The Great Wait

After the mountains of paperwork, the background checks, the home study, and the creation of the infamous birthmother letter, we are finally approved.  We are ready to wait.  It is actually somewhat terrifying to think that we have been working diligently on this process since July at the Weekend Intensive workshop.  There has always been one more piece of information to put together and get approved.  Now, there isn't.  We are done.  We have spent countless hours ensuring that we are the perfect home for someone, but that person hasn't shown up quite yet.

We have statistics to check how frequently the online version of our Dear Birth Mother Letter is being accessed and for how long.  I check that daily.  Or twice a day.  Or really, it is always open in the background and I am constantly clicking refresh to see if someone is looking at our site.  Its the little thing I can do so have some semblance of control over the situation.

We have been "live" for almost a month.  I know the average time for matching is about 14 months, and I know that we are only one month into that wait, but that doesn't mean I can't hope we will break records and find a match this soon.  It is crazy, I know, and it will probably drive me somewhat nutty, but I have a wee touch of the OCD and I am a checker by trade, so this is just perfect for me to spend my time doing.

As I said, it has been a month.  Our 1-800 number is all set up and forwarded to the home phone.  Our email is set up and is ready to go.  And it has been relatively quiet.  Yes, we have had some hits.  Some people have been looking at our site.  Some have even gone back more than once. In fact, someone in Arkansas (eek!) has looked at our site 5 times.  She spends a fair amount of time reviewing our site and her returns come several days apart.  It is exciting. But i don't know if it will evolve into anything.  We have had one call to the phone number, and it was a dead end.

So we wait.  It will happen when it is supposed to happen. I know that.  But honestly, those words don't provide me any comfort when I want something to happen right now.  I have to keep it in perspective and Chad has been incredibly helpful in keeping things from getting too crazy.  When I want to already consider more options for birth mother situations, he reminds me it hasn't been long enough to be thinking we are being too picky.  It will happen when it is supposed to happen.  And we wait.