Like this:

I keep journals for my kids.  I started Abbi’s the day we began our adoption journey and I continue to update it every couple months, telling Future Abbi what she was like as a baby, reminding her on every page how much I love her.  When we began the process of bringing home Baby #2, one of my first steps was to go buy a new journal and begin chronicling.  Eric tells me that if the kids are anything like him, they aren’t really going to care.  I counter, however, by saying that if they’re anything like me, they’ll love it.  Time will tell.  Today I was writing to Baby #2, and while the journals are private, I thought it might be worth sharing one excerpt from today’s entry.  I wrote…

I wish I was the one carrying you right now.  It really doesn’t bother me that I’m not going to experience a pregnancy.  I don’t need to be pregnant to be a mom and I wouldn’t trade you or Abbi for one hundred kids that I gave birth to.  You and your sister are my babies and I know in the deepest parts of my heart that I am your mother.  And yet, I wish I was the one who gets to feel you move for the first time, who feels you kick, who sees your heartbeat on the ultrasound monitor.  I wish I was the one going to doctor’s appointments and hearing all about how well you’re doing.  But I’m not.  But then I think about what I am going to get.  I get every Christmas morning and every birthday party.  I get thousands of snuggles while reading books.  I get first smiles and first steps and first teeth and first days at school.  I get recitals and ball games and graduations.  I get the midnight feedings and the diaper blowouts.  I get toddler tantrums and teenage testing.  I get a million smiles and a million hugs and a million sloppy kisses.  I get to be your mommy for your whole life…and suddenly I don’t begrudge your birth mother the experiences she is having.  Because here’s the thing- she loves you too.  If she didn’t love you she wouldn’t be taking care of you right now.  She wouldn’t be dreaming of the life she wants for you and she wouldn’t be carefully making this decision and searching for the right family for you.  She doesn’t love you like I do, but that doesn’t make her love any less real.  Do I wish I could be your birth mother and your forever mommy?  Yes.  But, if I can only be one, I’ll give up the nine months in utero for all the years that come after.  It’s a small, small, so tiny I can barely see it price to pay for the extraordinary privilege of being your mom…forever.

…

There are times when it really would be more convenient to be pregnant.  Right now I kinda feel like I’m an undercover mother-to-be.  Like any mom expecting her second child, I case out moms of two when I’m out and about.  How do they do two kids at the pool?  At the post office?  At the grocery?  The thing is, I don’t look like a soon-to-be mom of two.  I’d love to broach the topic of two kids, I’d love to let strangers in the pool know that I’m about to be part of their Mom of Two Club, but almost always I keep silent.  To mention that I’m soon going to have another baby causes people to immediately examine my flat(ish) belly and then look at me with confusion.  And then we have to have The Adoption Conversation.  And you know what?  The Conversation is much more interesting to people who haven’t had it a million times before.  It’s not that we’re ashamed of how our family came to be; it’s that it isn’t very important.  It doesn’t define how we see ourselves, but it very often changes the way others look at us.  We don’t hide from it, but we also don’t initiate The Conversation.  It kinda stinks that I don’t get to advertise that our family is about to grow.  On the other hand, I don’t have random strangers groping my belly.  I guess it’s a trade-off.

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