Beginning

So yeah, we're adopting. But it is very clear that we can have children. . . I mean we didn't pick Andrew up at Sam's now did we? So why choose to adopt?

As some of you already know, Andrew was born 5 weeks early. On the day of my baby shower . . . not that I'm still thinking about that. He was born via emergency C-section because I was having some major problems. If you want to look it up, it's called placental abruption. I'm not going into the gory details. On a side note, the Mayo Clinic is a great place to look things up, but be careful, you may diagnose yourself with 15 other diseases while you're there. I'm not kidding! Needless to say, he made his entrance into this world 5 weeks early weighing 4 lbs 13 oz and measuring 17 inches long. He was healthy, thank God, but he was still tiny. Now, one statistic I will give you about p.a. is that it happens in less than 1% of healthy pregnancies. Once it has happened to you the chances of it happening again are at least 15%. Which means subsequent pregnancies are high risk (mostly in the third trimester). I was told by my doctor I would most likely be on bed rest after 30 weeks. Ummmm, I couldn't stay in bed when I had the flu and was running 104 temp. When Patrick would leave I would get up and wash dishes (while holding my breath of course). I'm pretty sure I couldn't survive 5+ weeks of bed rest. Plus p.a. is very risky for the baby and the mother. It just wasn't a risk we were willing to take, so we decided that we weren't going to have anymore on our own. Now time for a disclaimer - if you've decided to have a high-risk pregnancy, I in no way think that you are wrong for doing it. It just isn't for us.

That alone wasn't the only reason that we decided to adopt. The truth is I had been thinking about adoption long before Andrew was born. I always knew (because I'm smart like that) that even if we had kids biologically, we would also adopt at least one. It was more a matter of the right timing for our family, and Patrick (wisely) wasn't ready quite as quickly as I was. We waited until we both felt ready to plough ahead with adding another child to our family.

So that kind of brings you up to speed. One thing I do want to address are reasons that are not good reasons to adopt. We are not adopting because we are "good" people. We are not adopting because we want to save an orphan from an orphanage. We are not adopting because we want this child to grow up in a Christian home. Now I'm not saying that those things aren't true - I mean we're not evil and malicious people and this child will be saved from life in an orphanage and he or she will be raised in a Christian home. It's just that none of those are good reasons to adopt. We are adopting simply because we feel that for us it is the right way to add to our family.  This is the way we want to bring another son or daughter into our home.

Now I have to go and check on a little boy that spends 90% of his time in a spiderman costume. He's the real reason I want more kids. I never imagined how great it would be to be a mother . . .

Have a good afternoon.