We are in the third trimester of the paper pregnancy and like all of my pregnancies, this has been the most emotional trimester. On a biologic pregnancy, this is the time that there is just no getting away from the fact that you are pregnant. Everyone around you wants to talk about it, including random strangers, even when your heart and body needs time to think about other things. (Perhaps I'll tell you about the two crazy old women in the grocery that thought Tim and I weren't married because I was too blasted swollen to wear my wedding rings one day.)
Sometimes paper pregnancy has been harder though because people don't think of us as pregnant at all. That can make it hard for others to understand some of the "symptoms" of this pregnancy-- the nesting (getting thing ready for Jaden, like decorating his room with Laura and Tim, Laura and I staying up until 2am getting Christmas crafts done in case we get to travel early, Tim decluttering and having repairs done) the moodiness (because darn it, I just want my son home already!), or the fear (not of having to pass a watermelon from places we don't want to think about at this time but real fear for my son's life, children die every day in orphanages; every day!) or the distractibility (for every ping of my email jumping to see if it is the approval or denial of whatever step we're working on) or, lastly, the tears (good tears and bad tears have been abundant, friends reaching milestones in their own alphabet soup of steps, adoptions falling thru, orphan songs on the radio, my daughter (who is usually my big supporter) hurting my feelings and my son Mitch hugging me, my mother in law wanting to buy baby sized hangers for me, patients excited about my adoption, people sending us quilt squares, and patients asking what I think I'm doing leaving the community for two weeks; all of thse things made me water this month). Whether pregnant biologically or going thru a paper pregnancy, I think growing your family is an awesome, inspiring, scary, intimidating, loving, expensive, priceless and physically demanding journey.
This adoption was a gift from God that we almost refused! We're smart enough to know that gifts sometimes come with big costs/responsibilities (remember that free cat Laura got in kindergarten, whatever happened to that cat? Oh, yea, we still have that cat! Well actually, one of her offspring is still alive at about 16 years old and is probably upstairs curled up with Laura!). We tried sticking our fingers in our ears, (la,la,la,la,la. Not listening!!), but God often bypasses our ears to speak to us. He sent Gael and Theron, Stephen Curtis Chapman and the ShowHope video, Josh Wilson with his "I refuse(to do nothing) shirt that lit a fire in Tim's heart, the Emmaus speaker that night who talked about the forty tiny babies who were wrapped like burritos lying silently on straw mats on a concrete floor and finally, He sent a picture of a gorgeous, perfect child on "rainbowkids.com" who looked up and seemed to be saying, "Hurry up Mama, hurry up Baba, I can't wait to play with you!" Thank you, God, for being persistent with your stubborn children.
