Where to Go From Here???

So I've had the hysterectomy.  What now??

I am almost 40 years old at this point.  I still want a baby.  Single woman wants baby...where to go??  At this point adoption from China was pretty much what I had my heart set on.  I'd been mulling this over for a couple of years and had pretty much decided this was my "path". 

Until the Chinese government had an epiphany that some of those single-Mothers who've been adopting unwanted baby girls may actually be (GASP) lesbians.  I won't get on my soapbox here about how loving and caring for a child is the same if you are married, gay, single, have two left feet, etc. But lets just say I'd become disillusioned with and no longer qualified for a China adoption. 

So hey, what about Cambodia???  Small orphanage's, babies/children may not be in the cleanest environment but are LOVED.  Some adoptions are "suspicious" so no more US/Cambodia adoptions.

So what about domestic adoptions?  Not really interested in baby with drug or alcohol issues.  Really not interested in someone knocking on my door. 

So what about Guatemala adoptions??  I can't really tell you why I checked this off my "list" at the time.  Heartbreak over not being able to adopt from China??  Or Cambodia??  I don't really know, but I decided no.

Three years go by and I am still kicking around the idea, but it's fading.  I remember being at a party one evening when my friend Candace B. says to me, "I thought you were going to adopt?  Whatever happened to that?"  (I think I was probably holding or playing with my friends' Bill and Angela's children).  And it really hit me.  I looked at Candace and said I am almost 45, I am too old.  (She tells me I'm not too old, I tell her neither is she...we both cry.)

And I think this is when I made the decision...I either had to "do this thing" or get rid of all that baby stuff I'd been buying over the last decade or so.  Period.  I recognized I would always feel a loss if I did not adopt a child, but I really felt it was an idea whose time had passed.

So I went to another informational meeting about international adoption at Hands Across the Water in Ann Arbor, MI.  I have to admit, I thought I was going to exit this meeting saying to myself, "Yupe, you looked into and this isn't for you." 

So I went to the meeting; my application for adoption was completed and submitted the next day.

Someone asked me one time, Why?  Why was I able to "hear" this time?  What was it that made me so sure this was "right"?  (I was, and still am, really reliant on the "little voice" inside myself"...That little voice frequently is right on the target. And it said "this is perfect".)  I had no answer for these questions then.  I do have the answer now; it is simply, Isabella.