I started thinking this week about sharing the story about how Baby came into our family, and where the story begins. It's not as simple as God sent an angel in the form of a birth mother to my doorstep and handed me a baby. When it comes to babies, life is never that simple. While Baby's story ends joyously, it was a long and arduous journey to get there, and there were many on and off ramps that I think are worth mentioning. This story could be long, so this will be the first part of how we came to the decision that we wanted another child in our family.
In some ways this story began when Jamie and I got married. We had always talked about kids. Even before we were married. I wanted him to know up front that I would have a hard time getting pregnant. He said he had thought about it before and he'd always known that he would be ok with kids that weren't his biologically. Just because we couldn't have biological kids didn't mean we couldn't have kids. There are other ways. (Isn't it amazing when God speaks directly to you through your spouse?) Kids were always part of our plans. I wanted three. Jamie didn't care how many, or maybe he just didn't want to put anymore pressure on me to get pregnant. I was putting enough on myself as it was.
With Brother's adoption process there was a lot of legal turmoil going on. Guatemala was in the process of trying to shut down their international adoptions. We brought him home in September and they closed officially in November. We made it out by our teeth skin. I knew I would get him out. I would have stopped at nothing short of becoming a Guatemalan citizen myself if that's what it took. So I wasn't worried that I wouldn't get my baby, it was a very stressful time though. It was such an intense emotional roller coaster that when we finally did make it home with our new baby boy, we were both emotionally wiped out. Any energy or emotion we had left we poured directly onto our baby. We cherished him, we savored him, we smothered him with love, and we spoiled him. Good thing he's kindhearted because he's a good kid despite our lack of parenting skills in the beginning.
The transition from non-parent to parent was hard for us. It took a while for us to find our balance. Jamie tended to err on the side of leniency and I tended to err on the side of strictness. We would both lean into our methods of erring to try to counteract the other, which kept the vicious cycle going. Once we figured out what we were doing to each other, we met in the middle, and life started to get easier. For instance, I didn't want my child to eat processed foods. Yes, George, I'm referring to the hot dog incident. Stop laughing at me. It was a noble fight. Jamie would try to even things out for Brother by letting him eat more candy than he should have. I gave in a little and started introducing some processed foods into Brother's diet. So I felt he was eating healthy, but Jamie didn't feel like he was being deprived. Parenting is a complicated dance. With all the emotions and learning going on we couldn't think about going through the adoption process all over again for a while. It took until Brother was four for us to decide we were ready.
Once we decided, we tried the biological route again. I love adoption and wish everyone wanted to experience it as much as I do, but I still wanted to experience pregnancy and birth too. Through adoption I got to feel God's love for us, and I wanted to feel a part of God's creation process through pregnancy. As I said before, I wanted three. I loved the idea of having the middle child be the biological child. That way people would see that I chose adoption, and not just because I couldn't have biological children. So while we knew we would adopt again someday, we wanted to try for the second the old fashioned way.
When we had tried before (before Brother) we went in completely blind. We had never given it a go on our own before we walked into the fertility clinic. This time I wanted to know what I was doing. I read books and did research. I tracked my temperature everyday and analyzed it. In my research I came across the subject of acupuncture for treatment. It seemed more natural than what I'd been through before, it was cheaper, and the success rate was way better than any fertility treatment, even in vitro. So I tried it for several months. I enjoyed it for stress relief, but when I wasn't seeing any results, I decided to take some time off to regroup. Brother was almost five and I didn't think I wanted my children that far apart. (turns out six years apart is the magic number, but more on that later.) That was when we moved full force into adoption mode.
To be continued...
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