And excerpt from our Klein Family Adoption Blog (www.texastochina.wordpress.com) …

So, evidently not everyone likes this adoption catch phrase, but I thought it was kind of cute. While I don’t consider myself pregnant, I do think of myself as expecting, and it has been interesting to consider the differences and similarities in the physical pregnancy and the “paper pregnancy”.

I’ll admit I was not the biggest fan of being pregnant when I had my boys. It wasn’t terrible or anything, just physically exhausting and limiting. I’m not much of a spectator, and getting involved was not always an option (my husband wouldn’t let me grape stomp on one occasion & more than once I wished he could have grown the babies). Don’t get me wrong, it was worth the physical sacrifices, but I just didn’t love it the way some women do. That being said, I did appreciate the connected nature of growing another person inside of you, a special treat that only mom gets to experience. It is the most amazing miracle, and I got to participate. That’s pretty cool. And now, more than ever, I can appreciate that physical bond with my first two boys that I won’t instantly have with my next son; that special privilege that’s not mine this time. A second big difference is the timeline. You are waiting on that kid in utero for pretty close to 40 weeks. When is your baby due? You have a date to work toward. When do you get to meet your adopted son? I have no idea really, maybe by the end of this year. ?? It makes the wait harder when you don’t know how long it will last. A third difference I try to look at as a positive is that in our paper pregnancy we are able to see and know our child through others in a way that we didn’t get to know the boys until they arrived. While we don’t know when we will get him (and I try not to constantly think about all his life we are missing), we do know what color his eyes will be, some of this strengths and weaknesses, and a bit about his personality. So we treasure these things during the wait.

The main reason that the term “paper pregnancy” does not offend me is because I know how much of pregnancy is expectation, anticipation, anxiety and a growing love for a little person that you’ve never met or seen with your own eyes. I can tell you that these feelings are the same whether that little person is in in your body or not. Instead of a growing belly, this time around I have a growing mound of paperwork. You can’t look at me and tell how far we’ve come, or how long we have left to go. When I break into tears, I can’t blame it on the hormones. The way I see it, if a pause can be pregnant, then it’s no stretch to say that I am full of meaning, heavy with, significant in not only paperwork, but in all the emotional ups and downs that come with expecting a child.

At the mailbox this week, I’m notified that the US government dropped the ball which equates to a big (approximately one month) step backward in our timeline. Just when I stopped growling, OK I was yelling, in frustration I opened an email with news that China had pre-approved us as a match for our boy. Unfortunately, that doesn’t really count as progress, promise a full approval, or improve the timeline, but it’s better than nothing. I feel like I have grown in patience, but I have so so far left to grow. Flow like a river, April. Bend and flow!