Waiting.

Whenever people find out that my occupation is a special education teacher, their initial response is almost always, "Oh, you must be so patient!"  Friends, let me be the first to tell you that I am NOT patient.  Not even a little bit.  In waiting for Little Fenrick to join our family, I have discovered, even more, just how impatient I actually am.

Every morning when I wake up now, my first thought is, "Maybe today will be the day that we get the phone call!"  And every night when I go to bed, I'm always slightly disappointed that it didn't happen.  Every time I see an unknown number pop up on my phone, my heart stops for a few seconds, and every time the office pages me at work to tell me that I have a phone call, I fly out of my classroom and down the hall.

We only started this process four months ago.  Now I know you're definitely thinking, "Gosh, MR, you really are impatient.  Most people have to wait nine months for a baby!"  I get it.  I just can't help but think that it's a little easier to wait when you have some sort of general sense about when the baby is coming.  Perhaps that's only true for super-type-A planners like me.  

When we went to our adoption seminar in February, 16 babies had already been born and matched through our agency in 2013 alone!  Our case worker seemed to think that we would be matched in a few weeks.  Since the seminar, though, only one baby has been born.  The agency is currently working with 14 birth moms, but none of those babies are due until summer.  (Of those moms, some may, through the agency's counseling, decide to parent and not make an adoption plan.)  I have heard people say that the number of babies born in a hospital at any given time ebbs and flows, and that certainly seems to be true.  

Most of the time, I can push the following thoughts out of my mind, but every once in awhile, they creep up and make me doubt.  "Something must be wrong with us because we haven't been picked yet."  "Our agency isn't doing their job because they made it seem like this would go much more quickly than it has."  "We definitely deserve to get picked before those people on the website."  (Sorry, y'all- just being real.)  "Maybe people think we're too young and won't have a clue what we're doing."  (Okay, so it's probably true that we won't have a clue what we're doing.)  "Our case worker doesn't like us."  "Our friends and family probably think we are idiots because we told them we thought we would have a baby by now."    

I know that whenever we finally do get the call, the timing will be perfect.  I can already look back and be thankful that it didn't happen before the marathon, before we got to have our last little weekend getaway as a couple, and before I had to go on maternity leave.  (I feel sick just thinking about having to make six weeks' worth of sub plans and leave my students in someone else's hands.  God knew I didn't need to worry about that.)  In the moment, though, the home stretch feels like an eternity.

Come home, Baby Fen.  Your crib is waiting for you.  And so are your parents.