Linked - my what if brain

[GoodTennis]

We have been linked. Everythings going great. Surprisingly great if I'm honest.
I'm a worrier and pessimist, and coming from a place of pregnancy losses I can only see everything falling to pieces at any moment.
We need to start getting rooms decorated so we can take pictures for their books and I feel this pit of dread if I go to buy ANYTHING for them.

Assuming a lot of you went through the same and had to prepare before matching panel? How did you cope? 😳

10% of my brain is saying we know everything about them, their social worker knows everything about us. The only real thing could be the chemistry meeting in the unlikely event I suddenly hate them? 😂

Also I've put on stress weight so I keep telling myself matching panel will say no because I'm fat and we will have all wasted the LOs time because I can't curb my emotional eating 😢

Congratulations! How exciting! I remember all those doubts so well especially with the getting rooms ready and buying stuff…’are we moving to early?’ We bought very little, I think we painted the rooms very neutral and then just got wall decals of their favourite characters. We bought some toys and the teddy that appeared in their books.

I think I read a lot to distract myself (not adoption stuff), got into gardening and making the garden safer and a little more child friendly, I think we went on holiday too!

I understand your worry, and need to keep a little back in case it goes wrong. But you are allowed to get excited and enjoy this part too! Huge congratulations.

Thanks 😊
I've made a list of what I need to do and I'm going to try do the "not committed" things, to lighten the load but not overwhelm myself by jumping in too deep.
It's just really hard to know when to take that leap

Don't forget you can get loads of stuff online delivered within a few days. Maybe do some online research, bookmark a few things and then press go when you get some more concrete confirmation?

This is what worries me! My "cheap plain wardrobe" took 6 weeks to come last year 😂 maybe just a layover from covid but it was a nightmare!!! I checked the beds I have in mind and they seem to be in stock ready for delivery so I am probably just going to keep an eye on them whilst doing all the odd jobs until we get closer. I'm not a huge fan of not being in control of my own destiny hah

Congratulations! I know it doesn't seem real until it's real. A lot of people will say just wait and do next day delivery, but you need nerves of steel to get through that. You'll also be trying to combine it with the last minute things that you haven't even thought of yet. The cot sheets I ordered a week before LO moving in were out of stock and the company didn't tell me until I phoned and asked why they weren't packaged with everything else so that felt very touch and go. Based on that experience I'd definitely get the essentials sorted in advance. You can always have them sitting in their packaging with receipts - just in case. So you can enjoy shopping with time to do it, but you're still covered for the what ifs. Then when it's all systems go, you'll feel smug that you have it all sorted and you'll just need to unpack everything, and if you have time then you can add on your non-essentials at that point.

This might be your last opportunity for a while for things like getting a hair cut and having a childfree lunch out, so make the most of that too.

Last childfree Christmas too! Not having to worry about Christmas nights out. I think you have a good point about receipts especially around Christmas many shops offer longer returns anyway.
We never bought anything or had chance to really when we got pregnant so its hard to go against that mindset!
Im going to start clearing the rooms out and go from there