20 Weeks

We've been on our adoption road for 20 weeks now, well in the grand scheme of things over 2 years. I have mixed feelings today. We should be finding out the sex of our child, preparing the room, or thinking seriously about baby names at this point. That is if we were doing this the old fashioned way. Instead the little voice in me that says "you know this might not work out, don't get too invested" is loud today.  The anxiety and frustration regarding the process has been getting to us lately. We have been able to do absolutely nothing for over 6 weeks now and the only things we can do in the near future is walk in and have our fingerprints taken. This part of the process has been slower than we anticipated. It likely will be at least another 6 weeks after our fingerprints that we can even think about having a dossier ready to go over to China. I think everyone has moments in this process where the anxiety can be paralyzing. I write these type of posts for them and for myself. Reading other people's similar experiences has helped me a lot through this, mainly by understanding I'm not a crazy person.

I've been thinking about all of the things that can either cause major delays or make us start all over again or completely shut the door. Things like one of us losing our job, documents
being lost in the federal government system, Fed Ex plane going down, a massive earthquake in China, identitiy theft, invasion of the world by aliens. Okay, I haven't really reached the point of worrying about that last item, please slap me across the face if I do. You watch international news like a hawk to make sure relations between China and the US are okay, and no government shutdowns are happening.

Then, this week Ethiopia announced they were reducing international adoptions by 90% starting very soon. Did I really need to see one of my worst fears played out? Ethiopia was actually our second choice country but we elected not to go with the program, one reason being we had a bad feeling about the massive amount of adoptions coming out of there. At some point we thought someone might put the brakes on, and it seems they have. I feel for all of those families in that spot right now. I can't imagine the not knowing and uncertainty on that level. I can barely handle it some days now in my situation.

I have had a few people tell me, "oh, you do know that things can go wrong with a pregnancy, don't you."  No, I didn't, thanks for alerting me to that. I was under the assumption that babies were delivered by a stork. They should really tell you that at the doctor's office. It is not the same. This is "it" for us. The stakes are very high for this process to work out.

On the flip side of that since the stakes are so high the payoff is also very high. I have learned a lot about giving up control, faith, and patience through this process thus far. I've actually gotten pretty good at a lot of those things I think, considering the situation. So, most days I have hope.  Most days that voice isn't very loud. Today just isn't one of them.