Ovewhelmed

After a month of failed injectable hormone medications and the decision to suspend formal fertility treatment while I take care of a slipped disk in my back, we felt now was the time to begin our adoption paperwork.

We have felt God pulling us to explore adoption for awhile now, but we are not people that are good at focusing on more than one thing at a time. While enduring transvaginal ultrasounds 3 times a week and injections in my stomach daily, I knew I could not focus on adoption paperwork as well. Both take their toll emotionally, and a person can really only handle so much.

Well, we sent in for the paperwork to complete before we begin our home study meetings. (As a fellow blogger put it, we are "paper pregnant"). As someone who immigrated to this country two years ago and dealt with the mountain of paperwork that came with that, I thought I would be somewhat prepared for the paperwork that would come with adoption.

Well, I wasn't. We received the package on Monday and I had a chance to peruse the package before my husband got home from work. Instantly, I felt overwhelmed. There is a medical to get, fingerprints to obtain and literally 20 questions to answer (anything from why we want to adopt to how we handle stress to our relationship with our parents).

As someone who suffers from infertility, these questions just really stung. The cynical side of me thinks, "If only I could just get pregnant on my own, I wouldn't have to meet with a social worker who will deem us able to have a child." I understand, however, that they need to protect these children and no one would want anything bad to happen to children who are adopted because the adoptive parents were not fully investigated. But, it hurts. It hurts not to be able to take the easy route when it comes to welcoming a child in our family. But I guess looking back in my life, things rarely happen easily. I got married later in life, moved 12 hours away and switched countries to get married. That seemed daunting at the time and I didn't understand why I had to wait so long to find the right person or why I had to move away to find them. But now, I know why all of that happened and wouldn't change a thing.

Maybe, just maybe, all of this suffering of infertility is so we can find the child God wanted us to have through adoption. I read a blog the other day of a women who adopted her child and was later asked if she wishes she could have had a biological child of her own. The infertile woman in her started to say "Yes, I wish I could have", but then she realized if she would have had a biological child she would not have the child she has through adoption and she can't imagine her life without them. I have a feeling that I will feel the same one day. But for now, I just need to get through all this paperwork!