Every adoption story is different, just like every birth is different. You can ask all of your friends for a recount of their delivery and you will get a unique story every time. Adoption stories are no different. So, here is how ours goes! The Decision: I had a rough pregnancy with Dakota, my six year old. I was nauseous the majority of my pregnancy. I only gained 19lbs, which I got lectured for at every appointment. I had horrible nose bleeds and at 34 weeks I developed Bell's Palsy. The Bell's Palsy cause excruciating pain in my face and all I could take was Tylenol. At 36 weeks and 6 days of pregnancy, my water broke. Luckily, for D, I had been on steroids a few weeks prior to that. He was very healthy for a 36 week baby. My Bell's Palsy took 4 more months to resolve after delivery. I ended up having acupuncture treatments done to help restore function to my face. There were several other things, but you get the picture. I told Troy that I really didn't have any desire to be pregnant again, but I wanted another baby eventually. He agreed with me. We decided that when we were ready to have another baby we would look into adoption. About a year after we had D, we decided to start looking at our options for adoption. There are so many... Domestic, International, Private, DHS, etc. Every option has it's pros and cons. You basically pick the one that you feel works best for your family. We decided to go the international adoption route. We didn't want to do domestic adoption because I have seen those go bad too many times working in L&D. Once you pick international then you have to pick a country. Each country has their own set of adoption laws and guidelines. We were not eligible for several countries because of age, income, or size of our family. At the time, Ethiopia was the most logical choice. It was one of the cheaper countries to adopt from, travel time was a week, and we had several friends who had already adopted from there. Not to mention that their babies are gorgeous!!! The decision to adopt and where to adopt from were the easiest part of this entire process. The Mourning: Mourning? What do you have to mourn at this point? Even though I already had two biological children, I still had to mourn. I grieved over the fact that I would never be pregnant again. I would never breastfeed again. I would never have that sweet newborn to cuddle and kiss. I think this process is what shocked me the most about adoption. In a way, I felt very selfish for thinking this way. I had so many friends who adopted because they never got to have those things in the first place. Here I am, blessed with two beautiful babies and I'm sad because I never get to experience it again...again... I then realized that this is a natural thing to go through no matter how many biological kids you have or don't have. It's normal and it's okay to feel this way. I think you have to go through this in order to open your heart to love a child that isn't from your genes. That might sound harsh, but its true. Sometimes God brings us through hard things to get to the other side with a more open and loving heart. I will post later on the rest of the process. It's will take several posts to get through all of it!
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