![\"\"](\"http:\/\/katherinemalmo.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/3\/lilly.jpg\" "\\"lilly\\"")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Warning: big announcement ahead.<\/p>\n
We\u2019re waiting for a baby. We\u2019re waiting an indeterminate period of time, gestating without any delivery date, expecting without guarantee. It\u2019s hard to know what to call this period in the adoption process when you\u2019re in line but have no idea when the baby will come. I usually say we\u2019re expecting. Actually, we\u2019ve been officially expecting for a month now, I just haven\u2019t had the time to tell anyone.<\/p>\n
It tends to be something I casually drop into sentences, thinking that I\u2019ve told the other person. Then: sorry, what the what?<\/p>\n
The whole thing is a bit hard for me to believe. If I were pregnant, I could say something casual like, we were thinking about it and it just happened, all of the sudden. But it\u2019s hard to say we fell into our 2nd<\/sup> child, casually, maybe even accidentally, when we spent hours and hours writing the 20 pages of our autobiographies, and pondering our childhoods and our parenting philosophy in an effort to portray ourselves in the most positive light possible \u2013 pick us, pick us!<\/p>\n It all just seems so much more carefree and cavalier than last time. By the time we adopted Josie, we\u2019d been waiting for a baby for 3 years, since before I was diagnosed, then through a year of treatment in which we let go of our hope of biological children, came to terms with the possibility of my short childless life, then started the adoption process. I was kind of a wreck by the time we finished the paperwork. Wait, I was kind of a wreck even before we started the paperwork. Then we got a dud of a social worker for the placement part of the process. Then we started working with a facilitator who yelled at me. I was officially broken by the time we got the call about Josie.<\/p>\n Fortunately it worked out. We met our girl a few days later. I realize now that in some deep hidden part of my brain, I believed the gift of a child was permission to live. It was a grant, a concession from the universe, a permission slip to go ahead and resume \u201clife as normal.\u201d Carry on.<\/p>\n Of course, my rational brain knew this wasn\u2019t how the world worked but that didn\u2019t stop me from feeling it. The adoption of a child was a sigh of relief, a celebration of not just her life but the resumption of ours. I see that now and I understand the entirety of what was at stake.<\/p>\n This time, I know it will happen. The baby will come. No lives hinge on the delivery. I hope to relax and enjoy the process, even the wait, to enjoy the imaginary, indeterminate gestation. I have dreams of a wait time filled with preparation, nesting, house projects, photo books, and buying a few cute little baby things that I was afraid would jinx the process last time.<\/p>\n That\u2019s a nice dream but in reality, my imaginary, indeterminate gestation is filled with a tireless three-year-old, endless book edits, a job, and a blog, but this is it, this is what normal life looks like. This is us as we carry on. This is us, busily waiting to greet our new baby.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Warning: big announcement ahead. We\u2019re waiting for a baby. We\u2019re waiting an indeterminate period of time, gestating without any delivery date, expecting without guarantee. It\u2019s hard to know what to call this period in the adoption process when you\u2019re in line but have no idea when the baby will come. I usually say we\u2019re expecting. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,3,5,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1055","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adoption","category-mom","category-cancer","category-parenting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.katherinemalmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1055","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.katherinemalmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.katherinemalmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.katherinemalmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.katherinemalmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1055"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.katherinemalmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1055\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1057,"href":"https:\/\/www.katherinemalmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1055\/revisions\/1057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.katherinemalmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.katherinemalmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.katherinemalmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}