Paper Pregnant

I wrote a few days ago about my quest for balance.  A comment was left by a Mama in the same shoes as me:

I feel so conflicted about this in my own life. Adoption is such a contradictory process. It really demands that you dive in whole-heartedly while simultaneously guarding your heart. It requires you to spend hours on paperwork, notaries, education, reading, and research -- without allowing those things to dominate your time. I look at this and think, how is this possible? How are we expected to stay sane?



You are in baby-waiting mode. If you were physically pregnant your family, friends and coworkers would ask you how you are feeling every day. Strangers would try and touch your belly. Grocery clerks would ask "When are you due?" "Is it a boy or a girl?" "Do you have any names?" The conversation would be constant. But, when you are adopting, no one can tell you are "paper pregnant" by looking at you. Fewer people ask questions. Some people may not be sure how to ask/what's appropriate. So, you bring it up. You tell people what's new. You share your feelings. You probably really aren't spending any more time on it than you did when you were pregnant.


Having said all that, balance is good. If you feel you are needing to back off a little, I am glad you are doing so. Just don't be too hard on yourself! After all, one of your children is nearly 8 thousand miles away, shouldn't you be a little "obsessive" about that?

I didn't worry at all about being too focused on my babies when I was pregnant.  I'm sure I talked about it a LOT and I'm also pretty sure I did a fair amount of whining: "My back hurts" "I can't sleep" "I have to go to the bathroom- again"  "I can't get up off the couch" and so forth.  People didn't seem bothered because those things are expected in pregnancy.  Adoption, on the other hand, is new to me.  I don't know what the protocol is.  I know it will be hard to believe, but I am the type of person who needs to share my feelings and talk things through.  I'm not an internalizer.  That is why I have a blog in the first place - it is a place for me to process what I'm thinking and feeling.  I hope that it might be helpful to others on the same journey to see that someone else is experiencing the same types of things as they are.  I am also thankful that I can read about the journeys of other families and gain wisdom from their experiences as well.  So, thank you Melissa for sharing your thoughts and helping me to see that it is ok to be a bit preoccupied with a baby girl that I have not yet met.  It was certainly that way when I was expecting the boys!