I am alive....

So last week was almost more than I could take. I finally have the wherewithal to sit down and post.

So what happened? Well as you know, the short of the long of it is that our court date was postponed (yet again) from Oct 22nd to November 23. We were hopefully all weekend that we had passed as we had not heard word from our agency. But when I called them on the Monday after our Thursday court date, they had just gotten word from their staff in ET that our date was postponed. I literally could not breath when the words came out of her mouth. The week before had been a tough one as we had learned some additional medical information about Cullen that means he will likely have to have a minor surgery when he gets home. Which we were hopeing would be in about 6 weeks. But instead we got news that once again, we would continue to wait to bring our son home.

The reason for the postponement was apparently that the "dockets were too full" and that they just did not get to our agencies cases that day. This was made all the more bitter by the fact that we had heard of other families with other agencies that had passed court on Oct 22nd. For some reason our agencies (and some others) cases were the ones pushed back. Why were the "dockets too full?" Well each fall the ET courts shut down for an undisclosed amount of time (typically about 6 weeks). Randomly and with out notice, about a month before the closure this year, the Ministry of Women's Affairs in ET (another government body that ins involved in processing paperwork for adoption cases) shut down for 2 weeks for training. All cases during htis time had to then be pushed back, starting the backlog. Then, the courts closed about 2 weeks after that for approximately 6 weeks. Our first court date was supposed to be the first week the courts were reopened, BUT the courts decided not to reopen as scheduled and stayed closed for training for an additional 2 weeks. And so additional backlog. Backlog from the closure and then more backlog for the delayed reopening. And a new court date for us of Oct 22nd. A date that apparently had too many cases scheduled due to all of these backlogs.

The good news in all of this is that we were actually given a future date (i.e. our court date was rescheduled rather than being postponed indefinitely). Often if your case is not heard, you then wait again to be assigned another date...which can take who knows how long. And then once you have the date you have to wait for it. Fortunately for us we were given a definite timeline and a spot in line. Without a scheduled date it is totally random how they seem to assign court dates.

So here I am comming out of my fog. Now it is less than 3 weeks to our 3rd try at a court date. Not great but better than the 4 weeks when we first heard. I really thought I was going to have a nervous breakdown last week. I am running out of the emotional wherewithal to continue to have to sit and wait with my hands tied to bring my son home. I want to be the one responding to and waking up to comfort him when he cries in the middle of the night. I want to start nursing him. I want him to start attaching to me and Jeff and Tessa, not random caregivers. I want to hold him in my arms and kiss his face.

Well at least I can start to prepare for the fact that there is basically no possibility now that he will be home for Christmas. Maybe January.

In the larger scheme of things, this wait is short...but for us, and for speedy ET adoptions, it is WAY TOO LONG. You can only understand if you have BTDT, but trust me, it is WAY TOO LONG.