Why we are now halfway to Russia

To begin blogging about our adoption of our daughter from Russia I thought it best to answer everyone's question of how in the world we ended up here, scheduled to bring home a baby less than a year after having one biologically. Well, the reason we are here is precisely because we did not think we would be.

We have always wanted to adopt a child internationally. From before we got married this is something Tim and I have discussed as a plan for our family. To be honest, I did not imagine this plan to begin unfolding itself on our second anniversary, but that's what happened. On our second anniversary, in January of this year, Tim and I lost our second pregnancy at about 8 or 9 weeks. Miscarriages happen, we said, and we moved on. Of course, the "moving on" process was not as easy emotionally as I would have liked, but in April we found out we were pregnant again, due Christmas eve. Things went along much better. We saw a healthy baby on ultrasound at 6 weeks and then at 10 weeks. At 11 weeks, one day before I was to take my boards for medical school (only the most important test of medical school) I began bleeding and went to the doctor to find out that our baby at died. We miscarried naturally 3 hours after I finished my test the following day. To say I was devastated is an understatement. Why did this happen? Were we ever going to be able to have another child? What was wrong with me? These and other questions raced through my mind as we got up at 4:30 the next morning for our vacation. Only 5% of couples miscarry two consecutive times and I had a hard time grappling with this statistic. We were unsure of our future and so I told Tim I wanted to begin researching what adoption might look like for our family. At the very least, I thought, it would give me something positive to focus on so I did not enter the pit of despair. It worked. I called a million adoption agencies from the middle of nowhere Vermont. We discussed at length what we wanted, where we wanted to adopt from, and all the other logistical things that come with adoption. I am not one to start something and then back off and so it should be no surprise to anyone reading this that we selected an organization, a country, a gender, an age range, and started the process of adopting. (I will tell you why we chose what we chose in another post). Focusing on this pending child helped ease the pain of the miscarriage and helped me think to a more positive time when that child would be home with us. We began filling our ten million forms (again, I'll tell you about these in another post) and planning for our future with a little Russian girl. Before we had even finished the initial set of forms my morning sickness began and I was shocked to discover we were pregnant again. It turns out we had been pregnant for most of this process and did not know it. But I was skeptical.

I was still so worried we'd lose this baby, too, so we kept going with the process. At about 14 weeks pregnant, when I had begun to contemplate the possibility that maybe this pregnancy was a good one, we were so invested with the adoption that we could not turn back. We are proceeding as planned because we have already made room in our hearts for our daughter and begun to anticipate her arrival. We will postpone the process for just a few months, which we have already discussed with our agency, in order to ensure that we are not traveling and giving birth at the same time and also to allow me time to finish my 3rd year of medical school. We are hoping to take our first trip to Russia next fall, about one year from now. This seems like a long time for me to wait, but the baby kicks I feel as I write this remind me that perhaps right now a little more time is better. Our hands will be quite full in 20 more weeks.