do me a favor and become a follower on BlogSpot or leave a comment on Facebook? I want to know if this is interesting to anyone other than me! Thanks!)

A Nursie and a Mommy

You know when you’re little how people ask you what you want to be when you grow up? Well I wanted to be a nursie and a mommy. As I cruised through my rebellious teen years and straight into getting married at 19, I figured the nurse part would never happen, but I had big plans for being a mom. And now that I was married, that would happen.  But wait… back up! Did you catch that word, “rebellious” in that sentence? I’m also very competitive. Put those 2 together and you’ve got fireworks!

When I was a teen I had shared my dreams with my bff Cheryl. Talk about competitive… that described our friendship! She found out I liked a guy… she went after him and got him. I pretended it didn’t hurt. We both wanted to be on drill team, so I lost weight and got on drill team. I’m sure that whole senior year was one big hurt to her because I’d gotten the one thing we’d both wanted since freshman year. So one day when I was living in Oklahoma (and I remember this conversation like it was this morning), she called and said “guess what”? Those were scary words when she said them. “I’m going to vocational school to become an L.V.N.”!  WHAT!?! She had NEVER said anything about wanting to be a nurse.

I hung up and immediately called the local college. It’s June and classes start in August and their nursing program is designed to really be a 3 year program even though it’s a 2 year associates program. I was told that it would be impossible to get in without any prerequisites and that the interviews were long over anyhow… the year was full. I would have to spend a year taking pre-requisites. Well THAT would never do! I asked if there were any exceptions and they said, “score above a…  (I forget the number) on the entrance exam and you’ll earn an interview! Now I come from a long line of non-college attendees and so had never taken any college prep classes or any extra classes in high school that would help me, I was smart though… I had finished all my required high school work and could have graduated as a junior, but there was drill team! And there were friends! And there was the fact that I’d started Kindergarten a year early and didn’t WANT to be a 16 year old HS grad, so I’d taken all fun classes my senior year and was NOT college ready... And I am HORRIBLE at math. So didn’t have any great expectations to score that magical number other than praying fervently!

So I pray! And I take the test. This was in Oklahoma at a college where the majority of students graduate with a major in agriculture or animal science. It’s small. That meant getting my results back quickly was a cinch. I expected a letter… that’s what they told me to expect. I got a call. I had not only beaten that magic number, but had crushed it! It turned out that only one person in the next years nursing program had gotten a higher score. I got my interview and got into the program. I had to carry 18 credits per semester plus summer school, but I got in. Cheryl never did go to nursing school. I really did feel bad about that, but I also knew, she never had really wanted to be a nurse in the beginning so the drive to succeed in that area wasn’t there for her.

During those early years of my 20’s is when my family began to say I had the type of brain that found solutions. It’s true even to this day. Whenever I want something, I put my mind to it and figure out how to make it happen. Now that I’m middle-aged, I’ve come to realize that the only thing that’s ever stopped me from reaching a solution to a roadblock is PEOPLE! (…or God! But mostly people!) Sometimes their words cause me to feel unsure of myself and I succumb to my insecurities and “change my mind”. (This really makes it my own fault.) Sometimes I just cannot “help” them see that I know what I’m doing and have intelligently and carefully thought through the process, and because they are somehow intertwined with the outcome, I am blocked from going down what I KNOW is the right road.

Now don’t get me wrong! I’ve made too many mistakes! Some of them are just a course of life… everyone makes mistakes. Some of my mistakes were total derailing train wrecks. But the thing is that when I make a mistake and realize it, my brain is always working on how to overcome that particular roadblock, correct it, learn from it, amend for it to whomever I’ve wronged, and get back on the right path. It just seems that the only mistakes I haven’t been able to overcome are because of other people’s inability to help me remove the roadblock and move on. It’s like they WANT to see me lying there miserable in my failure, squirming under their judgmental stares. They thrive on it. They can’t (or won’t) see that I WANT to make things right.

What I’ve decided though is that I want to lead a joyful, happy, fulfilled life despite the ongoing trials in my life. I have to learn to walk around them and keep going. It’s just that it’s so hard! I feel certain people’s stares boring into the back of my skull! Just seeing that I CAN still be joyful in the midst of some hard, hard times makes them try that much harder to crush my spirit.

I choose today to be at peace with myself. I choose to know that I am a good person despite my very human mistakes. I have been blessed in SO MANY ways and I will be joyful in that knowledge. I have a brain that figures out ways to make things happen. So I will choose to make NEW and different things happen in my life. Those people who’ve stumbled me will have to live with their own mistakes for blocking my God given path in life. I am a creature of God who is beautiful and talented and with God, I will succeed.

And about being a nursie and a mommy? You’ve hear the nursie story.  You’ll hear the mommy story next, so be watching!