Since we announced that we are indeed expecting another
baby, this time the biological way, we have had many questions. Thought I would attempt to answer some
of those for you here J
1. Are you still going to adopt?
YES, most
definitely! Our decision to adopt
was never based on if we could or could not have biological kids. We have known since we were engaged
that God was leading us to grow our family through adoption. We still imagine that most of the
Hartsfield kids will join us in that way.
2. Where will you have the baby? India or America?
The
timing works out really great for us to be able to have the baby in
America. When we moved to India we
wanted to stay here for two years in order to really acclimate, dive into
culture and language. We planned a
long time ago that we would be returning to visit the states during winter of
2013, it turns out the baby is due around December 7th. We will extend our stay a few weeks in
order to be in Texas by the time I am around 30 weeks, until after the
birth. This puts us in Texas from
late September-mid January. We are
really excited to be able to experience this with our friends and family in
America. I am seeing a Dr in a
city that is about an hour from us until we get back to America.
3. So now that you are having kids are you
going to move back to America?
Nope. Although the last year and a half has
been one of the toughest we have experienced and are still experiencing
(pregnancy in India during the summer is not my favorite!). Even amidst the hard days, we feel
really strongly that God has lead us here and we are excited to start this new
chapter of our lives in India J All of our Indian friends are so excited and don’t really
understand why we have waiting SO long to have kids anyways. It is uncommon to wait here. As soon as you get married, you get to
trying to have babies!
4. (Most common question (more like a
statement) from our friends here).
You want a boy, don’t you?
We don’t care
either way, just a healthy baby.
Of course, it is too soon to tell, but I have this feeling it will be a
girl. We want to find out the
gender as soon as possible, but it will be complicated here. It is actually illegal to tell the
gender of an unborn baby because there are so many abortions done due to the
fact that many families want boys.
Girls are a financial strain on families. It is a sad reality here. We will see if our doctor or the sonogram technician will
give us a hint without actually telling us.
5. And the last question, I know many of
you are wondering, but only a few of you are brave enough to ask: Was this planned?
I don’t know
how everyone goes about trying to plan his or her family, but for Ryan and me,
we definitely both imagined our first child would come to us through
adoption. After our home study we
were floored at how long the wait might potentially take, esp when we were
thinking about adopting from Bulgaria.
We had also gotten to a place in our relationship and life where we
began to really long to bring children into our family and into our love for
one another. Because the Bulgaria
wait was around 3 years we decided we would try for a biological baby, then we
switched programs to Madagascar and we didn’t change anything. So there you go. Planned, yet still a little
unplanned.
And lastly, just a
little side note/thought J
