Abby's Road, the Long and Winding Road to Adoption; and how Facebook, Aquaman and Theodore Roosevelt helped!

By Michael Curry

Winner: Honorable Mention, 2014 Great Midwest Book Festival!

Abby's Road leads a couple through their days of infertility treatments and adoption. It is told with gentle (and sometimes not-so-gentle) humor from the perspective of a nerdy father and his loving and understanding wife.

Join Mike and Esther as they go through IUIs and IFVs, as they search for an adoption agency, are selected by a birth mother, prepare their house, prepare their family, prepare themselves and wait for their daughter to be born a thousand miles from home.

“Once upon a time, there was a mommy and a daddy who loved each other very much. And they wanted to have a baby of their very own, but they couldn't even though they tried and they tried.
“So they decided to adopt a baby. They talked to some very nice people who help mommies and daddies like them.
“And they met a very nice man and woman named Valerie and Jonathan who were having a baby but couldn't be the baby’s mommy and daddy. So they picked Mommy and Daddy to be their baby’s mommy and daddy.
“So when it came time for the baby to be born, the mommy and daddy took a long plane ride to Long Island, New York where they waited and waited, and they waited and waited, and they waited and waited until finally the baby was born.
“The next day they went to the hospital to see the baby, but they couldn't hold her. They could only look at her through the nursery window lying in her teeny tiny little baby bed. But the day after that they got to go back.
“They got to hold the baby. They got to dress the baby. They got to name the baby Abigail, put her in a car seat, put her in the car and take her back to the hotel where they were staying.
“And after a few more days they took a long train ride home where they lived happily ever after. The End.”

"Michael Curry has a great way of describing in detail the steps of their journey. He is very witty and entertaining with his delivery of their adoption journey. “Abby’s Road: The Long and Winding Road to Adoption” by Michael Curry is fun, informative and entertaining." Daryn Watson, Reader's Views, 02/15/15

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michael Curry
• Release date: Jul 12, 2014
• ISBN: 9780692221532

Book preview

ABBY’S ROAD

The Long and Winding Road to Adoption

And how Facebook, Aquaman and Theodore Roosevelt helped

Michael Curry

ABBY’S ROAD: The Long and Winding Road to Adoption

And how Facebook, Aquaman and Theodore Roosevelt helped

By Michael Curry

Copyright 2014 Michael Curry

Smashwords Edition

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Dedication

This book is dedicated to Valerie and Jonathan (not their real names). If we could give you all the stars in the sky it would not be enough to thank you for your wonderful gift. Rest assured we love our little girl with all our hearts and minds and souls and there will never be a day she will not know about your love for her.

Speaking of love, this book is also dedicated to my two pretty ladies: Esther, whom I love more than life itself; and Abigail. This is all for you, my baby doll.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

Prologue

Chapter 1: What’s Past is Prologue

Chapter 2: Adoption

Chapter 3: Picked

Chapter 4 Getting Ready

Chapter 5: A Long Wait on a Long Island

Chapter 6: An Endless Sea of Blah

Chapter 7: And Baby Makes...

Epilogue

About Michael Curry

Connect with Michael Curry

Other Books by Michael Curry

ABBY’S ROAD

By Michael G Curry

INTRODUCTION:

The Baby Story is our daughter’s favorite bedtime story. She knows it so well she can repeat it to us. It has the added benefit of being true.

"Once upon a time, there was a mommy and a daddy who loved each other very much. And they wanted to have a baby of their very own, but they couldn’t even though they tried and they tried.

"So they decided to adopt a baby. They talked to some very nice people who help mommies and daddies like them.

"And they met a very nice man and woman named Valerie and Jonathan who were having a baby but couldn’t be the baby’s mommy and daddy. So they picked Mommy and Daddy to be their baby’s mommy and daddy.

"So when it came time for the baby to be born, the mommy and daddy took a long plane ride to Long Island, New York where they waited and waited, and they waited and waited, and they waited and waited until finally the baby was born.

"The next day they went to the hospital to see the baby, but they couldn’t hold her. They could only look at her through the nursery window lying in her teeny tiny little baby bed. But the day after that they got to go back.

"They got to hold the baby. They got to dress the baby. They got to name the baby Abigail, put her in a car seat, put her in the car and take her back to the hotel where they were staying.

And after a few more days they took a long train ride home where they lived happily ever after. The End.

PROLOGUE:

I am the father of a newborn baby. I am 45 years old. What are you thinking, my friends will say, are you insane?

At 45 I should be near the end of my parenting. My first children are at long last grown and gone. The children still around are so independent they shout from the door, I’m leaving; I’ll be back when I’m damn good and ready.

Okay, I would call back from the living room.

At 45 I should be jumping for joy because I dropped my kids from my auto insurance; that alone makes up for the loss of the deduction on my income tax when they turn 18.

Oh, I’ll still help the kids, sure. A few bucks here or there to help make ends meet. The odd meal once a week at the house, maybe co-signing for a car-that-you-better-pay-every-month-if-I-even-think-you-are-a-day-behind-that-car-is-mine-do-you-hear? But no more school bills, no more empty refrigerators the day after we just went shopping … we can take that long vacation out west. Or east! Or a cruise!

And the kids will just have to fend for themselves!

Do you want to go see a movie? It would be nice to watch the latest Spider-man flick on the big screen, wouldn’t it? And we can go out to eat afterwards!

At 45 I may even be preparing to become a grandparent. What? That’s not possible! Can’t he call me Uncle Mike instead of Grandpa? Grandparents are in their 50s or 60s not their mid-forties; too soon, too soon. But what a sweet little baby, grandpa’s little man. Oh don’t cry; there there. Ooo! Stinky diaper! Let me give you back to your mother. Or father. As long as I can pass him off to somebody else…

At 45 what I should NOT be doing is getting up every two hours for feeding, watching Barney, paying for daycare, watching Barney, potty training, watching Barney, putting up with temper tantrums, watching Barney Barney Barney.

But I am not just a father at 45, I am a new father at 45. Never mind, my friends will say, you ARE insane!

At 45 I should not be, for the first time, getting up every two hours for feeding, paying for daycare, potty training, putting up with temper tantrums-when-there-is-no-logical-reason-in-the-world-to-go-so-ballistic and who’s Barney?

I’ll be sixty when she goes to prom; I’ll be 63 when she graduates high school, 67 when she graduates college if she’s lucky enough to finish in four years.

By the time I teach her to drive, I’ll be an old man; and driving like an old man. Go ahead and pull out, they’ll stop. Gauge how fast the oncoming traffic is coming so you can go slower than that. He has finally passed us after ten minutes; when he gets back into the driving lane, turn at the next right. You did very well, dear, here’s your trilby.

And yet here I am, one month away from my 46th birthday with a little living baby doll snuggled on my chest. She’s so warm and cuddly and I love kissing her little forehead and listening to her coo and sigh. The hysterics will come soon enough. Right now we are a happy and sweet family of three. And, yes, I know it’s uphill from here, but it’s already been quite a climb. Right now I can sit on the plateau and enjoy the view.

CHAPTER ONE: What’s Past is Prologue…

Esther and I married in the year 2000, along with everyone else in the world, so it seemed. Party supply stores and bridal shops said their demand was constant and supplies dwindled even after delivery day. There were 2.3 million marriages in 2000 and more than that married in 2001. The numbers decreased through the decade but only by 200,000 (2.096 million in 2010 for example).

It was my first marriage, her second.

On November 8, 1999, my secretary told me Esther was on the phone - line one. I knew she was going to ask me out on a date. How I knew that I don’t know – but in our lives together we very often finish each others’ sentences, think the same thoughts – do you want to get a pizza for dinner? You’ve read my mind. – that sort of thing.

She was, and is, very cute and sweet and the most kind and gentle soul I have ever known. And also very strong and brave (strong and gentle seem to go together, don’t they?). Our first date was on Friday November 12th. Our second the 13th. By the day after Thanksgiving I knew I was in love with her.

The day after Thanksgiving was also the last time I spent an entire day without seeing her or talking to her on the phone. I proposed New Year’s Day 2000 and we married that September.

I am an attorney and she is a librarian. I know three other attorneys who are also married to librarians. There must be something in the temperaments of those professions that get along well.

I don’t remember when we decided to have children. At no point did one of us tell the other, Let us conceive. But we must have talked about it, because decide we did.

Why did we decide to go from a family of two into a family of three, four or five? It’s easy for me to say it was because I love the idea of there being more people like Esther in the world, but it goes deeper than that. Our reasons grew over the nine years of our marriage before Abby.

Legacy was an original reason: someone to remember us - to tell their children and grandchildren about. Here’s a photo of your great-grandmother, she worked at a library. These are birthday cards your grandparents sent to each other. That’s your great-great grandfather’s signature on that Petition.

Another reason came later: who would care for us in our dotage? When one of us dies, who will take care of the other? This reason came after Esther’s mother died in 2006. If I were gone, who would be there to pat Esther’s hand and sit with her and talk to her in the hospital bed?

I wanted someone to take care of me in my old age, too. I took a more practical approach: I changed your diaper, now you change mine!

I think the main reason was we were both lonely. I love my wife and to this day prefer her company to anyone else’s. She is my best friend and I am hers. But it was just the two of us in our house. We wanted little ones running around. My love for Esther overflows and I wanted someone else on whom I could pour my love. The two of us were so happy, imagine three of us. Or four!

When we first married Esther did not believe in the concept of soul mate – a couple so linked emotionally, spiritually and intimately that it seems unnatural for them not to be together. I called Esther my soul mate from the moment we were engaged.

Esther did not call me her soul mate until a few years into our marriage. Up until then she didn’t believe in soul mates. I didn’t mind. It was probably because she had been married before. When she divorced her belief in a soul mate fizzled. After she realized how similar our tastes and how compatible our differences, though, she believed in soul mates.

She didn’t believe in best friends either. She believes in that now, too.

Think of all the wrong reasons couples have a child – to save their marriage or to strengthen weakening bonds. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it makes things worse. Our marriage didn’t need saving; our bonds weren’t weak. We loved each other and we wanted someone else to love too. So we decided to have a baby.

The importance of research was pounded into me in law school from day one. Plus I was always bookish. Esther is a librarian and loves reading as much as I, plus she had access to every book ever written. Well, every book ever written as long as it was in the library system.

So we studied and researched and applied what we learned to get pregnant.

We took vitamins. Mine was a supplement designed for women: I took so much zinc I picked up cell phone signals in my fillings. We ate food that made for strong sperm and receptive ova. We kept a calendar and took Esther’s temperature three times per day.

We only have ten minutes! Hurry, hurry! We’ll have dinner later! At times I barely had time to remove my tie.

And sometimes we would miss the ovulation window altogether. We’d each be at work or she would ovulate in the wee morning hours.

But when her temperature went up (spiked), that meant she had ovulated. We missed our chance. Maybe next month. Then the month after. Then the month after…

It wasn’t working.

At the time Illinois state law mandated insurance coverage for infertility treatments. Insurance companies for businesses employing over a certain number have to cover infertility treatment as if it were a medical condition (which it is). The logic is thus: if they cover for erectile dysfunction, they have to cover infertility. Tit for tat; so to speak… Whether they still have such a law I do not know.

Self-help was not working. Let’s see if modern medicine would.

Esther was given pills that would help create a litter of 6 kids or so.

I was given Levitra to help the old soldier stand and salute.

One side effect was intense drowsiness. Much like taking Nyquil, I’d best be sitting down when I took my Levitra otherwise I’d wake up on the floor. The drowsiness was all right, though. It didn’t matter. I didn’t have to be awake; I just had to be there.

***

That was BC. Of course, all this happened BC. Before Children. It’s one of those phrases you never knew existed until you hear it from other parents.

They have their own language, parents do; their own code words. And they always hang out with each other. It’s like a cult.

I add my own: BE – before Esther. BE, I was able to pack for a weekend getaway with a small duffle bag. Pants, socks, shirt, 2 pair of underwear, t-shirt and shorts to sleep in, toiletries and my pillow. I always take my pillow. My mother made it for me out of three separate feather pillows. It’s as hard as a cinder block and nearly as heavy. And that’s all I needed to travel. I went to London for ten days with one duffle bag. Through Heathrow with one carry-on – that’s the way to go.

AE – After Esther, I could still manage one duffle bag. She needed a big suitcase. Sometimes two. AC – After child, the baggage grew exponentially. When we walked through a motel lobby you’d think Cirque du Soleil was in town. Two suitcases, a cooler, a folding crib, a portable DVD player with her nighty-night music CDs (we now have I-pods, pads and such…), another case filled with toys and books, the diaper bag, Esther’s purse that has also grown exponentially during the life of our marriage. Then my old duffle bag crammed into the floor of the back seat or smooshed in the back of the trunk, forgotten.

***

Esther was attacked by fibroids. "Weren’t they bad guys from a Patrick Troughton-era Doctor Who episode?" I asked. No, they were thingies that grew on the inside of lady parts and interfered with pregnancy. Well then, if that’s the cause of our problems, out they go!

Our adventure to St. John’s Hospital to fight the nefarious fibroids was between AE and BC, so we only had the two suitcases, plus her purse and my duffle bag. We stayed overnight at a nice motel, ate an early dinner, read, watched TV and then to bed. Up early the next morning through the St. Louis traffic to the hospital for an 8:00 am out-patient procedure.

Esther sat in a wheelchair and an intern took her through swinging doors leading to inner chambers. The waiting area was a big circular balcony overlooking the lobby with its huge water fountain. I sat in a quiet spot and read the paperback I had brought. Several hours later the doctor came and asked me to join him through the swinging doors.

He said the operation went well and started showing me x-rays. There are the fibroids, he said and pointed at several white blotches on the black and white pictures.

It was like those 3D pictures that were so popular in the 1980s. A crowd gathered in front of a store in the mall. Everyone stared at a framed picture of little blue or red dots. Eventually someone would walk up and point and say, Oh, a space shuttle, see? And this one has dolphins, right there. You just gotta unfocus your eyes. Everyone would ooh and aah and say Oh yes, there it is and fork over their money for the pictures. I never saw it. What I did see was that same guy pointing to the shuttle and the dolphins the next week. I’d bet later in the day he puts his name tag on and gets back behind the register. He’s a shill. It’s a confidence game – not only am I out the money but now I’ve got crossed eyes.

Back to the x-ray: There are some fibroids outside the uterus, the doctor was pointing at some white spots on the edge of what looked like a map of the galaxy, but I didn’t see fibroids. I did spot a dolphin. But they are harmless so we didn’t remove them. Esther is fine and you can see her in a few minutes and she’ll be ready to go home soon.

Soon? It was hours before I went to see her. A nurse led me past row after row of flimsy blue curtains until we got to Esther. She was sound asleep and hooked up to that machine that goes ping. She was in a hospital gown and covered with a toilet-paper-thin sheet and a blanket only slightly thicker than my shirt. I knew she was cold. She’s always cold.

She was fine, the procedure was textbook. But why did I cry while sitting there watching her? Maybe because she looked so helpless. Maybe because I felt so helpless and useless.

Esther calls me Mr. Fix-it when it comes to troubles – I don’t want her to be sad or angry, I want to do something about it. Esther has taught me that sometimes I have to let things go their natural course. She’s lying there and I can’t help her. The doctors and nurses can help her, but I can’t. I’m supposed to be her provider, her protector. Me big he-man, strong like bull.

Maybe I’m seeing the future. I’m sitting and watching her pass away. We did that with my mother back in 2001 – her cancer had metastasized and on her last day, a Saturday, Esther and I and my father sat by her bedside and watched her breathing get shallower and shallower until ten that evening.

Is it selfish of me to want to die first? I don’t want to be without Esther. I was without her for 35 years and I don’t want to be without her again.

But in a half-hour Esther awoke and asked for water. I filled a glass and helped her drink a little. She fell back asleep and I held her hand. A nurse walked in and said they were going to wake her up and dress her and I was to go back to the waiting area.

They wheeled her to my car. On the way from the parking lot I had to negotiate a stiff right turn and scraped my car on the faux-rock wall of the hospital. I still have the car and the scar on the back passenger side. The nurse and I helped Esther into the front seat. Esther slept through most of the drive through St. Louis and across the river to Illinois. She woke and asked if she could have a chocolate milk shake. We were very near the exit with a Jack-in-the-Box, which has the best shakes. I wasn’t about to refuse her, and I was hungry, too. She didn’t want anything to eat so I got a hamburger and drink for myself and a chocolate milk shake for her.

She took one drink and fell back asleep. A half-hour down the interstate I drank her shake. She didn’t mind. At home I walked her to the bedroom where she slept most of the day.

She was all right.

And the fibroids had been banished back to the galaxy from which they came. Now it’s into the Tardis and the hunt for our son or daughter. The worst was over, smooth sailing from here on, right?

***

Esther and her doctor had decided to try intrauterine insemination (IUI) before the more familiar in vitro fertilization (IVF). IUI sounds like those stories you hear on the news involving turkey basters. Washed sperm is injected into the uterus and everyone crosses their fingers and hopes one of the little swimmers fertilizes the egg. A washed sperm means that the sperm has been cleansed of any interfering goo it would otherwise have to swim through to get to the ovum. Less obstacles means more soldiers fighting their way into the egg and better chances that the one lucky guy makes it in and wins the race.

All right then, let’s go!

Wait, I have to do what now?

I’ve had worse birthdays, but not many. When I was 29 turning 30 I started a weeks-long bout of flu, sinus infection and eventually pneumonia. I was in the midst of a trial when I felt that tell-tale tickle in the back of my throat indicating a cold was coming. By that