Suck suck suck.
I'm so aggravated at the moment that I'm not even certain that I'll be able to write a coherent blog post.
"So, how exactly do they suck?" you ask.
Well, after three months of our profile being "live" we are "allowed" by the facilitators to finally make changes. So my lovely and very thoughtful husband makes some changes to our profiles and sends said changes along with a few new photos to the lady who does all of our profile stuff at the facilitator's office. He receives a confirmation message from the Profile Lady stating that the changes will be made post-haste.
Two weeks go by.
No changes.
So Chris sends the Profile Lady a quick e-mail just saying something like, "Hey, noticed that our profiles look just the same. Wondering when you're going to incorporate the stuff we sent you two weeks ago?"
He receives a reply stating that our stuff is in "the queue" which usually takes several weeks.
Ah, would have been nice to know that since in her first e-mail she never mentioned that it takes several weeks. Her original e-mail makes it sound like it will happen right away.
Fine.
So a few more days go by and we don't hear anything. Lovely husband just checks the profiles yesterday to see if changes have been made since we have not heard anything from them. Lo and behold - changes are made.
And boy are they ever.
Profile Lady has lopped out 20% of our profile information. Things that we painstakingly and thoughtfully wrote about ourselves - things we definitely wanted anyone reading the profile to know about us.
Gone.
Needless to say we are a bit shocked and the quite upset.
After sending off an e-mail questioning the removal of what we consider vital information, he receives a reply from Profile Lady stating that they have been receiving feedback from birthmoms (god, how I hate that term) that the letters are all getting too long and so the facilitators are changing their approach on how they promote adoptive parents. (And apparently starting with us because we read a number of other profiles that are considerably longer than ours...)
Well, that would certainly have been nice to know before they started lopping.
I sit in front of the television last night feeling pretty beat up, while Chris is tapping furiously away at his computer generating a reply to Profile Lady.
"Hon," he says quite a while later, tapping complete, "I think you'd better read this before I send it off. I think I may have gone a little too far."
You could say that he's gone a little far in the e-mail communication he has written for the Profile Lady. It is... ohhhh, shall we say ... a bit - erm - snarky in places. I indicate that a few places could be de-snarked. Chris doesn't look happy about my comments.
I return to the television.
Chris returns to tap-tap-tapping away on his computer and after making quite a few revisions calls me over, "What do you think of this? De-snarked enough?"
The revised communication is a truly thoughtful e-mail that conveys our distress over the drastic changes made to our profile without our knowledge or consent. The e-mail also effectively communicates our desire to work with the facilitators to make changes - not to have them foisted upon us with no warning. He ends the communication with the following:
When my wife and I embarked on this journey, we were told by my father that this might possibly be the most important thing we’ll ever do. We believe that he is right. Based on our conversations with your past clients and with a member of your staff, we also felt confident that we were making the right decision to work with [adoption facilitator]. We still do, and hope that you will help us succeed in this journey. All we are asking for is a level of communication, support, and feedback that enables us to be a part of this process, not simply bystanders.
My husband is a very brilliant man.
So, now we wait for yet another reply from the Profile Lady.
***
When we first started this process more than a year ago, I began reading as many adoption blogs as I could: those of adoptive parents, other prospective adoptive parents, first mothers and adopted persons. At the time what surprised me most about the blogs was the hostility that so many of the bloggers expressed toward the adoption industry. We had just chosen or facilitator and the folks there seemed so nice, kind and helpful. I thought, "Well, we really lucked out and got the right facilitators. We won't have that other kind of bad experience that those other bloggers wrote about."
Not so sure about that now.
Right now I kinda totally get the whole hostility-toward-the-adoption-industry attitude.
In a big way.
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