Meegan O'Neil has chosen a barnyard theme for the nursery. She has washed the baby clothes, bought the diapers and installed the car seat. She has a copy of "Goodnight Moon" on the bookshelf. She has even picked out a name for her baby on the way — Mason Minh O'Neil.
The hard part now is waiting — waiting for the e-mail from U.S. Immigration officials to give her clearance to fly to Vietnam to get her son and bring him home to Beverly. This explains why O'Neil rises at 5:30 every morning and heads straight to her computer, hoping for good news from the government.
"It's hard," she says, "knowing there is a child waiting for me who belongs with his family."
She shows an 8-by-11 color photo print of her son taken in the Vietnamese orphanage where he lives, located two hours south of Hanoi. His cheeks are rosy and chubby. She takes solace in the fact he looks healthy, with a handknit yellow cap propped on his tufts of jet black hair.
"But kids belong in families," she says, "not in orphanages."
Every day at work, O'Neil is surrounded by families in her role as executive director of the Greater Beverly YMCA and its 10,000 members. Her office smack in the middle of the controlled chaos of the Sterling Center offers the chance to see the trials and tribulations of parenthood without even leaving her desk. Clearly, the 36-year-old likes what she sees.
In the fall of 2006, O'Neil made up her mind to adopt a baby. She is not married but felt in her heart the time was right to become a mother. Her friends and family supported her decision to go it alone.
She researched adoption agencies and the policies of different countries, even creating an Excel spreadsheet for compiling the data, before settling on Vietnam. She submitted an application in January 2007. Almost a year later, on Dec. 4, she learned about her son in an e-mail.
She knows very little about him, except he was born in September and turned over to the orphanage the same day. The photo they sent helps make it more real.
The delays in bringing him home are the result of a new change in the way adoptions from Vietnam are processed by the United States. Previously, parents could go to Vietnam to meet their children, and the paperwork was completed while they waited. As of November, the paperwork must be finished in advance by immigration officials.
O'Neil knows there is often a lot of waiting in international adoptions. She is trying hard to be patient.
To get ready, she is reading parenting books and asking questions of parents who have brought babies home from Vietnam. Her friends threw her a Vietnamese-themed baby shower, complete with Vietnamese dishes. The invitation showed a stork carrying a baby cradled in a Vietnamese flag as the blanket.
"I have great friends," she says.
While her decision to adopt a baby as a single woman working in a high-profile job may not be conventional, O'Neil says she is touched by the encouragement she has gotten everywhere she goes.
"I can't tell you how supportive people have been," she says. "I don't think I have gotten a single negative comment from anyone."
At the Y, she sees grandparents, single parents, gay couples, all successfully raising children. She knows families come in all combinations.
"Being a single parent will certainly bring some difficult challenges," she says, "but I think that's true of parenthood in general."
So, like so many mothers-to-be, she waits for her baby, envisioning the life they will lead together as soon as the computer tells her so.
Staff writer Susan Flynn can be reached at 978-338-2658 or by e-mail at sflynn@salemnews.com.
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