It's really hard to know what to say about this, especially that I haven't already said. We started the process for our second right around Luke's first birthday. He'll be 5 next month. It's been A LOT of waiting. A lot of paperwork. A lot of crying and wondering WHY God is giving us this long wait. A lot of not understanding but trying to accept it.
Last year at this time I was pretty stressed out, finding more agencies to list with, more places to get our profile out. We spent over 6 months, going until late summer, working on getting on lists, waiting some more. We spent more time on adoption related things (meetings, training, and, of course, paperwork) than any other year since we started. And it really might have been more time in 2017 than in 2012, when we were starting from scratch.
We are now listed with multiple agencies, we get periodic updates from some (largely through Facebook). We know our profile has been looked at, at least once last fall. And finding out we weren't picked was a little heart breaking, even though, after all this time, we've learned to keep expectations LOW. And then even lower.
It's really hard to think about Luke starting kindergarten in the fall with a very good chance of never having a sibling with him in these years we've been home together. At the very least, he'll have one who isn't super into playing by the time Luke is out of the house 7 hours a day. It feels like we'll be starting over from scratch, back to just me and a baby together. Back where we were 5 years ago, if we even get a baby by August. Trying not to think about that too much because there is just no point in trying to plan it.
(Which kills me a little bit, as a super planner.)
And we've been through thousands of scenarios over the last 8+ years of "Well if we have a baby by this point then ___________ will be affected because...." And at some point we just had to stop expecting or planning anything baby related.
Maybe I'm just extra emotional because our sweet boy is leaving for kindergarten too soon and that alone can make me cry, without even getting into all the "will he ever have a sibling??" thoughts. He so so desperately wants to be a big brother, at least once a week asking why it's taking so long and why so many of his cousins have younger siblings and when is he going to get to wear his big brother sticker. He tells me the things he's going to share with a baby and what he wants to teach them (Star Wars, a lot about Star Wars). How he's going to give them bottles when they wake up in the middle of the night. (I don't actually expect that one to happen.)
It's never real easy but harder on some days than others. It makes me SO grateful that we have Luke, that the years of wondering if we'd ever even be parents are almost 5 years past. That we do have one (in my totally unbiased opinion) great kid. It seems like a few small things could have gone differently and he'd never be ours which...I just can't even think about. My sweet boy.
We feel like this is the giant elephant in the room that everyone feels sorry for us for but also, nobody wants to bring up. Which also sucks. I'm not sure anyone even knows exactly how many agencies we are listed with, because we're so rarely asked. We gathered with over a hundred relatives throughout Christmastime and were, combined, asked exactly three times about how the adoption stuff is going. Which I was honestly pretty excited about. "Matt! I had 3 people ask me about it in less than 48 hours! That's a lot!" It's SO rare that we get asked how things are going or how we are doing with it. Since I wrote this post almost a year ago we've been asked that questions one time. And I kinda get it, it's awkward and maybe people really don't care. But having this HUGE thing we're going through mostly ignored hurts really bad too.
So, all in all, still painful, still hopeful. We've put in a lot of hard work (and money) and now we're listed many more places. It feels like we can coast, a little, that we did our part of getting our profile in front of the mothers with babies that need a home. We have to trust God but also had to do our part, nobody is going to ring our doorbell asking if we want a kid, if they don't know we are looking for one.
Someday I'll write this annual post with much better news! Or we'll just give up/age out. Both feel almost equally likely at this point.
State of the Adoption - year 5
State of the Adoption - year 4
ALL adoption posts
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