52 Days!

That sure sounds like a lot of days to me to continue this pumping schedule...whew!! Less than 8 weeks, possibly 7 if they are scheduling her for a C-section.  He is considered full term on December 30th!! 

Monday I sent an email to our case worker inquiring if it was too much of me to request that our potential BM get some ultrasound pictures at her appointment this Friday.  In return I received this "Kim, please call me so I can explain to you last night's events".  Anxiety and sadness over took me and I walked around the house thinking 'nope I don't want to call you', I was scared to get bad news.  I paced the house for like five minutes and then just faced the call and immediately told the case worker 'I'm scared of what you are going to tell me'.  She told me not to be scared and I felt a tiny bit of peace.  So, without sharing what was discussed because it is personal - I will share that it was baby mama/daddy drama - who needs that?!  In this world of adoption what we are experiencing is considered normal and par for the course but it totally zaps the warm and fuzzies from my heart about this process.  There is an unbelievable amount of drama in our adoption journey.  This is hard to deal with and I continue to just try and focus my energy to the end result.  I surely hope and pray that we are not being taken and this is a solid match.  That is a thought I have to continue to bounce out of my daily thoughts and it's real hard.  Here I am pumping 9x a day for our hopeful baby and seriously starting to get prepared and I honestly can say that I believe in this match, it's just not going extremely smooth.  I truly believe that this couple is not going to change their mind because of many reasons that I can not disclose but living with the day to day drama is challenging.

Over the weekend as we pulled out our Christmas decorations and put the tree up, Joe also drug out all our baby gear.  It was good to take inventory on what we still have from Lola.  We lent a lot of our stuff out over the years and some of it doesn't work anymore, and some we never got back.  Also one of my friends swapped car seats with me and brought me an infant car seat and I can check that off my registry.  We also found our Diaper Genie and I got to delete that from the list as well.  That felt good. I started cleaning up the items we have, washing stuff in baby detergent which smells so good and I finally mailed back the girly bedding I had previously purchased from the last match.  

Less than 9 weeks...

I wrote a post and tried to keep it up beat on Tuesday but never posted it.  I admit - I complained a little about all the red tape, all the in's and outs about this particular adoption without getting too personal.  The bottom line is the communication between us and the agency could be a little bit better.  I'm not going to get into the nitty-gritty because I really wanted to keep these last few weeks on the positive side.  Some of you I've shared a bit with but I still have left some stuff out and have had to because it is personal information about our potential birth parents.  This process is definitely challenging and all I can do is focus on the end result and try my hardest to not sweat the so called process in the mean time.  Let me put it this way - there is a lot more to just being matched and waiting for the birth of your hopeful baby.  There is paperwork, major decisions, an extreme amount of trust and much much more. 

So we have less than 9 weeks till baby boy's due date!! I know that the BM is going to be getting a sonagram on Friday and I sure wish I could be there...  How neat would that be!  Anyhow - it wasn't offered and I didn't press for it because logistically it's kinda impossible for us to work that out.  However I am looking forward to getting possibly a picture (I will try and press for that), as well as finding out how he's doing in there! 

I have officially been pumping every 2-3 hours around the clock since last Thrusday, not to mention I also was bed ridden with a horrible cold/flu for the first 4 days too!  That was fun...  Actually it wasn't all that bad.  The cold was/still is rough, but once the pumping started progressing, it became something I looked forward to seeing.  It has really been great for me because it makes me feel more connected to this match and hopeful, like in a few weeks I really am going to be feeding a baby.  This journey for us has been much longer than the adoption process.  It's been about 4 years in the making and we are almost there...

10 week countdown!!

I've decided to snap out of my mood and start preparing for bringing home our baby.  I am going to do a weekly countdown on his due date.   Our potential birth mom is 30 weeks!!  That means that this is our longest match, we were matched when she was around 23 weeks and I'm glad we've made it through her second trimester into her third.  In seven more weeks he will be considered full term and we will hopefully have a more accurate idea of when he's coming (she's most likely having a c-section), and we will be making our plans to attend the birth per my hopes and our potential birth mom's wishes.  When we had that amazing phone call (still the only one), she told me 'this is your baby' and she wants us a part of everything.  She is aware that I am preparing to breast feed and she is all for it and comfortable with it which makes for the possibility of the hospital allowing for that.  I have spoken with the hospital and they informed me that most likely Joe and I will be getting a room and that's where we will be with the baby when he's born.  There are still a lot of worries I have.  Please pray for our potential babies birth parents and the health of the baby.  I can only have faith that she is healthy and he will be born healthy.  I tried to just touch base with our case worker via email last Friday morning and she has not replied.  Maybe as time gets closer to his due date she'll be more proactive with staying in touch with me.  That part is frustrating.  Thank you everyone for continuing to ride this journey out with us, I feel like we are so close to bringing home our baby but not without some bumps in the road.  I can only pray it goes smoothly from here on out.

Lately...

The truth?  I haven't felt pumped for a while with our adoption.  I headed everyone's advise and tried to just live as though everything is normal and not focus on adoption when in actuality time has gone by but so has my excitement.  This is so different than being pregnant and I am very blessed to be able to experience them both.  This one is definitely a challenge though.  I think through the two failed adoptions and the extreme highs and lows, my joy of this process has been zapped.  It's also hard to be matched so far in advance of the birth of your hopeful baby.  Plenty of time for things to go wrong.  With all that said, I'm still very grateful that our adoption is still moving forward.  The only issues we have had has been the continuous re-scheduling of our next birth mother/father phone call.  It was rescheduled four times now and still hasn't happened.  A few of those times I never even received correspondence from the agency that the call wasn't going to happen.  I was left to wonder all night if something was wrong, this has been hard to do.  I finally expressed my feelings to our case worker and she then advised me of a couple things specific about this process and since then I have totally lowered my expectations and am not holding my breath for another phone call. 

I've learned SO MUCH in this journey.  I will admit that once we finished our profile book and how good I thought it was, I was thinking we'd be matched very quickly because 'who wouldn't want to be part of our family'.  HAHA!!  Yeah, that is not how this works.  I am not in control here, that is evident and continues to be for me.  It's real hard sometimes when the case worker tells me how busy she is with her several birth mothers giving birth in one day and we are still waiting.  I picture how excited those adoptive parents must be and feel like 'why can't that be us?' - I have to be patient, I have to have faith that our match is going to go through, this is the baby we have been chosen to have and just need to hold out a couple more months and soon it will be us, it will be our day!  I'm trying really hard.  I've dreaded writing about it at times because of how hard it's been.  I feel like how many times do people really want to hear me gripe about what isn't happening in our adoption.  Since it's only 2 months away I am really going to try and focus on baby a little bit more and maybe we'll tell Lola that we are working with a potential birth mother but nothing is for sure yet or maybe we won't.  Who knows, I just gotta get my joy about this back somehow.

I'm also taking all these herbs and stuff and some of the medicine makes me fatigued, gain weight - I'm serious I have no idea what I was thinking when I decided to breast feed :)  I start to pump next Friday and my lactation nurse told me I need to go on a 'milk moon'.  I was like 'what is that?'  She was adamant about me pumping every 2-3 hours a day for what I'm assuming is until the baby arrives.  That's time consuming, that's painful, that's going to be different!  So my life really is changing, my body is changing and I really wish I had an ultrasound picture or more information on the baby but I don't other than he's healthy.  I'm a bit scared about the what if's and I really just need support.