I'm back from our vacation, refreshed and rejuvenated. It was nice to spend time with my husband and to not have to think about babies. Most of the families that we ran into were those with older school-age children, so I never had to hear a crying baby or see a pregnant woman. A couple times we ran into Caucasian couples with young Asian children. It made me think about getting the adoption process started once we got back.

I was not feeling very good at church yesterday. I saw the girl who could have her baby any day now. I didn't want to look at her. I saw that my pregnant friend is now wearing maternity clothes. I didn't want to look at her either. On the way home my husband said he saw another girl who seemed to be wearing maternity clothes, but he wasn't sure since she is kind of a large girl. She had a baby less than a year ago. I didn't want to think about that. Seeing these people, these mothers, gave me bad feelings. They are feelings that I'm not proud of. It's hard to describe them, but the closest way I can come to describing it is bitterness. It makes me sick that I feel like that. I hate it that seeing pregnant people triggers such negative feelings in me. I pray that God will help me to overcome this weakness. It's so difficult right now.

Knowing that I may never be able to wear maternity clothes, brings me sadness. Who wants to wear baggy clothes? Well I do. I want to experience that. I always used to think about what I would want my maternity clothes would look like. Now I have to skip a whole part of motherhood and start thinking about nursery furniture and baby things. I don't think I'm ready for that yet. Motherhood seems too far off for that right now.

To me, getting a baby without being pregnant is like skipping the wedding and honeymoon that you always dreamed about and then being married. The marriage is a wonderful thing, but the wedding and honeymoon would have been a lot of fun. Having a baby to love is a wonderful thing, but being pregnant would have been a special experience.

I guess I should look at the adoption process as my pregnancy. Maybe I should buy some new clothes and call them my secret maternity clothes. Whenever I wear them I'll think about how I'm pregnant, but in a different way. I think I should get a new dress for church for my first "secret" maternity outfit. That may help me with those bad feelings.

My period finally arrived this morning. My cycle was 29 days long, the longest one since I started charting two years ago. I knew I had ovulated late, so thankfully it wasn't unexpected.

Today the carpet layers came to measure my spare bedroom (future nursery). The carpet will be installed next week Wednesday. I wanted to get that done before school started. There's only two weeks until school starts! Summer sure goes by fast.

If I was doing another cycle of injections, I would have called the RE's office today to schedule an ultrasound. However, since I have now stopped treatment, I decided today would be a good day to call the adoption agency.

It took me a while to get up the nerve to call. I hate making phone calls. I get nervous just thinking about calling, and I have to plan ahead of time what I'm going to say. I think I thought of four different ways to start my call before I finally decided on one. Eventually I decided on,"Hello, my husband and I are thinking about adopting and would like some information."

So I called, and stuck with my planned intro, also adding my name at the beginning. The woman who answered asked for our names and birthdates - me 1975, hubby 1971, and our address and phone number. She wanted to know how long we had been married - five years. She asked if there were any other children in the home - no (I kind of choked out that answer). She asked what kind of adoption we were interested in - domestic infant. She asked about race - probably Caucasian. She asked about age - 24 months or less. My husband and I haven't talked about how old we were willing to go, so I told the oldest I was willing to consider. Since this is a Christian agency she asked what church we went to and how long we had been going there - I've gone there for 7 years, my husband even longer. She wanted to know where we had heard about the agency - my husband has cousins adopted through them, I know from friends and from church

Then she told us that she would be sending us an information packet in the mail. She said there would be classes, required reading, and a meeting where the domestic infant adoption lady would be available to answer any questions. I said okay and thank you, and I hung up.

I'm relieved that I've made the first step. I didn't tell my husband I was going to call. We hadn't talked about adoption since we decided to stop treatment, so it was difficult for me to just bring it up out of the blue. I'll tell him tonight, if the time is right. Else I'll just wait until the information packet arrives.

Oh, I've decided not to take my basal body temperature anymore. The thermometer is going to stay with my travel things. I'm no longer TTC so I'm going to say farewell to it until further notice.

When I talked to my mom yesterday she had checked her email and asked if we had gone to the adoption information meeting. I had to tell her that it wasn't until September. Since she had asked, I decided that I had better call the agency now. That way next week I'll have some info to tell her.

I'm not sure when we will tell my husband's parents, probably not for a while. I'm sure we'll know when the time is right to discuss it.

I'll now be eagerly looking in my mailbox each day. Maybe the packet will come tomorrow; maybe it won't be until Wednesday.