I bet ya didn't know

S was sick Friday, not a cold, down right ER visit in the afternoon because the Dr. said that there was nothing the office could do! She ended up having a stomach thang that dehydrated her and caused a UTI...poor bug! Sitting in the ER I started thinking about when R came home.

R was a little guy and very sickly. Not something any parent wants for their child and when you adopt in MI you have the added stress of not being a "legal" parent for at least 60- 90 days, you are considered "prospective adoptive parent'' and whereever we went we had 3 legal documents that stated this tucked away in a ziploc sandwich bag. So, whenever we had to take R to the ER or a doctors appointment we had a piece of paper that the doctor had to fill out and sign, then we sent this signed paper to the social worker who sent it to the court system. Easy peasy...

Now, imagine a sick little guy in the ER at 2am...coughing, he can't breathe and having to explain you really don't know anything about his life "in the womb", and that you don't know about family history....and really you don't know anything. You look in their eyes and you are praying you have those legal documents, because they already think you stole this baby! It doesn't help that my voice goes really fast and high pitched when I am nervous and stressed. Now, picture if you will, me and R in the ER at 2am...he is sick as shit...I am freaking out and rambling on like a crack head...and when he is better, breathing I grab the nurse and say, "excuse me...can you sign this?? We need it for court". Yea...I am a responsible parent!

R's adoption was not finalized for 18 months...during that time he was going to the doctor on an average of 1-2 times a week. Sometimes they sent us right to the hospital (that means 2 forms) sometimes not. Doing the math, 4 x 18 = 72, and that is a low estimate on how many times I had to ask a doctor to fill out a form to send to the social worker to send to the court to put in R's file.

I bet ya didn't know about that!