Adoption statistics for Western Australia 2011/12

When I discuss adoption in the real world, people are always asking me questions. Quite often people tell me that I will have a 'baby in no time'! If only it were that easy. A few years back I put some stats up from AIHW with how many children were adopted in Australia. I've just been reading through the latest annual report for the agency that manages adoption in Western Australia and thought I'd update people on the latest statistics.

In the 12 months July 2011-June 2012, there were 26 adoptions finalised. Sounds like a lot right? Well 18 of those adoptions were 'known' adoptions, basically where a step-parent adopts a child or the adoption of an adult. So that leaves 8 adoptions that were 'unknown'. Five of those were intercountry adoptions. Only three were local adoptions in WA, and only 55 local adoptions were finalised across Australia. The year before, it was 4 local adoptions; in 09/10 there were 12, and 08/09 there was 7. The numbers are up and down, but even over the last couple of years, the numbers have dropped.

Some other facts:

•  36% of the local adoptions were of infants aged under 12 months
• The median age of the birth mothers of children who were the subject of a finalised local
  adoption in 2011–12 was 22, with ages ranging from 15 to 43.
• Almost all (95%) local adoptions finalised in 2011–12 could be considered ‘open’—that is, all parties were happy to allow a degree of contact or information exchange to occur between families

The odds aren't in our favour, I know that. But you have to have something to hold on to, something to hope for. You never know what's around the corner.


References:
Adoptions Australia 2011-12
DCP Annual Report 2011-12

Our first dance

At our wedding, our first dance song was a really special moment. We had a friend teach us a few moves and we practiced a basic waltz with a few twists and twirls to jazz things up. Even now when we go to other weddings, or are at other functions, this dance has become our go-to dance. Each time we do it, Murray asks me if I remember dancing at our wedding. It's one of my favourite memories.

We danced to a song by Tamia and Eric Benet called Spend my life with you. I didn't want something that I had heard anyone else use, and while it apparently is quite popular in the US, none of our friends had heard it before our wedding.

The lyrics go like this:

I never knew such a day could come  
And I never knew such a love could be inside of one 
I never knew what my life was for  
But now that you're here I know for sure
 
I never knew till I looked in your eyes 
I was incomplete till the day you walked into my life 
And I never knew that my heart could feel so precious and pure  
One love so real
 
Can I just see you every morning when I open my eyes?  
Can I just feel your heart beating beside me every night?  
Can we just feel this way together till the end of all time? 
Can I just spend my life with you?
 
Now baby the days and the weeks and the years will roll by  
But nothing will change the love inside of you and I 
And baby I'll never find any words that could explain  
Just how much my heart, my life, my soul you've changed
 
Can you run to these open arms when no one else understands?  
Can we tell God and the whole world, I'm your woman, you're my man? 
Can't you just feel how much I love you with one touch of my hand?  
Can I just spend my life with you?
 
No touch has ever felt so wonderful (You are incredible) 
And a deeper love I've never known (I'll never let you go)
I swear this love is true (Now and forever to you)  
Only for you (To you)
 
Can I just see you every morning when I open my eyes? 
Can I just feel your heart beating beside me every night?  
Can we just feel this way together till the end of all time?  
Can I just spend my life with you?
 
Can you run to these open arms when no one else understands? 
Can we tell God and the whole world, you're my woman And you're my man? 
Can't you just feel how much I love you with one touch of my hand?  
Can I just spend my life with you, can I just spend my life with you?
 
Can I just spend my life with you?  
Can I just see you every morning when I open my eyes?

The words are so beautiful, and mean just as much now as they did the day we married. I feel proud to call myself Murray's wife, and to tell people that he is my husband. 

I guess I'm thinking about all of this because Valentine's Day is upon us again. Yes it's not a real holiday, and it's overly commercialised, but I'm more than happy to take it as another day that I can proudly declare my love for my husband, both to him, and the world at large. After nine years together, it honestly doesn't get much better than this.

Adoption progress

I finished up my adoption medical report today at my GP's, and come Monday morning, it will be all sent of to the department! Once more thing to tick off our list! There was a concern over the ketone levels in my urine sample, but that is to be expected with my weight loss and the bariatric surgery. My cholesterol is back to normal levels, and I have dropped even more weight since my initial medical report, so my BMI is down to around 31/32. Cholesterol and weight were the things the medical panel were concerned with the last time round, so I'm hoping that this time I might get through unscathed!

Murray has been working really hard this past month to eat healthy and try and control his cholesterol through diet. In the process he has also lost 5kg which is a great result! We are going to wait another week or two and then send him off for his cholesterol check, and hopefully that shows an improvement, and we can finalise his medical report as well.

While we were at our GP's today, the doctor also did up Murray's referral to the IVF clinic, so as of Monday, both of us will have our referrals in place, and the countdown to the 'within 6 month' timeframe begins. 

All systems are go! We are slowly but steadily making progress on our house. Last year storms wiped out part of our side fence and left holes in our patio roof, and the year before our ceiling started to collapse and ever since is being held up with tek-screws. Well all that changes in 2013 - our patio roof has been replaced, my cars windscreen was replaced due to chemical damage, and in early March, our kitchen will have it's ceiling repaired, along with a new light fitting and getting painted!

Although it has been extremely difficult with Murray not working, we have made it through the other end and all the better for it. We are now a lot more careful with our money, and also know that we can cope if we ever drop down to one income if we need to. We owe Murray's parents a chunk of money which they lent us to tide us over, but that will all be repayed with our first pay check this month, Murray now has a spectacular job at a new school that he loves to death, and everything has turned out for the best.

I haven't posted too much about my weight loss on this side, but if anyone is interested, head over to Lose and Hope to check out my latest progress. So far I am down 35kg+ and am feeling great!

Ministerial response

I received a call back from the Minister for Health's office this afternoon about our situation with the public IVF clinic. The clinic repeated their claim that they sent a letter to my doctor, which I wasn't impressed with. However the ministers office have arranged it so that, both Murray and I need to get new referrals from our GP, but rather than going to the back of the waiting list, we will be guaranteed to be seen within the next six months! We need to ensure that we reference the ministers office and this arrangement on the referral, but this is great news!

So by July, we will be on the fertility treatment bandwagon again. To be honest we have tried nearly all the options available to us. We have done ovarian drilling, IVM, IVF, Donor IVF, Donor IUI, FET, Donor FET, the works. The only thing we haven't really tried is PGD which is prohibitively expensive and I'm doubtful is covered at the public clinic. Admittedly I am in much better health now than I was during many of these attempts which is encouraging.

We are unsure what we will do in terms of the donor situation. We still have our known donor friend who I'm sure would be happy to assist us, but I believe all of the samples have been used so we would need new samples, more waiting periods, and it all starts getting too much again. We may go back to the donor sperm we planned to use initially from the sperm bank at our fertility clinic, but who knows if that is still available. I'm also open to doing more donor embryo transfers if they become available, however considering we have the option of doing full IVF again, I feel the need to give that a try.

I would also like the clinic to do a full rundown on Murray's sperm before we go down the donor path again. I know the odds are against us, but things may have changed since the last SCSA test, and perhaps his motility and DNA fragmentation issues have improved. I can't help but think that the only time we have been properly pregnant, not chemical pregnancies, but really pregnant, it used his sperm. We've had 2 Donor IUI's and 2 donor embryo transfers, none of which worked (0/4=0%) compared to 1/6 = 17% with Murray's sample. I don't know. I know we likely still need donor, but if the tests are at our disposal, I'd really like to check it first anyway.

So good news all round right now. Trying not to get too used to it, you never know when the next bomb will drop. But so far the adoption and IVF processes are on track. We've just got to keep plodding on.

Security checks submitted

We have completed two out of our three adoption tasks in this past week. Firstly we needed to provide a traffic infringement check from the police showing our driving record for the past five years. I have a clean sheet (yay!) while Murray had a couple of minor speeding fines from speed cameras (less than 9 km each time). I can't see either of those being an issue.

Today we went past our local DCP office and had all of our identification certified and our security check request witnessed. Basically it's like getting a police clearance, but it goes into much greater detail. They were both submitted this afternoon, so hopefully they should come back to the Adoption office in the next month or so.

The last thing on our to-do list is to complete our medical reports. Murray and I have both been in for our initial appointments and I am just waiting for my blood test results for my cholesterol. Murray's cholesterol has come back in the borderline high category (5.7, 5.2 apparently is normal). Considering our history with medical reports causing us to be rejected in the past, the doctor has recommended that he go away for 6 weeks and try his best to eat very healthy and stay away from animal fats, to try and reduce the levels. Then he will repeat the blood test again to hopefully get a better result. I get my results back on Saturday, and have had high cholesterol in the past as well, so I'm thinking that I will need to do the same thing too. In saying that, I had my cholesterol tested in November as part of a free check up at work, and it had dropped from being in the 6+ range to 5.7, so we shall see what I end up with!

Once the medical reports are submitted, we just need to wait for an assessor (social worker) to be assigned to us to start the interview process!

Opening our hearts

Finding out that we had been taken off of the public IVF waiting list squashed the life out of me last week. I barely got through each day at work, and each night I felt hopeless. More than a few tears were shed in the shower and in the dark of night.

The saying goes that as one door closes, a window opens. Well we had to find that window, that ray of hope that would keep us going. So after much prayer and talking, we have decided to reapply for local adoption.

It's a big step for us. The last time we went down this path, we were messed around so much - medical reports that weren't sent through to the panel, a rogue doctor who wouldn't recommend Murray as a suitable parent, and then the kicker - my weight being over their BMI limit, which ultimately caused the panel to reject our application before we even had our final assessment.

This time I think we are in a different place. While we will still likely pursue fertility treatments in the future, my experiences with my nieces and nephews leave me with no doubt that I could parent a child that was not born from me. We are also in a break from treatment, whereas before we were still doing IVF throughout the process. And of course the ultimate factor, my weight loss has enabled us to become eligible again, with my BMI currently around 32 and dropping every day.

So what does this mean for us? I spoke to DCP who look after adoptions in WA, and as we have already attending all of the workshops and training, we do not have to repeat that, and they also have our references on file so it looks like we wont have to repeat those either. We went to our GP yesterday to start the medical report process again, and now just need some blood tests to finish that off. Also we need to get a special police clearance which the department do, which goes over and above a normal police clearance. And finally a traffic infringement check from the police to make sure we aren't serially drink-drivers or speed or anything else naughty like that! We both got our traffic infringement checks done today so that is one thing to tick off the list!

We are sending through all of our documentation as we go along so that things can be done in the quickest way possible. I want to be alerted at the earliest possible opportunity for any issues that may crop up. I'm so used to disaster in everything we do, that I'd rather just know about it straight away, than get my hopes up about everything running smoothly, if that makes sense.

Once all of those documents have been submitted, the medical reports will go to an Adoption Medical Panel for review and they make the decision as to whether we are 'fit to adopt' from a physical point of view. The next panel meets in mid-February so hopefully by the end of February we will have a decision. After that decision, we will be assigned an assessor and begin a minimum of 6 interviews in our house to go over everything - how we were brought up, our family tree, how we intend on parenting, if our house is up to scratch etc. I'm not thinking too far ahead to this just yet - I just want to focus on what we are doing right now.

So yes. Certainly a change of pace for us, but we really feel God's hand in this. I read a bible verse which I hadn't come across before, and I felt like a promise that I couldn't ignore.

He gives the childless woman a family, making her a happy mother. Praise the LORD! - Psalms 113:9

I don't care how our child comes into our lives. I just know that they will come, one day.



PS - I spoke to a health liaison officer in Dr Kim Hames (WA Deputy Premier/Minister for Health) office today about the situation with the IVF waiting list. They are going to contact the hospital and try and get us reinstated. I don't know if it will happen, but I am glad to at least have someone fighting for us. Regardless of whether we get reinstated or not, we are very happy to be back on the adoption track.

The clinics response

I'm utterly miserable today. I got a call this morning from the public IVF clinic who told me that the reason my referral was cancelled was that at the time of the referral my BMI was 40. Apparently their rules dictate that just to get ON the waiting list, you need to have a BMI of less than 35. So you can't be on the waiting list and lose weight so that you meet the weight limit while you wait the 18 month or so until your first appointment. No, you have to meet an arbitrary weight limit before you get even close to a first doctor's appointment.

 

I asked how they advised people of this, and supposedly the referring GP would have received a letter back with that information – which of course we have never received or been told about by our doctor. I have booked an appointment for tomorrow morning to see my GP. The clinic said that the only way we could be reinstated on the waiting list (and reinstated to our second referral date of July 2012- thank goodness my fertility doctor insisted on writing a second referral), is if my GP writes a letter to say that I met the BMI limit at that point, because they never re-checked my weight on receiving the second referral (they just assumed I would still be over – great work guys). The problem of course, for those who have followed my weight loss journey, is that I was still over the 35 BMI then. So in essence, my doctor will have to lie if I am to have any chance of being reinstated to the list, regardless of the fact that I am now well under the BMI limit.

 

I can't see why they have this policy in place. I am supportive of a policy that says we will not pursue fertility treatment if the patient is over a BMI of 35 – the literature says that success rates decline after this point. Even though I have struggled with my weight, I really do understand this, especially in a public health context where we are not paying for the service. But to force people to lose the weight, which is often a long drawn out difficult process, before you can even get onto a waiting list which could take two years, well I just don't get that. After all, you could have a BMI of 35 at the time of the waiting list, and in the time between put weight on, but who would ever know? I could have lied and said I was under the BMI when they asked at the time, after all they didn't weigh me, it was just a phone conversation from the booking coordinator.

 

I am so angry and upset and flabbergasted. That the policy is in place, that we were not told at the time, that we had to find out after being so excited that this would be the year we could start trying again. I'm sitting at work trying to hold back the tears. I have worked so hard and made a really difficult decision to have surgery to help me lose this weight, the primary reason being that it would help us have a baby. Yet none of that matters right now, because of stupid rules that don't benefit anyone. 

Waiting list disaster

We've been looking after two of my little nieces for the last week and a half which has been a blast. Charlotte is 4 and Lilly is 3, and they are just so precious.

Blowing bubbles was a great time-wasting activity

The girls enjoying Murray's Dads bird aviary

They went to stay at their Grandma's from today, which is good for them as they will be with their other brother and sister, but still quite sad for us to see them go. Spending ten days with two princesses is definitely a learning curve - toilet training, making dinners that the girls like, bedtime routines, doing their hair dozens of times a day (they loved me playing with their hair so they kept pulling out to make me keep going!). Overall it was a very rewarding experience.

Between having the girls here and one of my best friends falling pregnant recently, we have started thinking about fertility treatment again, and so today I called the department of health to follow up on where we were on the waiting list for the public IVF clinic. After going through four different people, I managed to speak to the person who looks after the referrals and appointments. My referral was placed on 11th October 2011. Except that when she looked up the referral it says 'Final-Complete'. I asked her what that meant and she said that our referral was finished, it had been marked complete which meant we were no longer on the waiting list!!!!

I was in complete shock and just started quietly crying. The woman on the phone was the 'patient flow coordinator', and she basically said that someone must have marked it complete for some reason, but she doesn't know why, and she would have to get someone to look at my file but she couldn't do it today because she was busy. I hung up and went straight into the ladies bathrooms and cried.

I can't even process that we may be going to the back of the queue because of this. I just can't. It would be like admitting defeat for me. I am going to call the clinic back tomorrow afternoon to see if they have looked at my file. It's unbearable knowing that this mistake could cost us another 18 months. Fingers crossed that tomorrow we get some good news.

What's been happening in my world?

There really hasn't been a lot going on, hence the lack of posting - sorry about that. We are gearing up for Christmas, and I am officially on holidays until December 27th which I am very happy about. Unfortunately I drew the short straw at work and have to go in on the days between Christmas and New Year, but I will only really be working half days due to my flexi-time, so I guess I can't complain too much!

We have had some great news recently, Murray has been offered a new job for next year at a private Baptist college here in Perth! God works in mysterious ways, and we feel very blessed that this opportunity has arisen at the perfect time for him. To get us through the summer break, Murray has taken on a gig as Santa at the local shopping centre next week! Hopefully I will be able to get a photo with my own personal Santa next week!

So with the week ahead off work, I am planning to take my little nephew William off to the zoo for his first zoo trip! It will be a nice little adventure for him, I personally haven't been to the zoo for around 6 years so it will be great to get there again and have a walk around.

Fertility-wise we are at a stalemate until we progress further on the public IVF waiting list. At some point I need to call up the waiting list people and work out who is currently going through the system, based on when their referral was, and that should give us a guide as to how much longer we will need to wait. Our referral was put in September 2011, so hopefully they are up to 2011 referrals, which means (hopefully) that we will be seen sometime in 2013.

In weight-loss news, I have now lost 26kg, and my BMI is below 35 which is the cutoff point for adoption and access to the public IVF clinic! So great news for us, and I am feeling so good about everything. I can really notice the changes to my body, I feel healthier, and I know I made the right decision for me to go ahead with surgery.

A little update

For those not keeping track over at Lose and Hope, I have had my surgery and am in the recovery stage. So far I have lost around 11kg in the past month, and I am comfortable with my decision, even when some days are difficult. There is a lot of adjustment to be made, but I went in with my eyes open, and I'm already starting to feel the benefits. Just the knowledge that I can take the power back from my body - well, sorry for the lack of words, but it is powerful.

Before I had my surgery, my doctor said to me that I should go back on birth control, as obviously getting pregnant would stop the weight loss. I told him he had a snowballs chance in hell. He insisted and said that I had to give him at least 6 months guaranteed not getting knocked up, and even with our history, my rapid weight loss could make me super fertile. I stuck to my guns, and therefore am status normal - no protection, yet still not knocked up.

It's amazing that it has been more than six years of trying. There are always ebbs and flows, and right now I'm in one of those good places, where you can appreciate the great things about just being two of us. We are both young, we love spending time together, and have so many opportunities for happiness outside of baby-making. The sting of course is always there, but most of these days, you can barely feel it, unless you want to feel it, if that makes sense.

We are six weeks away from our 7th wedding anniversary. I imagine this year will be pretty low-key, not least because Murray lost his job last week (a whole other story), so we are tightening our belt financially.

I also have my 10 year high school reunion next month, which is making me a little nervous. Being around all these people who barely gave me the time of day in high school, everyone who has their own little families now, people pretending to be super successful. I know I have done well for myself, but I don't want to be the self-important person trying to make myself seem better than I am - that's not who I am and it's not how I want to be. Instead I've decided to catch up with some old school friends who I haven't seen over the next month I think, just to touch base. I'm not sure I'll even go to the reunion yet, but most likely I will. We'll see.

SO back to fertility (Gee it always comes back to that!). My plan is to restart our local adoption paperwork once my BMI is under 35, which will make us eligble again for approval. We are still on the public IVF waiting list (1 year down so far), and I imagine that we should get through to that sometime in the next 12-18 months, so if we haven't had adoption success by then, I will be starting that process again. It seems like so long ago that we went through this all. Maybe another year older and wiser will be the winning solution. I know I'm only 26, and that does give me some relief, that I'm not 10 years older and in a far worse predicament.

Okay, I've really put my blog name to work today - a lot of ramblings from a person whom many call crazy. Time for me to hit the hay. Night all.

What I've been working on

I've been a little busy lately. I've been making decisions about what I want my life to be like. I can't live my life and not have thrown absolutely everything at having a child, and my weight is holding me back from doing that.

So on September 21, I will be having a vertical sleeve gastrectomy, also known as weight loss surgery. It's drastic, but so is 16 unsuccessful IVF attempts, and the thought of not having children. It's also drastic to think my life expectancy is lowered by a decade because of my weight, and that the only direction my weight is going is up.

I've started a separate blog to follow my progress, I'd love for you to pop over. It's called Lose and Hope and I'll be blogging everything to do with surgery, recovery and life losing weight.

The not blogging thing

I'm feeling snarky today. Possibly it's just my period being a bitch. But I'm in a foul mood, which somehow makes this easier. I'm just not in a blogging mood right now. No doubt I'll be back in a week or month or two. I can never stay away for long. And it's not a 'break', I'm just gonna do what I want to do, when I want to do it. Work is hard, I'm back studying at night trying to get my degree, I had another papsmear came back abnormal which of course has skyrocketed my stress levels, and to be honest, I have enough on my plate. Hopefully I'll get back into some blogging rhythm when winter is over and the sun comes back. Hopefully. Always hopefully.