adoption bloggers interview project • becca of ‘becca blogs’
Last month I published a call for bloggers from Heather at Production, Not Reproduction, who is the amazing host of our Open Adoption Roundtable and is hosting the second Adoption Bloggers Interview Project.
In this project, bloggers from all sides of the triad are randomly paired up; we were given a week or so to read each other’s blogs and come up with creative interview questions (not all of which must be adoption related), and then we’re given a few days to answer our partner’s questions before publishing our interviews. And today is the day!
This year I was paired up with Becca of Becca Blogs. Among her many talents Becca is a graphic designer, and she designed the lovely button you see at the beginning of this post. As I read through her blog I was struck by how much we have in common—from baking and knitting (you have to check out her awesome wedding veil…) and DIY, to homeschooling (or planning to do so)—we even have the same mixer in the same colour. Becca is a bundle of energy with big plans for the future, and her blog is a joy to read, and I’m thrilled to have had the opportunity to get to know her a little better.
Becca and her husband, Steve, were married on 10/10/10 in Vegas, and are now getting all their ducks in a row before they start the ball rolling to adopt from foster care. And so, without further ado—here’s Becca!
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1. Since so many of your early blog writings are about your wedding plans—and you’ve been married now for a little over a year—I feel like I’d be ignoring too big a part of your recent life if I didn’t ask about married life. So…what surprises you the most about married life so far?
I actually started the blog for wedding planning and it evolved from there. Married life is pretty hard! We went back and forth forever trying to pick a date and then finally picked the awesome 10-10-10. unfortunately even up till about a month or so before the wedding we were having problems. The biggest one being money, which I know is a big deal for a lot of couples. Right now I’m only working part time, he’s working over full time (3rd shift and 60 hours a week) and we only see each other maybe 2 hours each day and then on his days off. It’s really tough! I honestly have no idea how people deal with long distance relationships!
I’ve learned a lot about myself this past 13 months of being married. Namely that I hate cleaning and would much rather knit, bake, cook, or research stuff online. We are working on things all the time; it’s just difficult being with each other so little.
2. You mention on your blog that you don’t expect much in the way of family support in adoption. Can you talk a little bit about that? What reactions have you had that make you feel that way? Do you think your family will come around to the idea when it becomes a reality? Do you have another support system in place since your family seems less than supportive?
My parents have made remarks every time I mention adoption. We received some info paperwork from an adoption agency early in the research and I was asked “why don’t you just have your own kids?” Like adoption was a foreign concept. Also, my family is fond of using horrible words that have no place in polite society (the N word for one) and often tell off-color and derogatory “jokes.” Sadly, if I let this bother me, it will limit the race of children we will adopt. I refuse to let anyone harm my children in any way and especially my own family.
Whenever I tell a friend or extended family member about our plans, they ask what my parents think, as if they “don’t already know.” It’s just a bad situation. I really don’t think they will change their minds, but who knows. We do plan on moving away from my family as soon as I get a job elsewhere and have no plans to visit with any sort of regularity.
Luckily, hubby’s mother says she wants grandkids, no matter how we give them to her.
As far as our support system, I do have some friends that don’t understand why we aren’t trying IVF or adopting a newborn, but they are still supportive of our plans. Most of our friends are excited for us to become parents in any way possible. I do have a couple family members that will talk to us about it openly and without nasty remarks and for that I am thankful.
One of my closest friends is actually a foster care social worker that teaches the MAPP classes and places foster children. She is one of our strongest supporters and has called other state agencies to find out their requirements. If we were willing to do our home study here (or at least begin it), she has already volunteered to do it. Through her agency, I have gotten so much more information about the adoption side.
Wow, that was a novella! 
3. Foster-adoption comes into your blog as something of a fully formed idea – I presume because you’d already thought about it & talked about it before you ever wrote about it – and I’m interested in hearing a little about your thought process. What brought you to foster-adoption as opposed to other sorts of adoption?
Before I started posting about adoption, I had been tweeting and Facebooking about it for weeks. We had discussed it for a long while and I started doing research. Honestly, the biggest reason we are going the foster-adoption route is financial. After checking out private, international, surrogacy and IVF, I looked into foster-adoption and just fell in love with some of the adorable faces I was seeing. We are also loving the idea of getting children already past the diaper and potty training stages and have them in at least kindergarten.
Our plan is to get “ready” with jobs, health insurance, get fit, and be ready to parents and then begin our home study. With foster adoption, placement is 6-9 months on average from completion of your home study. All my research tells me that special circumstances – such as adopting siblings – tends to happen quicker. So we want to make sure we are ready.
4. You seem to be coming at adoption from a different angle than many women, in that your plan all along was to adopt in addition to having biological children. Do you think that having expected to adopt from the start impacts how you deal with your fertility issues? [I misread something, somewhere to get this mistaken impression...but I'm letting the question stand because Becca was gracious enough to answer it anyway.—Ed.]
Hmmm. We actually didn’t have adoption on our plate until several months ago. Last December we decided to start trying to conceive. As the months passed and I didn’t even have a period (and no insurance to find out what was going on), adoption started forming in our minds. My husband actually brought it up. And then we had dinner with my foster care friend and we started discussing it more and more.
Interestingly enough, we still have those “we should name our son/daughter” conversations all the time. We are hoping to get checked out once we both have insurance again, but honestly don’t know when it will be. Certainly no matter how children enter our lives, we will be ecstatic. My husband is 1 of 4 and I am 1 of 3, so we both want a big family. We decided on adopting 2 siblings, and not more, as we don’t know how much we can handle at 1 time. Kind of like when couples have twins or triplets… we just want to make sure we can give enough love and attention to both of them.
5. In what ways is your life different now than you pictured it would be five years ago? What do you think your life will look like five years from now?
My life is definitely different than I ever imagined. For as long as I can remember, I have wanted children, and expected to be done by my early 30s having them. Here I am, freshly 35, without a child in sight. I also never expected to be living back in Miami, with my husband, on my parents property. Actually, I never expected to be back here at all. After growing up here, I swore I would never move back. But family obligations forced our hand on this one.
Five years ago, I wasn’t even dating my husband. I had just moved to NC, with no job, knowing no one in the entire state, and was terrified. (I moved for grad school.) I didn’t even meet him until the following year. I really had no idea where my life would lead as there was so much uncertainty both with work and dating life. School was under control, but that’s about it.
Five years from now, I expect we will be living in the mountains somewhere (if I get my way!) and have at least 2 children. I’d like to say I will have my own yarn shop, but maybe 5 years is too short a time frame. That’ll hopefully happen in the next 10 years. We will be living not in our own house, but at least in a nicer apartment or townhouse. Owning a house isn’t a priority for us.
We have a plan for him to own a comic and coffee shop and me to have a yarn shop. Both are on the “One Day” list.
6. What are your thoughts on open adoption? Is it something you can see yourself being a part of, in a situation where it would be healthy for the children involved?
I think I would consider it, but with foster-adoption, once a child has had their parental rights terminated, I don’t think it’s an option. It’s something I need to look into, as I really don’t know if it’s possible.
7. Since you are also a knitter, and I am always looking for recommendations from fellow crafters: what is your favorite yarn to work with?
My all time favorite yarn is Malabrigo, but alas, it’s a hand wash. I also love Three Irish Girls, The Unique Sheep and Knitpicks. You really can’t go wrong with those. Anything sort, squishy and superwash are atop my list… Especially when we have kids!
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And there you have it—Becca in a nutshell. If you want to read more, you can find her at Becca Blogs.
Be sure to check out today’s other Adoption Blogger Interviews (including Becca’s interview with me!). You can find a list of participating interview pairs, with links, at Production, Not Reproduction.
