Paper Pregnancy vs. Belly Pregnancy

Infertility has taken the opportunity to speculate about children. I hate it that when someone is expecting, everyone can wonder about the baby. Will she look like mom or dad? Will he be blond or brunette? Will she look like her sister or brother? I always want to remind people that we too are expecting. Sure we don't have a due date. Really, we don't know a single thing about our potential child. But they are in our hearts. We dream about them every night. We talk about them every day. We want to share this experience with everyone.

I guess it's hard to speculate about the unknown. With a pregnancy, the parents and family can talk about upcoming events. "Just think, next Christmas, baby won't be in your belly anymore and will be here to celebrate with us." We don't get that luxury. We have spent many holidays now thinking "next year..." But with adoption, we really don't know that our baby will be here by Christmas, or by any certain date for that matter.

I just feel so left out. Everyone will start talking about future events and such and they always include those who have a bun in the oven, but not about those who are paper pregnant. Do they think it will never happen? Or do they think that it might hurt to mention the fact that not only are we childless, but also we are waiting on the unknown world of adoption to help our family grow? I really think it is the second reason, but it's still hard to deal with.

I want to sit around the dinner table and talk about how our child will have a seat at it someday. Will they have dark curly hair to go with their brown eyes? I want to speculate if our child will be daddy's hunting buddy or mommy's little girl. I want to feel like our family is thought about, hoped for and dreamt about.

An adoptive friend of mine recently posted about this same subject on her blog. Check it out HERE. She was able to describe so many of my thoughts and feelings about waiting in the background of expectant motherhood. She talks about a friend who is expecting a baby through adoption and was just matched with a birth mom. Now this friend wants to start preparation work on the nursery. Some are hesitant to help her because they are fearful the adoption will fall through and not take place.

We live with that fear too, and we aren't even matched with a birth mom yet. It's one of the risks we take by trying to have our family grow through adoption. But all methods of reaching mother hood are risky. I have friends that have suffered miscarriages, still births, and early births that resulted in death. But they were all mothers. They all celebrated their pregnancy, speculated about their children and made preparations for their arrival. And then tragically their children were taken from them.

As an expectant adoptive mother why shouldn't I be allowed to act the same. We are anxiously awaiting our child. Why can't that be celebrated and talked about? If we have an adoption fall through we are going to mourn no matter what. Just because our child isn't in my belly, doesn't mean we love it any less. Our child is growing in our hearts.