fear fear fear everyday everywhere

I am reading a book about open adoption right now and in the Understanding Open Adoption chapter (1st) it talks about "Working Through Your Fears". Fears are reality in adoption as it was going through Infertility. My fears are valid in these two different arena's. In dealing with Infertility, our fears were that we would never become pregnant, once we did and experienced our first miscarriage at 8 weeks(2nd loss of 7 pregnancies), we then entered the fear of will we ever become parents of our own biological child. The answer we know is 99% most likely not (we do have one frozen embie and remember I am without a uterus now surrogacy is unreachable financially!). Then we moved onto building our family through adoption. The fears were there from the get go. Fears of never being the ideal couple a perspective birth family would never like, fears that we would have a failed match (3 times now), fears that we would never become parents through adoption.

Yes the fears are there in every step we have gone through. Fears that are valid. Being scared if we are not a couple that is Fit to be Parents. I often ask "Why" still in adoption as I did with Infertility so that fear, although a different perspective, is present every day of our lives.

Dealing with losses of any kind is hard. Losing a parent (both of us have lost our fathers to cancer) and losing a pet that has helped us deal with our Infertility and Adoption losses, loss of friendships, and loss of control.

I guess the control issue is a greater fear of all of this. I can't control what a potential birth family does and what decisions they make. I can't control when and how we will become parents (how is less of a worry because we know we will adopt). I can't control the worries about finances as we are not RICH (and I do work 2 jobs). I can't control when we will get that match that turns into a placement that is successful. I can't control ANYTHING except how we know for sure we will become parents one day. I guess that is more HOPE than control.

I know, I am rambling, but the issue of working through our fears is an everyday task we will not give up on. We hope that each day we can control our fears long enough to be able to keep that hope alive for a call with a match turning into a placement of our first child.

Another thing we just can't let go of is the wanting of a newborn. I fear missing out on those precious newborn moments. Sure, you all that are parents might think I am crazy, but I (and DH) have always wanted to experience that bonding from day one. Yes, we know there will be sleepless nights, moments of chaos, moments of sheer fear, but we feel we deserve to be able to experience these things as if we had given birth to our first child also. I know we won't have a sweet smooth ride the first few days and weeks of our baby's night and days being mixed up, but I want to and deserve to experience these things as any other new set of parents would also. It is a want, need, desire that I did not think was a problem until I this past week with dealing with a situation for a possible match. I know, you all must think I am ungrateful, but when a woman (and man) have a desire to experience something so strong, it can't just be let go so easily.

I have a longing for something and by gosh I will seek that out to the end of my days. I won't let go, although sometimes things have to be rearranged or changed to get there, I won't stop until we have a baby in our arms.