I'm BAAACCK...and WE'RE ADOPTING!

Even if these words do nothing but fly into the great void of the Internet, I'm still going to write. And now I have something to write about again!

We're adopting!

It's funny - in some ways, our in vitro journey seems so long ago, when really it was only a few months. But, it feels like a story I read, rather than something real that I lived. In all honesty, it was amazingly easy to leave it behind.

I didn't think I could. I thought after two years of knowing every cycle day, every intimate detail of my own body that I'd never paid attention to before, of shots and focus and determination and immersion in infertility, I didn't think I could heed the advice many gave me: Just relax for a while. Don't think about it.

My first response? Yeah, right.

Reality? Shockingly it was possible!

I've spent the last few months just be-ing. Drinking when I want. taking hot baths when I want. Brian and I have enjoyed the liberation of infertility freedom. No calendars, no scheduled together time, no sonograms...in fact, I've not even been back to my infertility specialist post-IVF. Just didn't see the point.

So right after the IVF, I floated the idea of the idea of adoption. I wasn't ready to MOVE on it yet, and neither was he. I just needed to know that we could talk about it eventually, whenever the time was right. I read some books and then parked the idea. Just knowing we could talk was fine.

And then my husband surprised me, casually leaning to me during a volunteer event and saying, "I think I'm ready to research more about adoption. It seems like this is what we're supposed to do."

Um...OK!

Fast forward a few weeks of reading, research and talking and I'm thrilled to announce that it's official - we're adopting! We've settled on international adoption for a variety of reasons (I'm happy to talk if anyone is curious) and have focused on a country. I'm not revealing said country until after Mother's Day when we can talk to the future Grandparents Neuman and reveal our decision to them.

So, for the first time in a long time, my heart is doing a little pitter-patter beat with excitement. That in itself is REALLY refreshing.

You know what we love about international adoption? We're GUARANTEED to bring home a baby. It might not be a newborn, but We. Will. Have. A. Baby. We. Will. Be. Parents.

I promise I'll post more after Mother's Day, and I'll shamelessly admit I'm going to blog away during our journey to our baby. Another great thing about international adoption is that there are milestones along the way. Our first, now that we've decided on a country, is to pick an agency. We hope to do that within the next week; then we can begin the paperwork and really be moving! It likely will still be at least a year before we're a family five instead of a family of four (I count the dogs in the five, of course!), but we also have two trips to a foreign land to start to get excited about! We're going to a land we've never thought of traveling to before - but now I can't wait to get there!

Until later, this really long-writing blogger is signing off!