How I'm Feeling

If you've had a baby (and probably if you've adopted before, but I don't know), you may be familiar with the feeling when you're nearing 40 weeks, and all the nerves and excitement and fear and everything starts to give way to the overwhelming desire for this current stage to be over. The I'm so uncomfortable I don't care if I'm unprepared for parenthood feeling. Or that was my feeling. The I'm so done with this feeling.

So yeah, basically that. Am I ready for the challenges ahead? NO! No. Do I feel even kind of prepared to parent four children four years old and under? No. I don't even think I know all the things I could be preparing for (despite having read many books on adoption or parenting or grief)? No. I feel about as prepared to bring these girls into my home as I did having Ezra.

The learning curve for me with Ezra was so immensely high that it took a long time before I got my head above water. I mean, some of that was hormones, but a lot of it wasn't. At least this time I know that the next few months may kind of totally suck for me. I mean, there have been times when parenting my biological, never-been-traumatized kids has kinda sucked. Some normal stages of development are kinda sucky. That's not very nice to say, but people aren't always very nice, and small children are just people with no filter on their behavior. You know?

But I am not going to be caught unawares when it happens like with Ezra. And the transition may be much smoother than what I've read about. Lots of people bring children home, and they attach to them, and they love their siblings and integrate easily into the home. I have no idea how it will go. It's all a big question-mark,  a white space on the scrolling page of our family story. And I'm just ready to move into that space and explore it, for all the pain and beauty.

So yeah, I'm excited and relieved and so, so thankful. I'm also terrified of how out-of-my-depth I will be and wary of the pain and selflessness it will require. But the prevailing feeling I'm having is just let's do this. Let's go get our girls and start to be a family.