Setting Up the Crib

We've been waiting awhile to order the Emily crib from Babies R Us but it has been continually out of stock. Joel received an e-mail alert that it was back in stock while we were on vacation and we were able to successfully order it - hurray!

We've had a lot of difficulty with the crib situation and so I was so relieved to find out that one was on the way. I've been in Chicago all week on business and came home to a large box sitting in our office/baby room. The crib has finally found it's way to our home!

Joel and I have had a packed weekend and so we decided to grab dinner and then set-up the crib this evening. I was commenting to Joel how unusual it was that I was helping put the crib together (after enjoying a margarita at dinner to boot). Probably not the usual role of the soon-to-be mom in crib assembly. After figuring out all the nuts and bolts, the crib was successfully assembled.

I finally was able to pull all of our bedding out of the plastic container it had been living in for the past three months. Ordering the bedding was the most exciting part for me. I found a set online that was the perfect mix of everything I was looking for- gender neutral, modern design and that features animals. We decided to make the crib and let all of the bedding off-gas pre-baby. The crib looks great with all of the new bedding!

The room is beginning to look official (as long as you look past the filing cabinet and camping gear that is still looking for a home).

Four Months and Counting

We've officially been waiting for four months for bambino. Honestly, the time has gone by pretty quickly. I've been trying to temper my impulses to buy things for baby for the fear that s/he is going to be dressed exclusively in polk-a-dots and yellow and green. I'm saving some of my shopping for when I'm shopping for a baby that will soon join our family.

I think it's been important for me to start preparing. I'm not going to have 9 months of pregnancy to get ready for baby mentally, emotionally and physically, so, it's been helpful to begin preparing a space for baby both in our physical space and psychologically. Shopping and reading baby books and books about adoption are helping me to accomplish this mental and emotional preparation.

Part of me is resisting the urge to go crazy and buy everything. I think it's going to be important for me to be shopping for my actual child. Of course, in the back of my mind, I still have a bit of fear about doing this. It's easier to shop for a hypothetical child in adoption than a real child. What if our birthmother changes her mind and I've bought clothes and toys for a baby that will not be coming home to me? That's a hard reality about adoption. It's one that doesn't happen as often as people think but one that lives in the back of my mind and creeps into my consciousness every now and then when I think about baby.

We live in a two bedroom condo in the city so I can't help but to see the baby's room. It used to be our office and it is directly across from our bedroom. When I get up in the morning and leave our room the first thing that I see is our changing table. I try to picture my baby on that table. Sometimes it's an African American boy, sometimes a girl with dark hair, dark eyes and olive skin, sometimes it's a freckled girl with red hair. I really have no idea what my baby might look like so I just change up the bambino every so often in my mind. I wonder if people who are having a biological child do this? The variations probably would not be as vast. Probably more like green eyes vs. blue or brown hair vs. blond.

We're Really Starting a Family

I wouldn't allow myself to do anything baby related until after we turned in our video. Really, the likelihood of us being selected without a video is probably pretty slim.

Once we turned in our video I truly felt like we were starting a family. It was really going to happen.



I had this horrible feeling the entire time that we were going through our infertility that buying anything baby related was depressing and pathetic. Why was I stocking up for an impossibility, an unreality?

It was a little bit hard at first when we were accepted into the adoption pool that the outcome was really going to be a baby. After everything that we'd been through I no longer allowed myself to believe that that day would ever come.

It was a strange transition to walk into Babies R Us. No longer was I wishfully thinking that I belonged among the aisles of baby paraphernalia. For the first time I actually felt like I had the right to be there and I wasn't just a voyeur into someone else's reality.

Consequently, I really was on the verge of tears the entire time we were registering because I was shopping for a real baby that someday would be inhabiting the crib, car seat, socks and onesies that we were purchasing.