Eight

When you're pregnant you are almost always thinking about how you're having a baby. Your new baby is constantly on your mind and numerous times each day you think about what life will be like when your new baby arrives. It makes sense that this would be true because when you're pregnant your baby is literally a part of your body. It moves and you are reminded that there is a life growing inside you, that your baby is on it's way to you.  Towards the end of the pregnancy you're mostly thinking about how uncomfortable you are and how ready you are to see your baby, but there continues to be a rush of excitement and anticipation every time you think about your baby's arrival.

Over the last several years when I thought about how one day Nghia and I would adopt a child, I never had any doubt that I would love that child with the same intensity that I feel towards Khai and Avi. I have never doubted that I will be as deeply connected to this baby as I am to them. I know with absolute certainty that parents love their adopted and biological children with the same magnitude and the same fierce dedication. This has always been clear to me and I can easily picture it for myself.  So when our baby is finally here and I am overwhelmed with emotion, I will not be surprised. There will be a million other surprises of course, but the profound level of love I will feel towards our baby is not going to surprise me. I am expecting to be hit with that wave of emotion and that primal instinct to nurture and protect.

What I was not expecting was for this period of time to feel so emotionally similar to a pregnancy. I didn't know that simply filling out paperwork, attending meetings and classes, and waiting for the phone to ring would bring up the same thoughts and feelings that one has when they are pregnant. The anticipation and excitement are the same. They are honestly exactly the same. Constantly thinking about the baby is the same. Imagining what life will be like once the baby is born is the same.

 All day long I think about our baby. When I get in bed every night with my book, I think about how one of these days there will be a tiny baby curled up in bed next to me. Some nights it almost feels like something is missing. In my classroom we have a poster board with family pictures hanging on one wall. The children in my class like to look at their families and their classmates' families throughout the day. My co-teacher and I put our family pictures on the poster board too. And every time I pass by it and glance at the sweet picture of me, Nghia, Khai, and Avi I think about how beautiful that picture is going to be next year. How much fuller it will be, how much more complete it will be. It's such an interesting feeling to know your family isn't complete yet, to know that someone is missing.

Because I have done both I feel that I can say with absolute certainty that, although the process is dramatically different, the feelings of excitement, anticipation, longing, and expectancy are exactly the same. Who knew?