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A big dilemma for me when I was waiting to adopt was deciding when to start reading parenting books. I never babysat as a teenager, and I never worked in a church nursery. My knowledge about taking care of a baby was very limited.
My sister had a baby a few years before, so I had changed a couple of diapers. I even babysat my then 4-year-old nephew for three nights when his brother was born. However, this limited experience was not enough for me to feel comfortable taking care of a newborn baby 24/7.
I love to read, and I knew that there were fabulous books to help me prepare for my new baby. The problem was that it was extremely painful for me to read about taking care of a baby when I had no idea in what year a baby would be joining my family. Even though I knew that I would need to know this information eventually, it was hard to read about taking care of a baby when there was little hope of my empty arms holding a baby anytime soon. So, I chose to wait to read parenting books until we were matched.
Fortunately for me, we had some notice that a baby was coming. We were matched with my son’s then-placing mother when she was 7 months pregnant. That gave me a couple of months to blow through What to Expect the First Year.
However, I know an adoptive couple who received a phone call out of the blue that said, “Your baby has just been born. Hop on the next flight to Las Vegas to meet your son.” I guess I would have been frantically reading the entire book during the plane ride.
It really bothered me that I did not have nine months to prepare for my baby like other women did. I believed that most women spent those nine months memorizing parenting books and that they would be so much better prepared for a new baby than I was.
I have since learned that most pregnant women do not spend that time reading parenting books. From what my friends tell me, when they were not throwing up from morning sickness, they were reading about labor and delivery. They assured me that I was better prepared for parenting than any of them were because I focused on the parenting stuff. They were more concerned about C-sections, Lamaze, and episiotomies.
My husband and I attended a free parenting class at a local hospital after we were matched with a placing mother. Those couples had spent several weeks together preparing for the births of their babies, yet all of the prior sessions had been about labor and delivery. In fact, only half of the two-hour session we attended was devoted to parenting a newborn.
At this session, we got to hear a graphic description of what afterbirth was, to which my husband replied, “$1,000 of the adoption was totally worth it just to avoid experiencing THAT!” So, don’t worry about being less prepared for a new baby than a pregnant woman. You might even find that you are more prepared.
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