After our move to Washington and Crosby's birth, I felt myself begin to sink. I tried to float - hell, I tried to SWIM through the tough currents of life but I have felt, for two years, off and on, like I'm being PULLED beneath the surface, barely able to keep my head above water enough to breathe. It's an awful feeling. I have tried to search and figure out what it was that kept me in this state. We've struggled financially since the move, with Ritchie taking a large pay cut to move us out here (a small sacrifice we thought for all of the potential opportunity here -jobs in tech were hard to come by in Denver). Then we had Crosby, and got his aortic stenosis diagnoses. A feeling I can't ever explain and I wouldn't wish on anyone. The pain of hearing that something is WRONG with your child. We've been SO fortunate that his condition has remained stable and we haven't had to do anything surgical yet. It's coming, but I feel so much more equipped two years in than I did days after his birth. With Crosby's diagnoses came a big life change of deciding to put off (or just not complete at all) our adoption. We didn't think we could handle two children with medical conditions. We also found ourselves unable to fund it with the income loss and sudden medical bills (we received ALL of our prenatal bills at once from Colorado and it was a SHOCK - throw in a birth and heart condition bills and we were flat broke).
I simply chalked it up to fate and tried to let go of the dream of parenting a girl. But I couldn't. It kept coming back to me. We still couldn't afford it, though. A little over a year later, we became licensed foster parents and we've taken a few short term placements to feel it out. Something about it doesn't feel right for us. I wish I could explain that better, but I'm not sure I can. It's a feeling, a gut intuition, that foster care is not the right path for us. With that realization, I felt the water overflow right over my head. Air GONE. That's the only way I can describe it. Pain, no air, feeling weak and stupid because I HAVE THREE AMAZING AND BEAUTIFUL BOYS AND SHOULDN'T I BE THANKFUL FOR WHAT I HAVE WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?!
My desire to have a daughter is very real. It's not something I have been able to just work past. Ritchie and I brainstormed and budgeted and searched and talked and tried to figure out the best path for me to fulfill this desire and it wasn't until we came right back to the adoption from China of a little girl with a cleft lip and palate that I felt... PEACE. My head came fully out of the water. I felt more present with my children, happier with my husband, my life seemed to make sense again. It's like I hadn't been able to reconcile that loss of something I never even had and finally I realized that I hadn't come to terms with just not having a daughter. What's even bigger is I realized that these feelings, this desire, is worth fighting for. It's worth the costs, the paperwork, the adding more to our family's plate, etc... because in my gut, and more importantly IN MY HEART, I know this is right for our family.
I was meant to have a daughter from China. I've always felt this IN MY BONES. Like, there's a piece of me IN China. It's the most bizarre thing. If someone else said that and I hadn't experienced it first hand, I would be so judgmental. Like, weird voodoo magic hippy crap that isn't real, right? It feels so real, it's almost unbelievable to ME and I'm the one feeling it.
Anyway, we're working on it. We're working on bringing our girl home. It's a bit of a process still because we have to redo some paperwork (a lot of thing expire after a year and we're THREE years in now) and, most importantly, gather some funds. But, we're going to DO this. And I cannot wait.
