Letting go a bit

When you decide that you are going to try to start a family, you don't really have much control over when and if it happens. I guess you could say that you can try to perfectly time things, but even then, it doesn't always happen. Although there are some people who say they are going to get start trying and get pregnant right away, this isn't how it happens for a lot of people. (This is me speaking as someone who thought it would be great to time a pregnancy so the baby would arrive at the end of the school year. Then I would have an entire summer before the new school year.) Well, we found out that we had no control over that.

Then after we got help from specialists, the only control we had over our situation was making decisions. For example, we decided what treatments we wanted to try. Ultimately, though, we still had no control over how things would end up.

After going through all of those procedures, I finally felt like I had some control when we decided to stop treatment. We both needed to stop. Making the decision to pursue adoption gave us back some control over the way we were going to build our family. I realize that when our child's adoption happens is out of our control, but there have been other things that we've been able to do in the meantime. Filling out the huge application and all of the forms was the giant step for us. Getting our fingerprints taken and having our physicals done was another checkmark on the list. Having our interviews completed by our caseworker and attending meetings -- all of it makes us feel like we're headed in the right direction.

There have been times during the waiting that have been hard for me. Hearing other's pregnancy news has been hard. I'm so happy for them, but it's hard to not think about our own situation, too, and how we've been trying to just start our family for the past 3 years. I am really lucky that I recently met someone through my work who is also in the adoption process right now. (I may have already mentioned this.) It felt so good to meet someone who has been there and is adopting for a second time.

So, the waiting has been hard. It's also been kind of cool in some ways. I feel like all of this is preparation. I'm working on an adoption scrapbook. It has all kinds of info in it from when we decided on our agency up until now (well, not quite now, because I have a few more pages to work on, but you get the idea.) I have had the chance to read adoption blogs written by people who are at all different stages of adoption. I've had the chance to "meet" even more people through adoption chatboards and share our experiences. I've read A LOT about adoption from children's books, to memoirs, to informational books.




I am a huge fan of Adoption Stories on tv! (I dvr them and rewatch them all the time.) Steve and I have also been figuring out what we want our nursery to look like. We don't know if we'll eventually adopt a boy or a girl so there are things that we'll have to decide on later, but it's been fun for us to plan and figure out what types of things we like.

The waiting has also given Steve and I chance to become closer. We have been really taking time to do things together that we enjoy. We love books and bookstores, so we've been spending a lot of time in them. We went to a book signing for one of Steve's favorite authors on Monday. His name is Jim Butcher, and he writes science fiction. It was pretty exciting to see how happy Steve was to listen to him speak and to meet him.





We're also going to take some kind of day trip on Friday. Not sure where yet. Not sure what we'll do. We've been talking about a couple of possibilities. It will be nice to just hang out and see something new.

So even though the waiting is hard, I'm appreciative of what we've been doing during the time. You have to let go a bit of the idea of being able to control things and just have faith that it will happen. Some days that comes easier than others.
I know every moment will be worth it when we meet our little one.

Your comments

I was reading the comments that a lot of you left for me after my last post. (Thank you so much for leaving comments for me. I love reading them.) The last one that I read was this:

katd said...
I loved saying "paper pregnant" when we were waiting for Lily! You ARE an expectant mom; you just don't have any certain due date:)

I really needed to hear that. Thank you!

There are some days when I really feel like we're expecting...when Steve and I are planning things and talking about how things will be when we have a baby in our home. Then there are other days when I don't feel like this at all. When I feel down or feel doubtful. I have had some days like that over the past few months, too. I am trying to have a strong positive attitude about everything (especially with our profile being shown -- that makes me feel very hopeful.)

It's nice to be reminded that we are EXPECTANT PARENTS just like anyone else.

Our weekend

This weekend was so pretty. Steve and I took a walk to the park nearby our house. It's right on the water. We took these pictures there. It finally felt a little bit like spring! Of course, it's been snowing all day today, so obviously spring is not quite here yet!

After being at the park, we went out to dinner. This was our "date" night for the week! So far we've been really good about doing something fun each week or weekend. It's so easy to get so busy and not make time for yourselves. So we went to dinner, and then went to see "I Love You, Man." (Very funny, by the way!)

When we were at dinner, we talked about all kinds of things. At one point, Steve started talking about insurance, and I kidded him about how that's not very date-like conversation. His response: "It's not easy being paper-pregnant. There's lots to plan for." I just love that he's thinking about all of this...he really wants to plan for our child's (children's) future. It was pretty cool to hear him say we're "paper pregnant" (home study is done), too. :)