{Pregnancy Hormones}

No. No. I am not pregnant. But I am Expecting!! There is a lot of information out there regarding pregnant women and adoptive women sharing similar experiences. Did you know that an adoptive mom can actually breastfeed her baby!! There are women who have never been pregnant and yet can breastfeed their child. Wow! That caught my attention. Now it is a little out of my comfort zone, so I will not be breastfeeding my baby. But who knew that can happen.

Even though pregnancy and adoption are different journeys, they share a lot of similarities. The first one is obvious, there is a baby at the end of the journey. But there are others. Just like pregnant women, I suffer from crazy mood swings. I can cry at the drop of a hat. My emotions are all over the place. I can be biting Jason's head off one minute, then joyfully loving on my family the next- be crying one minute and dancing with joy the next. Now I am not saying that the adoption journey is the same as being pregnant. There are women who have done both, and they say each are hard in their different ways.

Many pregnant women suffer from insomnia. I am in on that one. Many pregnant women have morning sickness. I am nauseous A LOT. Now driving force of the symptoms are different (mostly hormone changes for pregnancy and mostly stress related for adoption) but outcome for both stinks. You can't sleep and you can't enjoy food. Good thing for all us women, that it only lasts for a short time.

Many pregnant women will enter the "nesting" phase at the end of her pregnancy. I have heard stories of women cleaning the baseboards in their house with toothbrushes. As mothers, we want to welcome our babies into a spotless clean environment. That is no different for adoptive moms. I went through a mild nesting stage before Jadon and I have a feeling it will be more intense this time around. Mostly because with Jadon I was still waiting for the sky to fall, never really fully believing that I will have a child. Kept waiting for something bad to happen. That is common when you deal with infertility. So with this journey, I am already a mother; and yes bad things can happen, but I am not expecting it at every turn. I can focus more on welcoming the new baby into the McCabe household.

Now for me there is a positive to adoption over pregnancy- my tummy will stay flat (which I think pregnant women are amazingly beautiful) and I will not have the physical pain of labor. However, with pregnancy you pretty much know that in roughly nine months the baby comes and there is light at the end of the tunnel. With adoption, you have no idea. You have no control. I could be expecting for one month or 5 years. With that comes a lot of emotional turmoil and pain. There are many days I would prefer to have the physical pain of labor over the emotional pain of the adoption journey. (with pregnancy you can opt for drugs to help with the pain :) But beautifully both journeys end with a child and whether pregnant or adoption, people would agree that is was well worth it. And so do I.

So what do you think? Do you agree with me?