Adoption: Paper Pregnant
Such a weird term... Paper Pregnancy.
It popped into my brain this week and I can’t stop thinking about it. I feel overwhelmed. I feel emotional. I started having surreal dreams about it.
Adoption…
I woke up today… in a somber mood, such an inexplicable feeling lingering over me. Hours later I remembered my vivid dream. I went to check my email to see if it was in fact real, thankfully it wasn’t.
I dreamt that our home-study wasn’t approved because… well I am infertile. The email from my social worker stated that because we were trying to conceive (which aren’t now), they decided we wait to adopt till we stop trying. I remember crying to my husband asking him how in the world was I ever going to become a mother if I couldn’t conceive and if we couldn’t adopt.
Thankfully it was all just a horrible dream and thinking about it just makes me want to vomit and cry.
Our friends recently adopted a set of two amazing little boys a week ago. From the moment they submitted their homestudy on them to the moment they arrived home the process took 2 weeks. Yes, 2 weeks. It almost happened in a blink of an eye.
So now we are basically in that part of the process. We are waiting for our homestudy to be approved, if it hasn’t been already, and then we get to submit our homestudy on children.
I have never been pregnant. I don’t know how it feels to be pregnant but I know the symptoms a woman experiences during pregnancy (I have spent two years reading up on them thinking I was). What I do know about a pregnancy is that it usually lasts nine months, give or take a few weeks. The mother gets to mentally prepare herself for sleepless nights, breastfeeding, she starts buying what she can afford to give her baby the best; clothes, crib, carseat, stroller, etc. She finds out the sex of the baby (most times) and buys gender specific clothing and room decor. Of course, there’s a whole lot missing in the preparation of what the mother does for baby but you get the idea.
With a paper pregnancy it goes nothing like that. Unless of course you have a specific age and sex in mind, which tends to be a little easier. In our situation here’s what we can expect: Ages 1-10, male or female, illnesses, down syndrome (yay, hope we do get a little blessing like that!), 1, 2, or 3 kids. That’s what we decided to be open to and we have NO idea what to expect. The process could take two weeks or it could take a year.
My stomach twists at the excitement and anticipation… this journey has officially begun- we are paper pregnant and have no idea what to expect.
So many things going through our minds; the need to move to a bigger house hasn’t left our mind (it’s like the nesting stage has begun). The emotions are all over the place and all I could think of is that God has it all under control, our children have already been picked by Him and it’s all going to work out, but the kinks in between are just too many to count.
Will you pray for us?
