You're adopting and pregnant? Q&A

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 7^th.  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

  Of course many more of you have had children the old-fashioned biological way vs the adoption way and so it is just easier to understand for most of you.  However, the way in which a child comes into a family is always a miracle and although different still very much a blessing ONLY from God.  Although the time-line for our biological baby is a bit more tangible, we are still counting down and longing for the day when both of our babies our in our home and we can’t wait to celebrate this