A Hearty Silver Lining

Now that a good week has passed since we were told the stork wouldn't be landing on our front lawn in the foreseeable future, I am able to look objectively at the situation and see all the good things that came from this whole ordeal. I got my house CLEAN. The nerves helped me lose a few pounds. We got great feedback on our portfolio (namely that we shouldn't change anything). I can now kind-of-sort-of-maybe see this thing actually happening. But all of these reasons combined pale in comparison to the real reason I can't stay upset about it. While it would have been amazing to be picked, the anxiety stopped with the knowledge that we were not picked. Had things gone differently, I would be a freaking mess right now and here's why...

Now we won't have to bring a baby home and wonder for weeks or months if she will really be ours.

We originally said we didn't want to adopt from Wisconsin because all adoptions here are considered "legal risk adoptions." This means that while you get to take the baby home, you are technically a foster parent until the adopting parents and the birth parents can all get to court on the same day at the same time to make it final. But even then it's not really final. Then the birth parents have 30 days to appeal.

So while we were waiting to find out if this baby was ours, it had me thinking about how to deal with a few issues knowing there would be the possibility of having to release this baby to her birth parents at some point. Should we get professional newborn pictures done? Should we wait to get her baptized? Should we tell Simon the baby is his sister? Should we use the name that we really like? Should we announce we have a daughter to our family and friends? Should I really try to bond with her? (It's amazing what I took for granted having a biological child.)

PW wisely advised that if we wound up with a baby from Wisconsin we'd really just have to go about our business as if she is 100% ours until someone tells us otherwise, because that is what the plan would be and it would probably work out just fine. While she was completely right, I'm glad that I don't have to take that advice. Instead we took our opportunity to again take Wisconsin out of the running. While we would have been elated to be picked and would have taken on the challenge of navigating through the legal proceedings with the hope it would all turn out okay, I'm happy that our family doesn't have to deal with that kind of stress.

By adopting out of state, we know that when we bring a baby home she will unquestionably be our daughter and Simon's sister. Now that's a silver lining if I've ever seen one.