In my last post, I went into detail about some of the reasons that your first meeting with your new child and your first days together can turn out to be less than perfect. Here are some tips on how to best prepare yourself emotionally for the unpredictable but yet miraculous event of meeting your child.

- Prepare yourself for the possibility that your first few moments, hours and days with your new child could be wonderful and magical, but could also be challenging and not as... more

As I wrap up writing about adoptive parents and the range of emotions they often feel while going through the adoption process, I thought I would share some of our highs and lows.

For me, some of the most joyful moments of my entire life were when we were united with our adopted children. They were moments that were happy and amazing and blessed beyond measure. Tiny Maggie being handed to me by a nanny in a Vietnamese orphanage, a sweaty, overwhelmed yet cheerful Amanda arriving at our local airport and coming to me willingly from the arms of her escort, being in the room and witnessing... more

For the past few days I have been writing about all of the many emotions that adoptive parents often go through. Going through the adoption process brings some of the happiest of joyful moments, some of the most heartbreakingly sad moments, moment full of stress... more

Happiness and joy, grief and sadness, and stress and frustration are only a few of the emotions that have been known to strike unexpecting adoptive parents with great force, and then disappear as quickly as they came, only to be replaced with another, equally powerful emotion.

Some of the less pleasant emotions... more

Becoming a parent is an emotional journey, no matter what path may lead to you to your new child. When a pregnant woman is emotional it is often chalked up to "hormones", but expectant adoptive parents are often no less emotional. I know that I for sure, tend to be super emotional during an adoption (insert the sound of my husband laughing obnoxiously at the gross understatement I just made).

I have already written about the happiness and joy that adoptive parents feel, and the sadness... more

I have been writing about the wide range of emotions that many adoptive parents feel at some point during the adoption process, and the rapid rate at which those feelings can change. In my last post I wrote about some of the happier emotions, and touched on the happiness, joy and excitement that adoption brings to adoptive parents in overwhelming quantities.

And yet while adoptive parents can be feeling... more

As I started writing about in my last post, adoption is an extremely emotional process for all involved. Adoptive parents often find themselves in a surprising range of emotions throughout the adoption process, and the intensity, variety and rapid change of emotions often catches adoptive parents off guard.

The emotions involved with adoption are often complicated and even conflicting, which make them that much more complicated and hard to deal with and figure out.

I hope that... more

Today I am going to start writing about the feelings of adoption, for the adoptive parents. (There are of course also many feelings involved in adoption for the adoptees, birth parents and others involved which are equally as important if not more so, but since I am an adoptive parent, I will write about what I know).

In adoption email groups, forums, books and discussions, we often hear adoption described as an "emotional roller coaster". I cannot tell you how many times I... more