8 days...

We're down to 8 days until the baby's due date. Wow - in some ways the past couple weeks have felt so slow, but in other ways it feels like it's zooming by. Does that make any sense?

I have been back at work. The students started this week, so it's been busy. It's also been very hard to focus on work-related things! I'm really glad that I took a lot of time in early and mid-August to prepare for my substitutes. It made it a lot easier during this past week. Everything is ready, though, so whenever the baby comes, the sub will have what she needs to start.

There certainly is a lot of waiting with adoption, isn't there? The closer it gets to the due date, the harder it seems to wait. I have been busy with work and things at home, but it's not enough to take my mind off things, that's for sure. I've been thinking a lot about how the birthmom may be feeling right now and how this must be so hard. We still email each other often - I'm so happy when we get an email from her.

So that's where things are right now. We don't have anything specific planned this weekend, so I think I'm just going to try to organize some things around the house a bit more. I might try to work in our garden, too. And I'll be trying not to be so jumpy every time the phone rings! :)

It took 5 years to get to these next 5 weeks

"How do we know where our journeys may ultimately take us?" This is how the epilogue to Forever Lily, a story about an adoption from China, by Beth Nonte Russell starts. I read the book back when we first started considering adoption, and I thought we might actually pursue international adoption instead of domestic. The author writes about how, over the course of the past 5 years, her life changed dramatically. It makes me think about how our lives have changed so much over the past 5 years, too.

Five years ago this month we moved to a new state (well, new for Steve but it was the state I grew up in) and a new home. We scrambled to make the move happen in a short amount of time. We were closing on our home, and I was starting a brand new teaching job all within a matter of a few days. So not only were we setting up a new home, I was setting up a new classroom. The home we bought was our first house - we had always rented in the past. This was a HUGE step for us.

I started the new job and met hundreds of new students and many new coworkers. Steve continued to work his same job but in a new location. He had to meet many new coworkers, too. It was an adjustment for both of us.

We always knew that we wanted to have children, but we waited until after we had bought the house and we felt we were ready. Then after trying on our own for a long time, we moved on to a fertility specialist. She is a great doctor, but things just didn't work out for us. We got to a point where we knew that we needed to go down a different road. We had talked about adopting for quite a while. Even back before fertility treatments - we talked about it back then. When we decided to adopt, I felt a sense of relief. I felt like we had finally found a way to start our family. That this way might work for us. I felt a new sense of hopefulness that I had lost along the way during the infertility procedures.

The ups and downs are still a part of the adoption process, but I think we have felt more of the ups this time around. In the beginning, it was hard to hear that our profile had been shown but not picked. Part of you is happy that it's being shown, but the other part of you wants to know why you weren't chosen. Then we got the call on a Friday afternoon in June that changed everything. We feel really fortunate that our wait time was short considering what it could have been. We feel really lucky that we've been able to get to know the birthmom and some of her family. We're hoping that maybe we'll be lucky enough to spend more time with them before the birth of the baby.

I am so thankful for this situation. For us to have met her and to have spent additional time with her is a gift. We realize that not every adoptive parent has that same situation where they get to meet their child's birthparent(s). We're writing a journal about getting to know her - we'll give it to Zoe when she's older.

So much has happened in five years. So much transition, newness, starting over, beginnings, endings, emotional highs and lows. I wonder what I would have said if you had asked me 5 years ago where I thought I would be 5 years later. I'm sure I would have said that I would still be a teacher. I know I would have said that we would be still be a happily married couple. And I'll bet that I would have said "hopefully I'll be a mom." And to think...that looks like it might actually come true in about 5 weeks. Looks like our journey to parenthood might just be beginning...

Two More Times

Our case worker emailed us yesterday with our June update: our profile was shown twice in April! That means that our profile has been shown 4 times since it went 'active' in December. We were told not to expect to be shown much (if at all) before we had been waiting for at least 6 months. The people who tend to be shown the most often are couples who have been waiting the longest. So it sounds like something in our profiles has matched what some expectant parents were looking for. We weren't chosen, but it's good to know we're being shown. We're close to 6 months waiting right now.

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.