Busted!

Our adoption journey/craziness has definitely been a comedy of errors – but this latest experience ranks right up there at the top.

Our lawyer (who is on her last leg with me) contacted us last week to let us know that it was IMPERATIVE for us to get our homestudy update from our agency as soon as possible.  I asked her why, and she said she had a birth mom who was due at the end of January. OK… this was an exciting prospect. So in true fashion, I ran around like a crazy person getting things signed and notarized, on top of writing another fat check to our agency, and then we waited for her to send us the paperwork.

She overnighted it, and I ripped open the Fed Ex envelope as soon as it landed on our front porch.

Now, I have never looked over this kind of paperwork before, but it’s basically background information about the birth mom including medical and family history. I scanned over the pages carefully and found no sign of anything alarming – except the fact that this woman and her family didn’t seem to have any medical issues at all. No drinking, drugs, family history of cancer or heart disease or anything else for that matter, but let’s be honest,  even the most ‘normal’ families have a history of something… right?

Well, I was about to find out that this birth mom was not so perfect after all. Her name was glaring at me from the top of the document -and so I did what anyone in my place would do – I Googled her.

I was thinking maybe a Facebook page would come up with her name – but no. Instead, the website, BUSTED! mugshots.com was staring back at me. It turns out she was arrested a few months ago for obstructing justice (or something like that). OK. Not so bad. But then I Googled the birth dad’s name, and just like that, his name popped up on mugshots.com as well. Turns out he was arrested last month for assault and battery/domestic violence. REALLY!? Now, I don’t expect the birth parents to be perfect by any means, I really don’t. But the fact that her “old man” (he’s 54 and she’s 31) got busted for domestic violence when she’s supposedly 6 months pregnant didn’t exactly give me the warm and fuzzies.

Long story short, as my husband loves to say, I called our lawyer and she had other news that wasn’t so promising. Like the fact that the birth mom was due at the end of May, not January.  That’s a big difference. She then tried to feed me some story, saying she thought she was 6 months along, but it turns out she was only 2. Again REALLY?!

I stopped her right there and said we would take a pass.

By the way – she didn’t know about the arrests either – which is BS. Isn’t that part of her job to know? Ken and I have gone through more fingerprinting and background checks – but god forbid – we know that information about potential birth parents. (sorry I’m going off on a tangent)

Bottom-line: I am sure we will meet the right birth mom or birth parents at some point… it’s just hilarious what we have to go through in the meantime. If I don’t laugh about it… the only thing left to do is cry… and I’m over that for now.