Still no news. I'm beginning to think that she had the baby, and that she isn't quite ready to choose a family. No news is not necessarily a bad thing. I'm sure I would be told by now if she had definitely decided to parent.

I am on edge though. Every time the phone rings my heart starts to race and I rush to answer it, hoping it's our social worker. This morning it was about 8:20 when the phone rang, around the same time we got "the call" about being chosen for our first adoption. It was only my sister-in-law planning her daughter's birthday party next week.

I did get some interesting, although sad, news from my good friend. She's the one who once was my principal. She went through fertility treatments after me. It was successful for her, and she now has a daughter about six months younger than mine. We both no longer teach (well at least not full time), and we get together every month or so to talk and let our daughters play together.

I figured she was probably at the point where she was ready to try for another baby. A long time ago she said they'd go see the RE (fertility doctor) again in the spring of '07. I never asked if she had started treatments yet, and she never volunteered anything. Once when I saw her in the late fall I told her that I needed her to tell me she was pregnant, then we'd get chosen to adopt. (That's how it was the first time.) She sounded a little disappointed when she told me that she wasn't pregnant.

We got together for lunch yesterday and I mentioned all the summer babies that I knew of. She said, a little warily, that her church was expecting lots of babies too. She went on to tell me that she started seeing the RE in July. As before, her eggs kept developing on the wrong side, her bad side with a tube that is blocked by fibroids.

In November she started bleeding, and it continued for 7 weeks. Eventually there was pain, and after first thinking it was cysts, it was discovered that she had a tubal pregnancy in her bad tube. She had to terminate the pregnancy. Since then her hormones have been all messed up, and she has to be on birth control for three months.

She's not too excited that her plan of having another child is being delayed for even longer, but she said it is kind of nice to have a break, a time not to even think about trying to get pregnant.

I was comforted in knowing that we are both struggling with waiting for another child. Neither of us wants to have a large age gap between our kids. I think it's even harder for her because she has to wait nine months when she finds out she's having a baby. I'll only need to wait a few days or a few months at the most if we are chosen to adopt.

I started paperwork for our second adoption in August, '06, about 17 months ago, and we've been waiting for 15 months. My friend started treatments in July, '07, and won't give birth to a baby until Dec., '08 at the earliest. So she also will have to wait at least 17 months. We're both basically waiting the same length of time.

I don't feel so bad anymore about the wait. I've already waited 17 months, and she's only at the 6 month mark of the 17 months.

One thing is true: I'm much more happier with my adoption wait than I was during my pregnancy attempts.

And this is even truer: God will be with me through this all. He has a plan, a perfect plan for me and my family. He will provide.

And totally off the topic....
I think I have written before about the lack of contact with my daughter's birth family. I send regular updates to my daughter's birthmother, through the agency, but she has never written me back. I even gave her my email address to give her direct access to me.

Last spring I discovered a MySpace page of my daughter's birth aunt. It had little info, but I would look at it occasionally to see if she updated. Well she never did, but in August she opened up a new account, with a photo. It was just one of herself and her daughter, plus a couple other people, but it was a little something of my daughter's birth family.

A week ago I was thrilled to see that she had updated her profile and added new information. Today I was even more thrilled to discover that she had uploaded 11 photos of herself, her family, and friends. There was even one of my daughter's birthmother. It wasn't a really good photo, but it was something. I saved all the photos to my computer as well as their descriptions. Should she ever take them off or make her profile private I want to be sure I have copies of these photos for my daughter.

Sometimes I think of writing this aunt to get information on what my daughter's birthmother is doing. But I would never betray my daughter's birthmother and contact her family behind her back. That just wouldn't be right. I was comforted to see that she listed her religion as Christian. My daughter's birthmother described herself as an agnostic, so I was a little shocked to see it. I hope this young woman is teaching her daughter about Jesus. I see that many of her friends also describe themselves as Christians.

I wonder what kind of relationship we'll have with our next child's birth family. So many people think that it's good that we don't hear from our daughter's birth family. I have to admit that I'd like a little more contact with my daughter's birth family than we currently have.

Enough thinking about what may or may not be. I'll just keep working on redoing our profile, with the goal of getting it done next week. No more stalling and waiting to hear some news. I won't stop praying. That's for sure.