One of the most difficult things in any adoption is all of the waiting that you have to do. However, I believe that the wait in international adoption is especially hard, although certainly every parent who adopts will experience the wait to some degree. You see, when you are waiting during an international adoption, a lot of that waiting happens after your child has already been identified. You know who your child is and you know that they are growing up without you.
Each day that passes, you wonder what your child is doing. Is she happy? Are they taking good care of him? What milestones has she reached – and I’ve missed?
Frustrations mount as days, weeks and sometimes months pass with little or no news about how your case is progressing. You wonder if anything is happening and mostly you wonder if your child is ever coming home.
When my husband and I made the decision to adopt, we were warned about the wait – sort of. Other adoptive parents talked about how hard it is, how frustrating, but somehow they never really managed to explain the wait in a way that did it justice.
The best way I can think of to describe the wait, for those of you who haven’t experienced it yet, is that it is like a rubber band. At the beginning of the adoption process, you are holding one end of the rubber band and some unknown source is holding the other. At first, there is a lot of slack in the band, but as time goes on, it begins to stretch. As days and weeks and months pass, the rubber band continues to elongate. Around the time that you receive your referral and your adoption process really gets going, the rubber band begins to pull even tighter. Soon, it feels like it is going to break. It feels as though if one more thing happens, if one more thing causes a delay, your rubber band will completely snap.
The good news is that your rubber band won’t snap. You will make it (or so they tell me) and your child really will come home. Over the next few days I will be posting several blogs on the trials and joys of the wait – and some keys to handling them.