Mr. Polish and I are waiting on our Mini Polish to arrive and change our lives forever, but just so you know, this isn’t our first manicure. (I wanted to say rodeo, but I feel like that is Mrs. Cowgirl’s territory more than mine.)

In the summer of 2012 we first entertained the idea of adopting. I don’t know if you all have ”the grapevine” where you live like we do, but it is a major form of communication here. We heard about our first birth family through the grapevine. We discussed it with each other, with our parents, and most importantly I discussed it with my BFF. Everything was a go. I contacted an adoption attorney to gather information about how to proceed. Our attorney directed us to a local social services agency to begin our home study.

Suddenly, without even knowing it, I fell in love with a baby I had never met, or even knew the sex of. I had all these ideas of how I wanted things to be, how I wanted birth announcements to look, who I wanted to watch our baby, getting our baby onto our Y membership, and almost every other thing you can imagine. I had all of our ducks in a row. I knew the attorney we were to use. I had all the paperwork from social services. I was getting ready to tell my boss that if everything went well I would be taking a leave of absence. I started pinning adoption links. Picking out clothes. Losing my mind.

And then the birth mom changed her mind.

I was so upset, to say the least. I was crushed, and at the same time I felt like I was being selfish for being upset. I felt like I should have been happy because the birth mom stepped up to take responsibility.  It was so hard because I felt like she stole our baby. The baby that was hers all along.

And I thought that was it for us. I thought we were done. I couldn’t get pregnant, and I couldn’t successfully adopt. I began to get used to the idea of just the two of us. We decided to not continue with the home study, and just take every day one at a time, when suddenly the grapevine fired up again, and months later we found ourselves in our current situation.

Our first birth mom’s story got around to our current birth mom. Before our current birth mom reached out to us, she found herself confiding in a woman in her church about her pregnancy and the decision she had made. The woman she confided in is related to our first birth mom and she knew what we went through the first time.

What I’m getting at here is that if we hadn’t known about the first birth family, we wouldn’t know about our current birth family, and we wouldn’t be anxiously awaiting the arrival of our first child.

It’s kind of funny how life works out.