As the email and comments have started coming in I’ve noticed a few questions seem to pop up over and over again, so I thought I would address them here:

Are you pregnant now or did this already happen?

These are the real life events that surrounded my son’s adoption, they are a few years old (as is he!)

Why didn’t you do this blog while you were pregnant?

Being pregnant and placing your child for adoption is an emotionally charged experience, I didn’t have the energy or strength to do this at the time. (Not to mention I doubt you would not have found me very likable if I had written this then because there might have been too many weepy posts about throwing up – I suffered through “morning” sickness constantly and would get to a point were I just didn’t think I could handle anymore of it.) I did journal while I was pregnant, I thought it would be therapeutic, and that journal was the basis for this website.

Why do you only update weekly?

I update once a week on Thursday (barring incident or accident) for several reasons. The first is that I wasn’t always a consistent journaler (I think I made that word up, sorry about that) so some of these blog entries are made of several entries condensed and some are made of two or three sketchy entries like – “today the guys took me for sushi, I got sick, they got upset. No more raw fish for me until after the baby” that remind me of a bigger picture.

The second reason is that this is still an emotionally charged process for me. I am writing, reliving, remember. Sometimes I read my entries and I am embarrassed at how immature Rob and I behaved. I am trying to be fair in my reflections though so I am sharing even the things I am embarrassed about or the things that are painful here.

How “real” is this blog?

I have changed all of the names in this blog, to protect the innocent – adoption is a very personal experience if Rob or my son’s adoptive parents want to share their story that should be their choice. I feel very strongly that it should be their place to share their stories when and where they want to. I will confess my “legal” name is not Joy, but Joy is a nickname that I am frequently called, and honestly no one ever calls me by my “legal” name except for my Mom and even then only when I am in trouble. (Thanks to creative family members I have more nicknames than I care to take ownership of – Joy is a favorite of mine.)

However, this is my personal experience, I am not striving for journalistic objectivity so if you talk to my parents about when I told them I was pregnant you would get a slightly different version because it would be from their perspective. (My Mom and I talked about it later and she didn’t feel that I was abrupt as I indicate I was in my blog post – I still feel like I kind of walked in and bonked them over the head with it.)

Do you have questions that weren’t answered here?

You can ask them anonymously here: http://www.formspring.me/decidingforlife

OR

You can email me at DecidingforLife (at) gmail.com (obviously replacing “(at)” with @ – trying to cut down on spam!)