Saturday, April 2, 2011

The emotional labor

Our birth mom was scheduled to fly out here last week to give birth to the baby. I was getting so excited to finally meet her! The day she was scheduled to fly out, I had been running around all day getting the last of the items I needed for the baby. As I was leaving the store I received a phone call from our adoption agency. Our agent called and asked if we had heard from our birth mom. I hadn't and asked why. She said that she didn't make it on her plane and that they weren't able to reach her for the last three hours.

My mind began to swirl with different ideas of why she didn't get on the plane. Had she changed her mind? Was she ok? For the next two hours my emotions were all over the place. I had heard that adoptive parents go through an emotional labor, and now I know what they are talking about. You become attached to the idea that this is your child, and he was just delivered to you in a different way. The idea enters your mind, "what if this doesn't work out?"  That thought made me extremely emotional.

We finally were able to track down our birth mom. She became nervous to come out here, but still wanted to proceed with the adoption. We are now scheduled to fly out there in a few days, so she can have the baby in her home town. I am still hopeful that this all works out and I  hope this emotional roller coaster comes to an end soon.