I had a chance meeting yesterday with a man I've known since we were both kids in our church. I'd just been given his name and number as a reference for the adoption agency we're considering using. It's the one run by the girl who's also from my home church, but the guy (M.) is several years older than I am, while the adoption agency lady (A.) is several years younger. At any rate, M. was very happy with the help A. had given him and his wife. He said A. had made all the paperwork and hurdles much easier for them and said I should definitely call her. They have a darling little girl from China (he was jumping at the chance to show me pictures). They're planning to adopt again next summer and will probably do one more adoption after that. He said they'd been married 18 years, but the last one with the baby has been the best. They'd also done 2 IVFs with my doctor--he didn't like him much, though. My husband thinks the dr. is just out for money, although he agreed with me that it's not a philanthropy, and all fertility doctors are expensive. If I can just get another job soon and we can get some of these debts reduced, then we can get started on the road to adoption.

I'm finding that I don't have big pangs of jealousy when I see pregnant women. And I enjoy living vicariously by reading pregnant women's blogs. I'd still be thrilled if by chance I wound up pregnant, but that's not my goal. Having a family is. When I was in college, I talked to at least a couple of girls who said they really wanted to have a baby, not at that moment, but someday. They said they didn't really care if they got married, that they'd have a baby on their own if need be. I never felt that way. I always wanted the whole package. I don't know if I had some premonition of what my future would be, but somewhere along the line I told myself that if I were married and my husband and I couldn't have children, I wasn't going to let it consume me. I think sometimes we know our bodies so well on a subconscious level, that we sense something is wrong even without any real symptoms. Anyway, I've always felt that, for me, having a strong marriage was important, and that having a family would develop from there. It's just taking longer than I'd thought. Back when I was painting rosy pictures of my future family, I thought I'd be married before I was 30, and start having my 2 (or 3) kids a couple of years later, and would definitely not be changing diapers by the time I was 40. Since I'm 38 now, it looks like I'll be changing diapers in my 40s! Although it won't be a big deal since I won't have spent much of my 30s doing it.