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 and grief that are also common emotions for adoptive parents.

Today I am going to talk about the stress and frustration that are very common to experience during an adoption.

I have written a lot on this blog about the paperwork aspects of the adoption process. On one hand, it's paperwork. It's not a big deal. You get some letters, you get them signed, you get them notarized, sometimes you get them authenticated, and then you mail them in. It shouldn't be a big deal, right?

However, this is not any ordinary paperwork. It is adoption paperwork. If it takes one of your references three weeks to write the reference letter for your homestudy, and your homestudy agency won't start the process until they have all of the reference letters, that is three weeks longer you have to wait until you will get your child.

If your bank won't cooperate with the letter you need for your dossier, or if your doctor is out of town and can't sign your medical letter, or if the notary makes a mistake notarizing your documents, these are not just minor paperwork problems, these are problems that directly affect your time line of becoming a new parent. So, the paperwork can be stressful. Not because it is terribly difficult, but because it is important and necessary and because we often want it done at lightning speed and the world doesn't always cooperate.

People often ask me if adoption is "hard", and my response it that it is not "hard", but that there are a lot of proverbial hoops to jump through. You have to jump through hoops for your homestudy agency. You jump through hoops for your placement agency. You jump through hoops for immigration. You jump through hoops for the country you are adopting from, etc. etc. etc.

When you are an adoptive parent doing all that you can to jump through the hoops as quickly and as efficiently as you can, and you hit a snag through no fault of your own, it can be very frustrating. When your social worker promises to write up your homestudy in three weeks and then takes six weeks, it is frustrating. When immigration loses your fingerprints and you have to go and get fingerprinted again, it is frustrating. When the wait for a referral increases or the wait to travel increases, it is frustrating and stressful.

I remember for one of our adoptions that nothing could be done for a few weeks because of the Christmas and New Year holidays, and I was so frustrated about it. I remember moaning about the only real holiday days being Christmas Day and New Years Day, and wondering why people needed to take two weeks off from work. The nerve of those people wanting to celebrate the holidays with their families when my adoption was waiting on them. :)

While many adoptions do go through fairly smoothly, most adoptions will hit a snag (big or small) at one point or another. Stress and frustration are part of the process.

Someone once told me to just get used to it and deal with it because it was good practice, as parenting is often frustrating and stressful. (I don't know that I buy that logic. It is kind of like saying you shouldn't sleep for a few months before you get a new baby because it's a good idea to get used to not sleeping!)


What has been your most stressful or frustrating moment during an adoption? Leave a comment and tell me about it.




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