Surviving Mother's Day While Waiting To Adopt

Today we are wrapping up the Getting Started series, with the first of two posts focused on helping you survive your adoption waiting period. You can find the second post in this particular survival guide here.

I know surviving the adoption process, especially during the adoption match period, can be pretty brutal.  It can be even more difficult when you're wanting to be matched super quickly. And even if you have the patience of a saint, just not knowing when you're going to get that call is so hard. You know, I'm deeply passionate about making your private domestic adoption easier, faster, and more affordable. Today I want to talk about how to survive the adoption process waiting period and what to do when those big, emotionally filled holidays like Mother's Day come around. 

I had always had a hard time at the holidays. It didn’t matter if it was Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Back To School, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Valentines Day, Easter. Well, I guess that is just about every holiday.  Any holiday where someone would post cute pictures of their kids was enough to make me dread opening Facebook or Instagram for a solid week.

With the big holidays right around the corner, Birth Mother’s Day and Mother's Day I thought this was a great time to give you some practical tips to help you through these difficult times.  But first, let's all start by acknowledging something that we all know is true. But oftentimes forget, this is a journey. It's not something that's going to happen overnight. And we all know that there's no magic cure for making it through the waiting period. There's simply no strategy that is one size fits all here. So as with all things in life, I urge you to have a plan, patience and get some support because that's what will help you most of all.

Average Adoption Waiting Times

To survive the waiting time, we must reality check our expectations about how long it will take. As with most things in the adoption process, there's just really a great deal of fluctuation, right? We talked about all the different types of adoption and their general waiting periods. According to American Adoptions, the waiting time is one year for about 75% of families, https://www.americanadoptions.com/adopt/adoption_wait_times but if you recall, the average waiting times we talked about according to AdoptiveFamilies.com, is about a year for about 60% of families.

So it's hard to get a clear picture. Either way, you should calibrate your expectations, and it's going to take a year or longer before you're matched with someone. For those of you that have been waiting longer than a year, don't panic. In the next few episodes, we're going to unpack where you should focus on making sure you're doing everything in your power to match faster. But surviving that year or even longer can be incredibly difficult. So we're going to dive into those ways that we can survive the adoption waiting process together.

What is Birth Mother’s Day

Birth Mother's Day and Mother's Day were hard days for me when we were waiting to adopt. Birth Mother's Day is typically celebrated the Saturday before Mother's Day. Some birth mothers and adoptive families choose to celebrate it, and some don't. And obviously, that's a highly individual choice. Personally, for me, this is a day that I send an extra special update with photos, a card, and a letter with a special reflection on something that has happened in the past year that made me incredibly thankful for her choice. For me, this day is really about taking some time to pause, be grateful for her, and intentionally communicating that with her. 

Before we add a new holiday into the mix, I just want to say any holiday can be challenging. I know I had a hard time at Mother's Day, Father's Day, Back to School, Valentine's Day, and just basically any holiday where someone was posting a cute picture of their kid or kids on social media. That was enough to make me dread opening Facebook or Instagram for a solid week, if not longer. So let's talk about those common pain points that come up around those holidays and really how to deal with them. I'll break it into two areas: social media and in real life. 

How To Survive The Adoption Waiting Period: Social Media

When it comes to social media, I just went with the whole avoided strategy. I'm not saying that's good or, or even healthy, quite honestly, just to avoid things like that. But it did make me feel better, but I wish I had turned those holidays into opportunities to create exposure for my adoption.  I should have found a way to make them work in my favor.

Fundraising For Your Adoption

Asking your audience to support your fundraising efforts around those key holidays might seem a little icky to some, but I am sure it would generate additional funds versus posting on a random day.  Only you can decide if you are comfortable with this strategy.  Regardless of timing, there are free fundraising graphics in the Facebook group that are generic of holidays that you could pair with a straightforward call to action if you do not do a specific fundraiser for your adoption but just generally ask for financial support. 

Asking for References For Your Adoption

This may seem a little odd, but references add a lot of credibility to your profile.  You want to ensure you are only asking those you respect to help you and people you know you can count on to provide what you need.  I would ask for something written, just a few paragraphs, a video filmed with their iPhone, 3-5 minutes in length max, and some permission to share some photos of the two of you.  We will get into this more in the free training we have coming up, so sign up here if you want to learn more about this.

Asking Others To Share My Adoption Profile

The next thing I would have done is I would have asked others to share my adoption profile.  This would have gotten our adoption profile more exposure which is critical when you are trying to adopt.  It could be as simple a simple post on social media to remind people you are trying to adopt and ask them if they would share your social media profile, specific to your adoption journey, with their social media network. Because you never know where that initial introduction might come from. Maybe they share on their social media. Perhaps somebody else sees it. And they think, Oh, I know so and so, and they are considering placing their child for adoption. You just want to make sure you are sharing the right content paired with the ask.

Getting Support From Others Who Have Adopted

The next idea of to survive on social media really is a no brainer, in my opinion, is to get support, make sure you are jumping into supportive groups like the My Adoption Coach Facebook group, on those emotionally filled holidays, that really is your safe space, to know you're not going to see pictures of cute kids, right? Instead, we're going to be talking about survival strategies. So I really would urge you to consider that if you're not already in there. 

Vision Casting To Survive The Big Holidays

The last idea is not directly related to social media, but it's one that I wanted to share with you. And it might be a little bit out there for some, but it did help me is I would take a moment to write a letter to my future child's birth mother. And I know that might be a little strange because you don't know them yet. Right? So how could you ever possibly write her a letter if you don't know her? It did help me articulate my feelings to her when I met her in person, though. It allowed me to process through some of those emotions on those big holidays and begin writing the actual narrative of the things that I wanted to say and express to them. It did help me, so it was just a good way of honoring the day you meet her to be a little bit more prepared. 

How To Survive The Adoption Waiting Period In Real Life

Okay, so next, I'm going to focus on real-life situations because, typically, you're going to be meeting up with family to some degree around those holidays. You might find yourself in a situation where a super well-meaning but overly nosy relative might ask when you're going to have a baby or might ask when you're going to adopt depending upon what they know. And this situation, I would have one have to kind of go-to strategies. I would either avoid the question by redirecting them. Just so you know, just randomly insert facts about the weather.

Or, I might do something a little mean and say did you try whatever dish, insert the worst dish at your gathering; it was great.  Yeah, I know it may be a little mean, but it isn’t going to harm them, and it might make you laugh for a second. 

Or I would go straight up, head-on into the messy, gory, you know, stuff that's going on, and tell them the truth.   I'm trying to adopt, and it is super hard, super expensive, and then ask them to help you somehow. Would you be willing to share my adoption profile the next time you go to the salon, right, or the dentist or, you know, something like that? 

I guess, either way, my point here is to have a response at the ready when you are physically standing in front of somebody. And about what you want to share or what you don't want to share before you walk in the door. And if your partner's going to be present there to make sure you talk about that before you walk into the room. Because that really does make a difference. Maybe you have one of those old Carol Burnett, like pulling your ear, or maybe something a little less obvious. Having a signal and just having a game plan, not only you by yourself but the two of you together will make you feel better about those in real-life situations. 

Surviving The Adoption Waiting Period Every Day

Alright, so now let's shift our attention to how we can survive every day of the waiting period to be matched. So I would recommend that you break these activities into two buckets. I would have a non-adoption-related bucket on things that would still help you in your adoption journey. And then some adoption-related activities. And for those that will be, the second part of this episode will focus on next week in its entirety. But these non-adoption-related activities are things that will help you on your adoption journey overall as well. 

Non Adoption Related Tips To Surviving The Adoption Waiting Period

Okay, so to focus on those non-adoption-related, my biggest piece of advice here before we kind of jump into the like step-by-step ideas is that it's important that you not put your life on hold. For those who are adopting your first child, I would spend your time focused on those activities that might be a little bit more difficult once you have a newborn in your home. For those who already have a child at home, what will be more difficult when you have two kids and one of those children or more, and one of those children being a newborn.

I started with home improvement projects, and the home improvement projects take a whole new meaning. Not only was I like getting this ready for the home study and then any subsequent visits, but I thought, you know, this is the time to rip out the shrubs in the flowerbed. Why I don't know other than moving my body makes me happy, allows me to change my mind, and makes me feel a little bit better about curb appeal, but this is literally what I did. I started from the moment I would drive up to my house to the moment I would lay my head down on my pillow each night and go through each area that I would live in in the house and touch it somehow. So outside, we did a lot of like beautification work.

On the inside, you could like you could eat off my fan blades because they were so clean. Again, probably not the healthiest strategy, right? I went into super overdrive pure mode because that's how this type of anxiety-driven woman could process her emotions at the time. But I also did things like okay, let's change the drapes, you know, small things that wouldn't impact my adoption budget crazily, but it made me feel good. I was total nesting period while I was in the waiting period, and I will tell you it's perfectly normal if you feel the same way. 

It's just your body trying to work through the anxiety in it. In quite honestly, being distracted with a project or two from a home improvement list does help you process those emotions. It gives you something physical to do that wears you out. Mentally, it's a distraction to focus elsewhere, but letting that anxiety come out through a feeling of productivity. Progress is important, so it's not crazy to feel like you're nesting. That is normal. 

The next thing we did was vacation. And listen, I am the queen of if that credit card comes with points or miles, let's charge everything on it, pay it off at the end of the month, and take those points or miles to the great vacation of my dreams and laugh all the way. So know that as I share this next story with you. We had a long infertility journey before we adopted, and I used a credit card with miles on it to pay for IVF for anything we had to pay out of pocket. I used those miles to cash in for a last-minute vacation to Hawaii. Y'all, my husband thought I had lost my darn mind. Because I came home on a Tuesday and was like, next Thursday, we're going to Hawaii, and he was like you and what Brinks truck is taking us to Hawaii. I reminded him of all of those fertility treatments we went through and all of those miles we racked up on that card. It was great. It was just perfect for our souls. So listen, I'm not advocating for you to go into debt over anything ever, period, full stop. But finding a creative way to take a moment away from the everyday waiting period. It does help. 

The next things that we did a lot were date night or timeout with friends. Since we had been so focused on saving all of our money for infertility treatments and then regularly adopting, going to a restaurant was still pretty much a treat for us. Going on those date nights and or planning like a, hey, we're going to try a new restaurant with some friends. That, for us, was something that helped pass the waiting time. It's probably because I'm a type of planner, and I wanted to have some of what I guess I would call micro occasions in my planner of things coming up that I could look forward to. It gave me a reason on a Saturday night to put on makeup and take a shower on the weekend. So that was just really, really important. 

The next thing I would share is I did something that made my soul happy, right? And it's important that you always, in my opinion, have this list of your go-to activities that fill your cup that make you happy. For me, it was extra time with my grandma. And unfortunately, I already lost one grandmother at that time, so I had learned the hard way that time is finite. Having extra time with my grandmother and my mother did make me happy. So I would make excuses to do things like hearing all of the stories about my grandma. great grandmother, or as morbid as it might sound, like go to family cemeteries and learn our family’s history. Like that, just quality time. I guess it is one of my love languages, which made me happy. So I would highly suggest that you have a list of those things that make your heart happy or fill your soul in, find ways to do that. 

The next thing I didn't do as much as I had wished I had which is finding creative ways to earn extra money to put towards the adoption. So listen, I'm not saying obsess about every spare moment to fundraise for your adoption because you need to, like, take a breath. But you are finding a few small things here or there, where you have unique talents that you can offer to friends and family to help you earn a little bit of extra cash, does really good things for both of you. It helps them feel like they're contributing to your adoption, and then it enables you to feel like you’re productive on two fronts.  You're helping them by performing whatever service, but also, you’re productive towards your adoption. It's not something I did as much as I wish I had because I know it really would have made a big difference for us in the end. 

The next thing I did was start a journal, and if you don't love to write, then this is not your jam. I get it. Obviously, by now, you guys have picked up. I am a born communicator; that is what I love to do. It is probably no surprise to you that I have my bachelor's and master's in journalism because writing in a journal helped me through the adoption process. I just legitimately picked up the cheapest notebook I could find at Walmart and just wrote until I was tired every night. Or when I just felt like I couldn't get off the floor because I was crying or I was paralyzed with anxiety, I would pick up my pen, and I would just let it pour out. So again, it's not something that's going to help everybody. But it did help me.

The next thing that helped me a lot was moving my body. And for all of my Rachael Hollis fans out there, move your body and change your mind like that is entirely me. Again, it may not be your jam. But as silly as it sounds, I would find intentional ways to do things like go for a long walk or run depending upon where I was in my health journey at that time. And even like a 60-second dance party. I legitimately would just turn on a song on my phone and just dance my heart out. I would find ways to do this in my car before I went into work and got the dreaded how are you today by well-meaning co-workers, or in the bathroom at work after someone announced their pregnancy, or just generally any time or place I could put in my headphones and slip away from people I would dance it out.

The next thing I did, which was terrific for me, was working on my someday list. We all have those lists, right? Someday I'm going to build a garden, or someday I'm going to learn how to sew, or you know, maybe you're super ambitious, and it's like climb a mountain or run a marathon or something right. But I would say find them a few minutes to focus on your someday list, and I made sure to tackle those things that would have been more difficult with a newborn with me because it made me feel extra productive to get it done now.

My point to you is, don't put your life on hold. You’ve got to continue living. You’ve got to continue being you. Because you just never know when that phone's going to ring, right? And it could ring tomorrow, or it could ring in four years. That is the harsh reality of the adoption journey, so my urge to you is, don't stop being you. She is choosing you because you are lovely and different and unique. And maybe even a little corny, like me, right. But the point is, if you've been waiting a while and you're feeling super anxious to try to focus on like, I've got to push my adoption forward, I would argue, find a moment of stillness. And let's try to focus on some things that are non-adoption related so that you can still, you know, be you. 

If you want to take action and know that you're doing everything in your power to move your adoption forward, I will spend some time digging into your profile, right? We all know that that profile is the most critical step in the overall adoption process to get matched. I would just ask myself some simple questions like: are there any tweaks that you could be making to your profile that would increase your chances of being selected by an expectant mother but staying super authentic to who you are? 

We just spent the better part of this post talking about what authentically makes you who you are, right? When I was sharing that make your list of what's going to help you through that list, that’s who you are. That's what makes you you, and being able to share that in your profile will help you. If you want some help with your profile, make sure to sign up for the free training coming up.

I've shared a lot with you today, but I want to make sure that you're clear that we both know it's hard. We both know that there's no magic wand that I can wave and make your waiting time to adopt a baby shorter or even to help you pass the waiting time right. But I surely hope that you found something in today's post that will help you just a little bit in every day or those big emotionally filled holidays. If you need extra support, make sure to jump into the Facebook group. We are always finding ways to lift each other and support each other, and I want to share them with you. Just keep going, friend. I know it's hard, but I've got your back.

Hi, I Am Amanda

I help women build their families through adoption by giving them the step by step guide to adopt a child and support them on their journey