"I know this must be disappointing"

That's what the adoption agency said. What an understatement. Our adoption journey lasted six days. After we filled out the paperwork on the weekend, I had several follow up questions I needed answered quickly as we had found out last Friday that the fee schedule is changing March 1st. One of the significant changes was that the cost of our homestudy would jump from $5500 to $7000 if we did not get the forms in by the end of February. Coupled with the fact that my severance pay from 2012 was not taxed high enough (feelings of hate towards my former employer slightly resurfacing), we were also scrambling to get major RRSP contributions in by March 1st. Shitty week.

The fine print said that "prospective adoptive applicants who become pregnant, give birth or begin infertility treatment during the homestudy process or prior to the referral of a child will be required to put their adoption process on hold.....applicants are to notify the agency immediately if infertility treatments are started and within 3 months of becoming pregnant."

I inquired about how this policy works. They said that couples need to ensure they are ready to go through this process and have exhausted all other options. Couples must have grieved the fact that they cannot have their own biological children (does grief ever really end? what about the loss of our babies?). If a couple becomes pregnant naturally, which they don't encourage but cannot stop in reality, then the process is on hold (until the birth of the baby and a subsequent updated homestudy is done). For those going through infertility treatments, the adoption process cannot even start. I said I understand putting the process on hold if there is a viable pregnancy, but in our circumstance we have made this resolution that we are ready to adopt even if we have one biological child, and because we need to get pregnant by infertility treatments rather than naturally is unfair. It needs to be determined on a case by case basis and for that to occur an extensive interview needs to be done. If a couple had recurrent miscarriages through natural pregnancies then they could still go through a homestudy, and in the home study they prove that they are ready for adoption. Many couples I bet may not even be honest about that and here we were being up front with it all.

The agency kept claiming this policy is in the best interest of the adopted child and they need couples who are committed - which didn't make sense to me as there is a huge wait list, the home study is the first stage which takes 5-6 months to complete, and education sessions are offered only twice a year. It takes ages just to get on the waiting list so how is a child effected when there are so many other prospective parents in line? If a couple gets pregnant naturally the process gets put on hold and they may or may not choose to move forward with the adoption - but are given that choice. For those needing infertility treatments, we are treated as though we will automatically bail on the whole process if we get a viable pregnancy and are not evaluated on our own experiences. I was almost in tears. I called Gerry and he decided to call the Executive Director. He told her about our circumstances and (nicely) that we felt discriminated against. For the next day, she looked into their policy, cases they had, and what other agencies were doing, but in the end she said in the gentlest way possible, something to the effect that we are not deemed to even qualify right now. Gerry was almost in tears. There is no gentle way to put that.

Part of me is like fuck it. Let's just continue with our other plans and if we end up in the same place a year from now, one year older and pushing 40, then we are just that much more unattractive to birthparents and governments who get to critique our dossiers to bloody determine if we are "ready to be parents".  At least we got a good glimpse of what this process will be like.

Do we qualify to make a TV movie of the week out of our lives?