As we impatiently wait out the next 18 days until our case is heard again in the Ethiopian courts and Solomon will hopefully, finally, officially become our son, I have been thinking a lot about disappointments in adoption.

These past few months have been emotionally challenging, but we know that Solomon will come home to us and the day will come when he is in my arms, getting smothered with kisses and hugs.

On New Year's Eve we went to a party with a bunch of people who will soon be relatives through marriage, most of whom we did not know prior to the party. Just a few moments after our arrival, one of the women pulled me aside and told me that her two sons were adopted domestically and that they had just (the day before) had a domestic placement for a daughter that was due to be born this month fall through. While she was very happy that the baby's mother had chosen to parent her (she had built a strong relationship with the mother), she was of course very sad that she was not going to have the daughter she had been planning for and hoping for. The tears fell down her face as she talked about it.

Even though I was a stranger to her and there were tons of people in the room that she knew, she wanted to talk to me about her feelings and experience, and I am sure it was because I was clearly an adoptive mom. There is definitely comfort in talking with others who have been there and done that.

Risking a disappointment, and at times even true heartbreak, is a reality of choosing to adopt. It is a true risk that a "match" will fall through in a domestic adoption, before or after the baby is born. Sometimes children who have been referred to an adoptive family die before they are placed. Sometimes the birth family reclaims the child or something else occurs to result in a lost referral. Sometimes there are paperwork delays. Sometimes there are real problems with an international adoption that prohibit the child from immigrating to the United States. Sometimes international adoption programs shut down and parents and children are stuck, separated. Sometimes foster children are reunited with birth families, moved to new foster homes or placed for adoption with other families with little rhyme or reason.

Choosing to adopt, and choosing to love a child before he is truly and legally your child, is a risk.

I have no idea if there are any real numbers on this, but I do think that the majority of adoptions go relatively smoothly, and end with the child coming home to the adoptive parents. Of course domestic infant adoptions and foster care placements usually have higher numbers of placements that fall through because of the nature of the programs, but even so, most adoptive parents I know who decide to adopt domestically end up with children.

Adoption is truly an emotional roller coaster, and the dips and drops can be very difficult to experience. When prospective adoptive parents choose to pursue an adoption, they have to know that the disappointments and risks are a part of the process.

It is also good to remember that while the disappointments can be horrible, the joys are unbelievable, and once you have a child in your arms, it truly is all worth it.