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Saturday, June 29, 2013

A different kind of waiting

     So a typical question among adoptive families is "How long did you wait?" Usually referring to the amount of time between the completion of your home study and your match.  Today I want to talk about a different wait. The wait for the child we had been matched with to be born.  Three very long months.  Three months filled with excitement, and hope but also anxiety and fear.  Since we got the call at the end of December, we were pretty busy until the second week of January.  Even then, throughout this time we kept pretty busy with our 3 kids.  It was during the quiet times I would think about our new daughter and would wonder things.  Of course some of them were things I wondered when I was pregnant.  "What will she look like?", "What will it be like to hold her?" "How are the kids going to handle a new baby in the house?"   Some of the thoughts were unique to the adoption "Will she attach to me and my husband OK?"  "Will she grow up wondering why her birthparents chose an adoption plan?"  But it was a constant barrage of  whats? and wills? And I finally had to learn to let it be. To remind myself this was God's plan for our family and whatever it looks like in the end is all a part of it.

     In January it seemed so far away. We had plenty of time to prepare, get the nursery ready, pick a name.  In the three months since we were matched our daughter's birthmother and I spoke frequently by email.  I have saved and printed all those emails to go into a folder to give our daughter.  I often wondered what our relationship would look like afterwards, how it has turned out is a different post :)  One of my big concerns was how to tell our children.  You might be questioning why we didn't tell them right away.  In a way we wanted to protect them.  See the process itself is really an emotional roller coaster.  I tell people adoption is like a pregnancy of your soul.  Just as a physical pregnancy stretches your body to its limits so does adoption to your emotions.  It will have you doing things you never thought you could do, things you never thought you could feel and in some cases, leave evidence of itself on your soul, much like stretch marks.  In many cases, over a longer period of time than a physical pregnancy.  So we had decided not to tell our kids up front because we did not want to have this huge discussion and then something happen and her birthparents change their mind and decide to parent the child.  We were afraid of how it would affect them if we told them this thing would happen and then it didn't.  We didn't want them to have any anxiety or fear about it.  How little faith we had in our children.  Now we had discussed adoption with them, they understood what an orphan was (remember we were initially seeking a child with special needs from China) and they completely understood we felt God was calling our family to be a family to a child who needed one.  So we discussed it with our adoption worker and she convinced us to tell them.  She stated it would be better to work through the aftermath of a failed placement then to expect them to adjust appropriately without proper time to work through it emotionally and prepare for another child.  So we took her advice and went out to a family dinner.  We told the kids we had some exciting news.  I was super nervous, trying to anticipate all the questions they might have.  We kind of went halfway and told them we met with some birthparents who thought they wanted us to be a forever family to a little baby who would be born in a few months.  We told them we should pray for their family as they chose what to do.  That way it still left an out if minds were changed last minute.  So here I was ready to tackle the life changing questions and all they said was "OK.  Can we order some cheesesticks?" That. was. it.  To them it was so simple and pure. It just....was.  No concerns, no questions, just complete and utter faith in what was to be.  Oh, what a lesson in faith I took away from that night.  To this day, with the exception of a brief discussion on babies in birthmother's tummies and which child came out of which tummy, there has still been very little discussion on the matter.  It just "is".  I'm sure the questions are coming, and maybe they never will, but we want to be as open as we can be about all of it.

     So then we had a little more waiting to go.  We already had everything saved from our last child, so there wasn't a rush of going out and the excitement of buying new things.  What we didn't have we borrowed or found at a reasonable price and we waited.  We packed a bag of lots of different things because we had no idea of what she would weigh and we waited.  We packed an entire Suburban full of things we had no idea of whether we would need because we did not know how long it would be before we could return to our home state with her.  And we waited a little more.  During this time I worried a lot about if I would bond with her.  I think up to the second she was born I kept a little emotional distance as a safety net in case the placement fell through.  I tried to guard my emotions for self preservation, I realize that now.  I think it was also a little difficult to fall in love with her during those three months because we didn't have an image.  I saw a few of my friends who were working through international adoptions with pictures of their children they had been matched with and I envied them.  They had something tangible to love.  They carried around those pictures, stared at those pictures and fell in love with the children in those pictures over a period of time.  We had an ultrasound picture (which touches my heart that her birthmother thought of sending to us, so cool) but come on, how much can you really see in one of those.  So I worried that it would take me a while to fall in love with her.  And the next thing I knew, time was up, our waiting was over and we were heading to her home state where she would be born the next day...

Tuesday, June 11, 2013

They chose us?!?!

     So after taking a break from blogging world, I am back to continue our story.  (Major kudos to those who blog everyday, wow!)

     If you remember the last blog post, we had met some birthparents.  Well after that meeting we were told they wanted to meet with two other families, that it would be well after the New Year before we would hear anything.  So there was a break from the anxiousness, I knew not to expect anything so the holidays were relaxed and we just focused on family.  A few days after Christmas I was driving our three kids from a doctor's appointment when I got a text from our worker.  It simply said "Hope you had a great Christmas. By the way I have some great news for you" I read it and I swear when it comes to stuff like this my mind goes into warp speed.  My first thought was "No way!!!!" "But we weren't planning (see, there I go planning again, you think I would know better by now) to hear anything." "Maybe that's not what she's talking about"  So before I panic I text her back "No way".  She texted back "Yes way and it's a girl".  Talk about shock.  I think it is also important to note at this point we had decided not to tell the kids about any of this.  We had discussed adoption with them, sure, but didn't want the potential continuous ups and downs to get to them.  So while I am finding out that birthparents have chosen us to be their child's forever family, I am trying to hold myself together because my 4,6 and 12 year old who have no idea are in the car.  So I quietly asked her about the other families they were supposed to meet, I felt badly they didn't get the opportunity to meet them and be considered.  She replied it was a good fit and they really liked us.  I let her know I would talk to my husband but we would let her know if we agreed to be matched (Duh, yeah!).  So I then called and woke up my husband who had just come off a midnight shift and whispered "Six words".  It took him a moment to wake up and wonder what in the world I was talking about.  So he was like, Umm OK what are the six words.  I whispered to him "They picked us.  It's a girl"  I must say it took about 20 seconds and me repeating myself two more times before he got it.  And boy was there some hooting and hollering when he realized what I was telling him.  It was the best Christmas present we could have gotten.  So there we were.  We were matched.  What next??
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