But that was long enough. I haven't written about all the problems we've encountered along the way because I don't want this blog to be about nothing but the waiting, how difficult they make the process, the waiting....
But the night we got that phone call I told Mike I was finished with the whole thing. It has really been one ridiculous thing after another and as we talked about all the little problems that have increased our wait a few weeks or months here and there, I started to feel that these speedbumps are slowing us down for a reason. I'm sure we're going in the right direction, I'm just not sure we're on the right path to get there. So we started talking about other options.
And suddenly the desire to have a healthy infant was trumped by the need to find the right way for us. Letting go of that fear that every prospective parent has, that our child will not be perfectly healthy, that our child will have had some (likely negative) life experiences before we adopt them, was inexplicably freeing.
I called the CAS the next day and arranged a meeting with an adoption counsellor. We have not terminated our Ethiopia file yet (In adoption you are legally allowed to follow more than one means to adopt). But the following day we went to bed and woke up feeling really good about the adoption for the first time in a long time. We will meet Ann in the end of January. And we already have good news. We are already done PRIDE and our homestudy, so we could adopt immediately if we wanted. There is nothing else to do. What a relief!
