I spent two Christmas Eves in the "waiting to adopt" mode. The first Christmas came around about 6 months after our home study was approved. I kept hoping for a Christmas miracle in which the phone would ring, telling us that an expecting mother had chosen us to adopt her unborn baby, but that was not meant to be.

Our agency begins showing all profiles of hopeful adoptive parents to expecting mothers as soon as the home study is approved, so I had hoped that we would be matched right away. After running the infertility marathon for three years, I was exhausted and saw adoption as the light at the end of the tunnel. I had no idea that Christmas Eve that I would still have empty arms the following year.

Even though my arms were empty on the second Christmas Eve, I was not depressed because we were matched with an expecting mother whose baby was due any day. As it turned out, my son waited a few more weeks to be born, but we eagerly sat near the phone all through the holiday waiting to hear that she had gone into labor.

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Then there were the feelings toward the expecting mother. Before I met her, I felt a lot of insecurity about my baby's "other mother." Those insecurities melted away when I met T. Instead of being a scary concept, she was a real flesh and blood person who was facing Christmas while pregnant with a baby who she did not plan to parent. I cannot imagine how difficult that Christmas was for her. My thoughts went to her a lot. My anticipated joy came at the expense of her deep pain. That was a tough reality to face.

It was not until the third Christmas that I got to hold my almost-one-year old child in my arms. That was the first Christmas in six in which I could fully enjoy myself. The empty place at the table was finally filled and, more importantly, my formerly empty arms had a child to hold.

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Photo Credit: Lynda Bernhardt