Shifting Gears from TTC to Adoption

Since my adoption announcement, I've been wondering how much to share on the blog.  I want to be careful and cognizant of both the birth mother, whose privacy I want to respect, and the baby, who may some day come across this blog and read about how her story began.  Keeping that in mind, I still want to share what I'm going through with you guys! This blog has been such a positive outlet for me and I've made so many friends and connections over the past couple of years. So I will continue to write about our journey and I hope you follow along.

It's definitely been an emotional process for me from the beginning.  The adoption situation came up so suddenly and out of nowhere, I barely had any time to process it all. When we were first approached about it, I was still dealing with the grief from my miscarriage and my due date in October.  There were a lot of complex feelings and emotions that I was dealing with at the time. And obviously Daniel and I made a very thoughtful decision to pursue this adoption despite those things. Since then, I've been trying to balance my grief with the hope that this adoption has given me. My therapist was a huge help as I worked through these conflicting emotions.

With each passing day, I feel less and less attached to TTC and getting pregnant the ol' fashioned way. Even before the adoption situation came up, I was already starting to let those expectations go. Of course Daniel and I would be thrilled if we were to conceive naturally, miracles happen every day. And we have our 2 snowflakes that I hope to be reunited with in the future. But for now, we are putting all of that on the back burner.

Releasing expectations of my own pregnancy wasn't easy, and I still have feelings of jealousy towards pregnant women and new mothers.  I'm not sure that will ever go away.  And of course I've struggled with the fear that this adoption won't work out. Specifically, that the birth mother will change her mind. I know this is a fear that everyone pursuing adoption has to face. But I'm not focusing on that now, I'm focusing on the positives and staying hopeful that in a few short months I will finally be a mom.

So much of this situation is completely outside of my control. It's been difficult at times, but I'm finally learning to let go of negativity and fear. Just living in the moment has been so immensely comforting to me. I have had to learn to let go and just take each day as it comes, and to acknowledge my emotions and release them when I need to. I'm finally able to feel hope again after so long, and that has been a powerful change for me.

I feel like I've come a long way from where I was a year ago, and I'm so excited to see what the future holds! I know how lucky we are to have an opportunity to adopt this way without using an agency or waiting years for a match.  Daniel and I are beyond excited and can't wait to meet our baby girl!