I couldn't sleep last night.
For the first time, I let my mind run away with all those things I've been carefully not looking at. I thought about cradling a small baby and those little knitted caps and their little squashed tomato faces when they cry. And rocking chairs and little snow suits and waking up in the middle of the night and being exhausted and not having time to mop the floors and putting a blanket out on the grass and lying there with baby, watching the leaves.
I haven't let myself think of these things because it doesn't help. People keep saying if you don't think about how much you want it, it will come. So I didn't. After all, I have a lovely life now. So I focused my mind on the oodles and oodles of spare time I have now and how clean and shiny everything is and the passionate relationship I have with my young and adoring husband and all the energy we have. (Except right now, as he got back this morning at five after being a lane walker for some guys earning their spurs. He is dead to the world.)
Anyway. I also had a sudden burst of sheer terror. I'm talking terror. What have I done? I thought to myself. Oh my god. I'm not ready to be a mother. This is huge. So many things could go wrong. We should wait, we should wait at least until August, when we know what's going on reproductively.
The agencies won't take us, I went on thinking, and saw the Agency Person in my mind during the home study interview; an upright, nobby looking woman on the edge of sixty, with hair scraped back, saying "Mm hm," in a distant voice as she checked something off on her sheet, something bad, no doubt.
We probably will end up waiting until August anyway, because I have found out that if we get pregnant during the adoption process, we'll be dropped immediately. At least that's the way it is for one agency whose fine print I had the opportunity to read through. It's not that I want to get pregnant while adopting, it would be very complicated if that happened. So it seems we must take clear steps in one direction or the other, but not allow for either possibility at the same time. I have to talk to Keith more about this.
I know this sounds really weird, but I keep hoping that I'm completely infertile and that door is just closed for good. Maybe this is my way of expressing anger at myself for not producing the desired effect in the desired time. Or maybe I just dislike the ambiguity of many different shaded possibilities, the ratios, the averages, the time span to chase this ellusive goal via one technique and then the other.
In the meantime, I am waiting around for various agencies to call me back. It's good practice, since waiting for one thing or another is going to feature largely in my life from now on.
