Sometimes people ask me how long I’ve been waiting, and I never know whether to say “18 months” or “all my life.”<\/p>\n
I didn’t blog about the early parts of my determined journey toward parenthood, because it was messy and weird and sad, and private. But I certainly talked about it with my friends, all the time, and emailed about it, and kept diaries for myself.<\/p>\n
Diaries!\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, man, did I keep track of things back then!\u00c2\u00a0 Chart after chart after chart of menstrual cycles, my early-morning temperatures, and all sorts of specifics about bodily fluids that don’t have charming euphemisms…\u00c2\u00a0 yeah, I burned all those records.\u00c2\u00a0 Burned them like they were old love letters from someone I wanted to forget.\u00c2\u00a0 So it’s actually really hard to piece the story back together with specific dates.\u00c2\u00a0 I had to log on to my old email and look through my sent messages for subject lines like “no news” and “maybe!”<\/p>\n
And then, of course, it’s pretty much all cussing, so I still can’t post it.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Certainly it started in August 2008.\u00c2\u00a0 Ah, 2008….\u00c2\u00a0 I missed teaching like a physical ache, but it had been all-consuming and stressful.\u00c2\u00a0 After only a few months of a quiet office job at Duke I found I could sleep, I could have hobbies, I had time to make friends.\u00c2\u00a0 I had been through a whirlwind year of internet dating and decided it was enough to last a lifetime.\u00c2\u00a0 I was settling happily into being single, stable, and feeling whole.<\/p>\n
I was taking care of my young neighbor, Emily, several days (and nights) each week.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 I had to sign forms for school, and take her to the doctor, and I didn’t really have legal authority to do any of that.\u00c2\u00a0 I was constantly in the middle of her family’s conflicts. \u00c2\u00a0 I was starting to feel a little out of my depth.\u00c2\u00a0 So even though she wasn’t “in the system,” I signed up for foster training that fall.\u00c2\u00a0 (It was a huge help.)\u00c2\u00a0 And every morning that she woke up in my house, I felt like bluebirds were sitting on my shoulder.\u00c2\u00a0 She was (and is) my heart’s daughter. \u00c2\u00a0 But