One Month Waiting Check In

I thought since I’m going through this entire process start to finish with all of you, I would touch base with my readers once a month as we continue through the wait process to let everyone see the emotions I’m experiencing along the way. For many adoptive parents, the wait is the most dreaded part of the journey because we have nothing but negative warnings thrown at us about the wait. You already heard my mini rant about being labeled as desperate very early in the process in my post titled Are All Adoptive Parents Desperate?  The post talks about the warnings of that desperateness that everyone inevitably says will set in. I’m trying to avoid that feeling as much as I can.

So, later this week, we will have reached one month officially as a waiting family, and I can say at this point that the first month felt like a breeze. School started, which meant Travis returned to work. Buggy and I are adjusting to our new routine here at home just the two of us again. I started some new classes this semester and realized that I’m only ELEVEN hours from graduating!!! (yea!!!) In other words, there were plenty of other things to keep my mind off of the wait.

That doesn’t mean that I don’t feel anxious from time to time, because I do.

At this point, I DO feel…

-Frustrated sometimes with the adoption process and the hoops adoptive parents have to jump through just to extend their families. While I don’t think it’s ridiculous or unnecessary, there is a jealous bug in me that says that biological parents should have to jump through the same hoops to have their babies too. Ridiculous, I realize…But many people around us right now are expecting, and I shift between excited and unselfishly thrilled for them to sad for us and selfishly jealous every day, simply because I know I can’t possibly have another baby on my own.

-Relaxed about the wait. It’s like running a marathon. {Not that I’ve ever actually done such a thing.} But from what I hear from runners is that first mile, maybe even the first few miles are like pieces of cake. I feel relaxed that it won’t be that bad. But I have no idea. Check in again in six months time and see how that feeling has changed.

-Slightly anxious/excited when the phone rings. Especially when it rings during strange times of the day or when it rings and the number is not one that is already in my phone book. I also get a little butterfly feeling in my stomach every morning when I first check my email. Just in case there’s that tiny chance our agency director has emailed me about a possible situation. So far there haven’t been any calls or emails, but still every morning I check with that tiny twinge of excitement.

-Ready but not. This one is hard to describe. Because I’ve always felt in my gut that our wait will be x amount of days {I’m actually scared to say it on here for fear of looking like a fool if it’s not…really optimistic, huh?}, I don’t feel extremely anxious or nervous right now. We’re fully stocked on clothes for a girl or a boy. We’re still praying for a girl, but because specifying one gender would limit our chances of being shown substantially, we’re open to either gender and just praying that God brings us our perfect baby regardless of gender. So this baby is set as far as clothes, accessories, diapers, toys, bedding, etc whether they are a boy or a girl. In that sense, I feel ready. Emotionally and psychologically, I don’t. But that’s only because I’ve always had this “feeling” that the call will come at x time, so I don’t feel like right now is THE time. I could be completely wrong and God is known for his surprises, but I would be honestly floored if the call came any time soon.

-Confident in the agency we’ve selected. I haven’t heard from our director in about a month, since we became active, but I have faith that they’re doing the leg work required to get us matched. I just don’t worry about it. I could tailspin down that road of “what if they aren’t networking enough and our profile hasn’t been shown at all,” but that’s not good for my optimism or my spirit, so I’m just not going there.

-Hopeful. The way I see it, every day or week or month that passes in this wait is one day or week or month closer to being matched and bringing another baby into our family. It WILL happen eventually, and every day that passes is one day closer to THE day.

At this point, I do NOT feel…

-Discouraged. Not at all. The families who are matched within one month’s time are honestly rare. Yes, it happens. Yes, agencies will tell you those stories over the stories of the couple who waited 2 years because it breeds optimism and makes you want to sign with them. Yes, every couple who hears those stories has a secret hope in their hearts that that will be them. But I’m guessing it honestly doesn’t happen that often. When we signed with this agency, our director told us about a couple who was placed with a baby just last month. She said they’d only been active for 6 days when they were matched. Sure, I got those excited jittery feelings about what if that’s us, but in my heart I know that our babies come to us when they come to us. Theirs was ready. Ours obviously isn’t yet.

–Like it could be “any day now.” When you become an active family, you truly are waiting for that call to come at any moment. It could come tomorrow for all I know, but it doesn’t feel like we’re there yet. I don’t know if that makes any sense. I guess it still feels like there’s some step we have to go through before we’re waiting. Maybe that’s just because I worried that we wouldn’t be able to adopt until Little was much older, so us actually being in this process now still feels like a dream. I don’t feel any more “expectant” than a couple who is trying to conceive. Still, the thought occurs to me sometimes that they could get the call this afternoon about a baby who was born in a hospital and abandoned and they need a family for her NOW. Sure, I get excited thinking those thoughts, but I try not to dwell on them because even the exciting thoughts can turn into anxiety or restlessness if you aren’t careful.

-Desperate. We have continued praying about the things we told the agency we would and would not accept, and while I’m completely open to God changing our hearts or revealing to us that we’ve missed something in there {perhaps a racial preference that we were originally closed to, or a special needs we would not consider before}, I don’t feel compelled to change anything at the moment. And I know I wouldn’t change anything we said we would and would not accept unless we truly felt like God was leading that decision 100%. Right now we don’t feel like that, so we just continue to pray that if we were supposed to mark something we didn’t, or if we weren’t supposed to mark something we did, that God would reveal that to us in his time. But I don’t feel this compulsive need to go over the form again and change things just to increase our chances of a match.

-Worried about this wait. Right now I don’t. Now, again, ask me in 6 months {you’ll hear about it anyway} and my story may change. Sometimes I go over our profile and think, “Maybe I should or shouldn’t have added this part,” but I just put it away. It’s perfect, we prayed for it and over it before we sent it out. We had our family and best friends look it over. It’s done. That sneaky little voice that tries to whisper doubt to me about it is just trying to distract me. I feel like God wouldn’t put something in front of us that we can’t handle, so this wait is not going to be something we can’t tackle. I do worry that I’ll reach that point where I feel as though I can’t take it anymore, but then I often hear from adoptive parents that that seems to be the very moment when the call comes. You never know. I’ve seen adoptive parent friends go through the process and the wait is just agonizing. I pray I don’t reach that point. I pray there are plenty of things to keep me distracted along the way, including my sweet little boy. I hurt for him to have a companion and playmate, a friend for life that can only be found through siblings. But I trust that it will all happen in God’s perfect timing. I hope I maintain that attitude months down the road.

So here we are. A waiting family for one month. Nothing really. I’ve been researching and preparing for this adoption since January of 2010. Actually, that’s a lie. My heart has been prepared to adopt since I was about 12. But we started actively diving into this adoption in January of ’10. I figure if we’ve come this far with the odds stacked mightily against us, we can go the rest of the journey. I pray that my excitement and anxiousness don’t get the better of me. We also continue to pray every night that our wait isn’t too terribly long. I guess just like a couple trying to conceive, any month could be THE month. That’s kind of a reassuring way to look at it.

Have a great weekend. Of course, I’ll let you all know if anything happens! 🙂

Kat