Seems simple enough, right?  Miracles take time.  We know that.  It doesn’t make the wait any easier.

Chances are if you’re reading this you know a bit about our situation already.  After trying (and failing) to get pregnant through many rounds of fertility treatment several years ago, and then being blessed with a foster situation at the end of 2017, Laura and I made the decision to build our family through adoption.  We’ve had a proverbial fencepost in our butts for what feels like years on this decision – and that precious baby last year removed it for us.  We want to be parents…so much.

So…at the beginning of 2018, when we emotionally recovered from saying goodbye to the precious little lady who cracked this decision wide open for us, we began.  We researched agencies – a lot of agencies.  We interviewed them, compared services, costs, documentation.  That part? Well, it sucked.  But if you’re adopting in Ohio, let us know…we’ll gladly share all that we’ve learned.  We chose an agency, a wonderful agency by the way, and began the home study process.  Sweet Jesus that was intense.

What’s it like?  Gather up every document you can think of, (about sixty documents all in) hand them to a stranger who is here to evaluate your worthiness, and then let her interview you for six hours while asking about the most intimate details of your marriage, your families, your life.  It’s lovely – and yes, that is dripping with sarcasm.  The rational mind says “it’s such an important process…a sweet precious life could be placed in your care for eighteen years, so you must be really well vetted”.  The reactive mind says “we’re fucking done with this extremely invasive conversational pap smear now”.  Finally, the pap-smear-home-study was complete and approved, and we’re now officially a waiting family.  Which is sort of offensive – we’ve been waiting for years, only now we have a label.

Still, we’re excited, so excited, and now we have nothing to focus on but the baby’s room. It’s decorated in green, the only really gender-neutral color.  (Be honest, you know not one man with a yellow bedroom.  And if you do, his wife picked out the color.)  We each go in there every day to talk to the baby – time well spent, by the way, because it feels productive.  We both believe our baby may well be in someone’s tummy right now, so every day I tell the baby to “be healthy and get big”.  I know his or her soul is hearing us. And I know that soul knows that these two sappy gals adore it already.  Miracles take time, right?  We’re waiting.

Then earlier this week, the world spun upside down.

-Jenn