Adoption brain and a Very Exciting Morning

After having been sick the last several days, I was woken up this morning by Steve stumbling into the bedroom writhing in pain, which quickly led to piling the boys into the car in their pajamas, rushing to the urgent care center, where, I am here to tell you they do NOT rush you back for writhing in pain, maybe we should have yelled "I THINK I'M HAVING A HEART ATTACK!" as I hear that gets a fast response. Oh no, please sign in and wait. Please sign here and there, insurance and co pay please, we will call you in a minute. My mom ran over and took the boys, and eventually it all ended when a very tiny innocent kidney stone was passed, and Steve declared that if the pain is similar to giving birth, as many say it is, then I should never be pregnant again, and I said maybe it was all worth it for that gained perspective. Anyway, that was our Very Exciting Morning, which has nothing to do with the rest of the post. 

Adoption and pregnancy have a surprising number of things in common, not the least of which is that you end up with an addition to the family at the end. You might be interested to know other similarities...here are a few I've noticed:

1. Adoption brain - pretty much the same as pregnancy brain, adoption brain causes you to forget helpful things like thawing out the meat for dinner, putting the coffee pot under the coffee maker, and causes you to mindlessly say helpful things like "um-hum, yeah, ok, sure" in a conversation when in reality you have no idea what's being discussed. 
2. Sleep difficulties - waking up in the night to obsess about important things like did the notary date match the signature date, did I review everything ten thousand times before mailing it yesterday, how will we do that fundraiser, what if Tavin is sick and no one is helping him, what if he breaks his leg but they don't care because he isn't using it, what if he is increasingly mal-nurished, how long should it take to get a fingerprint appt, furiously trying to calculate our travel date with too many variables in play, and so on. Nothing that needs to be worried about at 3:30 am, which seems to be the time I like to wake up and think about such things.
3. Imagining what the new little guy will be like - how will he adjust? What will his personality be like, likes/dislikes, will he cry a lot? How will we adjust?
4. Waffling between excitement and nervousness, both on any given day
5. Reading helpful parenting books

So there you have it, a few ways that adoption feels like pregnancy. Do you have more things to add to this list?

~Chrystal