WARNING! Mushy post about the adoption

I didn't sleep too well last night. My mind was racing with thoughts about the adoption. It was exactly one year ago yesterday that Jeff and I sat on the couch in the living room and talked intensely about our options for creating our family. We had recently gotten bad news from the fertility doctor about our chances of ever having our own biological children and we were at a crossroads. Our options were to keep on spending time, money, emotional energy to continue fertility treatment or to put that part of our journey behind us and explore adoption. Needless to say our overwhelming choice was to start down the road of adoption and, within 5 minutes, we decided our baby girl was in China.

The decision that we made that day brought me the most overwhelming sense of peace. The struggle of infertility and loss was so painful for me and some days I still feel like I haven't completely put that grief behind me. When Jeff and I came together and decided that it didn't take our genes joining for us to truly and completely give our hearts to a child that would be ours, it was such a magical feeling. For the first time in years, I had so much hope for our future as parents and for my own future as a mommy - one role that I have desperately longed for for so long. That day and that decision have changed me. The dreams and hopes I hold today are drastically different than those that I held onto at the start of the fertility treatment. I dream of being handed my little girl and comforting her as she grieves the loss of her life in China. I dream of watching Jeff shower his little girl with kisses and love and seeing them create a father-daughter bond that will fulfill him and be a gift to both of them. I dream of Jeff and I as mommy and daddy to a precious child that was chosen for us by God.

This is a pretty emotional day for me as I remember this decision, reflect on the years that have brought Jeff and I to this point and look toward the future when, eventually, our dreams to become parents will be complete.

One year ago today, following our decision to start this journey, we completed the preliminary application to our adoption agency. After the 8 months of preparing our complete plea to China to allow us to adopt a baby girl, we now sit and wait (some days more patiently than others) for a picture of our future to come to us. We have no idea how long it will take....a year, two, three....there is no way to tell right now. The wait is hard now and will most likely get worse before it gets better but I have to convince myself that we have already survived the hardest part of our struggle to build a family. We are in this moment where we are supposed to be...