I've been delving into blogs of adoptive moms & moms-to-be. One is at the stage of waiting for referral...she has her nursery all set up...but she's still in that "OMG I can't handle other people's pregnancies/babies/etc." stage. There's been a death in the family, and her SIL is coming with 4-month-old baby in arms, and is staying with her. She is all trembly about sharing her baby's crib--pristine, holy, set up just for M., site of dreams and hopes and repository of years' worth of baby-longing--with the baby. Sigh. I understand. But I don't understand any more. Does this make sense? At the worst of my IF times, yes, I was bitter, jealous, angry, emotionally fragile about babies, pregnant women, baby showers, everything. So I know exactly where she's coming from. But I have to admit--M. never got a nursery! No dainty frilly crib clothes, no fanciful baby-girl designs on the walls, no physical shrine wherein to cherish the coming baby-to-be. I just never got into that stuff. I was actually more scared that they would actually hand me--ME, Ms. I haven't ever diapered a baby!--a child to take care of and cherish. And as time got closer and closer to referral, my locked up emotions began to loosen. I began to emotionally venture forth. I actually threw an itty-bitty baby shower in my own home for a friend, because I was so excited for her and, by extension, for myself and my husband. We were going to have a baby!!!! It was like the first tender green growths of wildflowers in an area that was only recently scorched by wildfire. Gentle nourishing rains instead of a torrential downpour that scours the hillsides and causes floods and landslides and catastrophes. I knew I had really passed the oh-my-god-IF-is-so-horrid-awful-miserable-my-life-is-a-shambles-my-body-doesn't-work-right-I'm-not-a-real-female-me-me-me-misery when I realized I hadn't dipped into alt.infertility or my IVF groups in years. I wish everyone who has suffered from IF could get to this point. I look back and realize how locked into misery I was. I read this gal's blog and wish she could look at the baby-in-the-house as a harbinger of joy to come, rather than a reminder of pain in the past. But emotion is emotion. You can say, till you're blue in the face, "buck up! Joy is yet to come!", but it doesn't mean anything until the person you are talking to is ready to be in that place. I wasn't then, I am now. And I praise the Kosmik All that I've reached this point in time. Categories: [Family] [Our Adoption]