Waiting

My initial goal when I started this blog was to post what is happening in our lives once a week.  How am I doing?  I'm not...doing.  Well, I am doing lots of things, posting in this blog is just not one of them!  I have decided that I will not berate myself for this ,as this blog is intended solely for my own benefit and enjoyment, and I don't need to worry about setting high standards for myself and not living up to them!  Henceforth, you will not read an apologetic caveat at the top of each post!

Today, I will record for myself some of my own thoughts and feelings about life as a waiting adoptive mother. 

I have always thought that I am a patient person, and relatively speaking I might be, but that patience is waning.  This year I will turn 35.  Turning 30 stung a little, but 30-34 really all seems about the same to me.  But 35 feels heavy.  35 is over the hump to 40.  35 is new grey hairs every day.  35 is going to physical therapy for that unexplained knee pain.  But heaviest of all....35 is "advanced maternal age".  While I am mostly okay with only adopting children and not having biological children, there is still part of me that feels panicky about this milestone.  When you are an adoptive family it feels like you have even less control over your own destiny than most.  Waiting is hard.  I have been feeling this more acutely recently than normal. 

We have had meetings with two different birth-moms in the past few months and know that several other moms have specifically been considering our profile. While I believe wholeheartedly in birth mothers having more control over how and where their children are placed for adoption, I also feel the lack of control that gives us as a family.  I am a reasonably confident person, but it is not easy to sit back and wait to be chosen based on one small photo book and an hour-long meeting (if it even comes to that).  Most of the time I am able to convince myself that we will have more children, someday, but other days I wonder if that's really the case.  Living in limbo is a tiring state for me.

Recently, I have also been struggling with the need/desire to prepare for more children.  When we received a call a month or two ago that there was a birth-mom who wanted to meet us that had already given birth, I vacillated back and forth between nesting (ie. cleaning the 1/2inch layer of dust off of every surface in the house, getting food ready to freeze, getting out our bassinet to set up and clean, etc.) and doing nothing in order to keep myself detached from the situation.  Waiting for her to decide between us and another family was agonizing.  She did not choose us.  And while it is okay...really...it's still a little hard to choke down.   Now, we find ourselves waiting for a decision from a mother of twins.  Yes, you read that right, twins.  Now of course, there are parts of me that find the prospect of caring for our 3yr old son and twins terrifying, but there is also NO way to stop from imagining what it might be like to adopt these twins.  There are important details to consider.  How will we even transport a family of three children in car seats?  Our cars won't work.  What plans will need to be altered over the next few months if we do, in fact, adopt these twins.  Where would we get the appropriate nursery furniture, car seats, clothing, etc. to care for two infants at once?  How do we actually go about getting two babies fed, clothed, bathed, and sleeping at once?  But we are paralyzed.  There is really nothing to do but wait.  You can't prepare well for something that might happen.

There is a part of me that wants to be hopeful at each of these possibilities, but there is also a part of me that wants to shut hope down in an attempt at emotional self-preservation. 

Some days are easier than others.  And the truth is that our experience with adoption so far has been beautiful.  So, I will continue to wait and to pray, cautiously hopeful that there will be more children in our family someday.  And that when that day comes we will have room in our hearts to love them as well as they deserve (and room in our garage for that devil mini-van we will probably have to have)!