Nine.

Today’s realization: I am too attached to the results.  I want to be good at what I set out to do.  When I am not good at it (right away), I get frustrated and want to throw in the towel.  

We’ve reached the point in our adoption where some of our documents are beginning to expire.  It’s typical for international adoptions, and we were aware of it already.  Our adoption agency first contacted us to say that we needed to renew our fingerprints.  Okay, no problem.  Just filling out a few forms and mailing them in.  And then, showing up for a fingerprint appointment this week.  Easy peasy.

Then last week, our home study agency here in Chicago got in touch with us and said that our home study needs updating, and that we need to get on it ASAP.  With that news, she also attached all of the forms we need to renew (which was a list of 6 or 7 forms), including a form on updating our physicals.  We have to go back and get another physical.  As well as reviewing our entire home study with a fine tooth comb to edit anything that has changed in the last 9 months.

9 months.  9 months ago we submitted our dossier.  

We have to meet with our social worker to discuss all of the changes, so that she can type them up and produce the updated home study.  We also have to cough up $600 for the amended document.

9 months.  9 months ago we submitted our dossier.

Completing our dossier was such a huge labor, and what we’re faced with now doesn’t compare in scope to what we had to produce then.  But, I know that after our dossier was complete, we experienced a deep breath of fresh air.  Things got comfortable and we weren’t under the stress of notarizing documents and making trips downtown every week.  Life was normal again, and I was able to let go and just enter the period of our wait.  I felt like we were good at our adoption, strong, and experiencing a deserved respite from all of the activity the process requires.

So, when this latest round of e-mails arrived, I quickly became overwhelmed.  Perhaps I’m just out of practice and my adoption muscles got a little weak, but what we’re faced with now feels like contractions.

9-month contractions.  Pains that are causing me to groan a lot :)

I am so committed to becoming a mother.  I am very focused on our end goal, which is new life for our family, and the opportunity to experience parenthood.  But I become so anxious over everything we need to do to get there, that sometimes I fail to enjoy the pregnancy itself as it happens each day.  

There is life today.  There is family and joy and movement today.  There is adoption today.  Each thought, each step, each signature, each check, each stroke of the keys is a piece of what is to come.  Today.  Already, but not yet.

How wonderful.  How unbelievable.  To be a part of life, to enjoy life, to live…today.