A Mommy's Patience

No calls today telling us we can continue.  I'm praying we get a call tomorrow saying we can come back Saturday.  We'll see.  Meanwhile, we're getting a room ready. 

here are my thoughts about the decision:

We keep describing how I’m feeling about this as being on “cloud nine”.  I’m not sure where the expression comes from, so let me give you a few more adjectives…overjoyed, ecstatic, like I could jump up and down and break down in tears at any moment.  Emotionally, I’ve been attached since I first heard about her, and then a few days later, we met her!  Mark warned me that maybe that wouldn’t be best.  I felt like my heart would be okay…I was wrong.  Separating my mind, my logical thinking, from my emotions has been the most difficult part of this decision making process.  She’s beautiful.  She’s four months old.  She can come into our care so quickly.  Her special needs are within the realm of what we said we were willing to accept.  All of these things caused my heart to say, “yes” rather early.  However, while I knew that hearing from doctors and making a wise decision was important, saying no to this opportunity would have been rather crushing.  So, while we had heard from one doctor to be very cautious and were still waiting to hear from a few specialists, we contacted an American doctor on the west coast.  I sent him an email at 2pm my time.  By 4:30pm he had replied with a very thorough and favorable report.  The bottom line of his recommendation was that her medical conditions are not ones to be overly concerned about and that with good nutrition and a loving and stable and stimulating environment, she will likely do just fine.  I was thrilled, but still needed to wait on my husband and make sure that he was convinced that we had enough information to say “yes” and move forward.  It took about 24 more hours for that to happen.  (It might have been less, but he was in another city and he had limited time that week.)  

 

I was actually in the orphanage turning in some paperwork when Mark called to say that we could move forward.  That afternoon I was able to sit with her outside, feed her another bottle, and she fell asleep in my arms for the first time.  I cried as I told her that I’d been waiting for her for a very long time.