WaItInG fOr WhItLeY!

The wait is hard. Depending on how you look at it you could say we waited for 10 years, 3 years, or 3 months. We were matched on December 4th and that was also the official day our wait for Whitley began.

When we signed up with our consultants we had read about several families who were matched with a baby who was already born and they were traveling right away. I thought this would be the ideal situation and prayed it would happen to us. Who likes to wait anyhow?! Lord knows I am not very good at waiting and we had also been waiting a long time already. 

Advice from friends who have adopted (as well as having a failed match less than a year ago), was not to buy or do too much ahead of time because the biological parents always has the right to chose to parent after the baby is born. Remembering with M had told us we really did try to get excited but we still spent most of our time waiting window shopping for Whitley. We did buy a few items, including a Vera Bradley diaper bag that was on my must have list! We made Pinterest boards to "decorate" her new room when she came home. We made a list of girl names we loved. We started a registry. We went to Disney. We spent time with friends. We also gathered some of momma K's favorite treats to make her a bag for her hospital stay. 

We have learned several times over the past few years that God always has bigger and better plans for us. Our wait allowed the opportunity for us to get to know Whitley's first momma, to love her big and well and pray for her as our consultants encouraged us to do. We were able to talk about all kinds of things, things we will be able to share with Whitley when she is older. We answered questions. We talked about our pasts and our future plans and goals. We talked about how Whitley would be raised. We chose her name. We encouraged each other. We laughed. We talked about hair. We shared our favorites. We shared pictures.

We know we were lucky because our official wait for Whitely was not that long. If we had not had to wait those few months, we would have missed out on getting to know Whitley's first momma. We can't imagine our journey any other way, we love our story and we love Whitley's story even more. 

Aaron trying out the new diaper bag!