Five and a Half Months

The little guys are hitting that magic age of five and a half months. It is probably not a magic age for anyone else, but it is a magic age for me. The first time I ever met Marcus, he was five and a half months old. The first time I ever met Will, he was five and a half months old.




I got to know my friend Cara while Greg an I were in the process of adopting Marcus and she was pregnant with her first child. She said once (although she might not remember) that there were a lot of similarities between my adoption process and her pregnancy. I just kinda smiled and nodded at the time but now, having been through both, I have to admit that she was right.

Both ways of bringing a child into your life is packed full of unknowns. Adoption has certainly got the upper hand in the unknowns though. Whether pregnancy or adoption, you don't know what the health of the baby will be. You don't know when the baby will show up. And you never know what you are doing when that child does come into your life. Mostly, you just have to have faith that it will all work out. There are those horrible times when it doesn't, but most of the time it all does work out.

Going through the adoption process twice was good practice for pregnancy. Almost no one expects to give birth to their child and then leave the hospital without them. I had a pretty good inkling from the beginning of the pregnancy that this would be the case. Leaving Sean and Aaron in the NICU while Greg and I pulled out of the parking garage to head for home, I had almost the same feelings as I did when we visited with Marcus and Will at five and a half months in Guatemala and then hopped on a plane and headed for home without them. I left all four of my babies in the hands of virtual strangers and could do nothing other than trust that my babies would be taken care of.

Now that Sean and Aaron are five and a half months old, I can't imagine missing their lives up until this point like I did with Marcus and Will. I was so sad every single day I knew that Marcus and Will were in Guatemala and I was home waiting for them, not knowing when they would arrive. Now that Marcus and Will are 5 and 4 years old, I don't feel that I ever missed a day of their lives. I haven't had to miss a single day of Sean and Aaron's life here on Earth.

I was telling Marcus and Will stories about the first time we met them, when they were the same age as their baby brothers are now. Marcus loved hearing about the joy he got from bouncing up and down and how he kept his mommy and daddy awake that first night and made them walk laps up and down the hotel hallway with him. At five and a half months Will was such an easy baby, just smiling all the time, drinking his bottle, and falling asleep without a complaint. It is hard for me to believe that my big kids were ever so little.

At five and a half months, I have drastically different stories of my kids' lives up until this point. No story is any better than the other. Just different. I am just as close and connected to each one of my kids, no matter their story.