Let me make an analogy here. Announcing on FB and all this planning stuff is like you just peed on a stick and found out you were 5 weeks along and told everyone, including you high school lab partner. There is a high rate of miscarriage here still. I certainly hope this baby becomes yours, but until the expectant mom signs surrenders, she's still someone else's baby. You're going to be in for a big heartbreak if this doesn't happen...just like last time.
We announced on FB as soon as we matched. It was a week before the due date, though, so I don't know what we would have done with a long wait. A lot (if not most) of my adoptive mom friends only tell a few people and don't go facebook public until after surrenders are signed. That said, the secrecy wasn't for us. I'm not a private person and I can't keep a secret. I did pretty regular FB updates starting from when we were "paper pregnant" through when we received ICPC clearance. If the match had failed, we would have shared that openly as well. For me, I actually think that keeping a secret and then suffering in silence would have been worse than letting everyone know what we were going through, but that's just my personality.
Oh, and I'm a big fan of the mom cut. I just like short hair, though, and I had a mom cut before I was even a mom. Short hair really is easier with my hair, because it is fine and is just stringy and flat when it's long. It looks like crap without putting a lot of work into it curling it, so I just end up wearing a ponytail literally every day, and then what's the point of long hair if it is always in a ponytail? So I keep a chin length bob and it takes less than five minutes to style.
I had long hair when he was born, then chopped it about three months PP. Don't do that.
Long hair is easier for me to manage (it's now grown out again, thank goodness) because it is thick and wavy and air dries nicely. Short hair was much more of a PITA because I had to try to find time to style it, it didn't go back in a ponytail, and my hair is frizzy and wiry.
We announced on FB as soon as we matched. It was a week before the due date, though, so I don't know what we would have done with a long wait. A lot (if not most) of my adoptive mom friends only tell a few people and don't go facebook public until after surrenders are signed. That said, the secrecy wasn't for us. I'm not a private person and I can't keep a secret. I did pretty regular FB updates starting from when we were "paper pregnant" through when we received ICPC clearance. If the match had failed, we would have shared that openly as well. For me, I actually think that keeping a secret and then suffering in silence would have been worse than letting everyone know what we were going through, but that's just my personality.
Were you all prepared or was it out of the blue and a rush? I am always curious about this. When we adopted my sis. They called out of the blue when she was 2 days old to come pick up a baby. My parents picked up a carseat on the way. We had NOTHING!
It was a huge rush. We matched just 7 weeks after signing up with our adoption consultant and we weren't even done with our homestudy. We did have a crib and a carseat, but that was it. We matched, had to rush around to finish up the last few things for our homestudy, and because birth mom was due in a week and wanted us there for deliver, we then flew to Vegas (from Atl) the day after matching. It was pretty crazy.
It was a huge rush. We matched just 7 weeks after signing up with our adoption consultant and we weren't even done with our homestudy. We did have a crib and a carseat, but that was it. We matched, had to rush around to finish up the last few things for our homestudy, and because birth mom was due in a week and wanted us there for deliver, we then flew to Vegas (from Atl) the day after matching. It was pretty crazy.
I love this. If I am ever to adopt I would hope it happened this way. I could not take the wait.
We hired a consultant specifically because we wanted a fast match. At the time, the typical wait with our consultant was 3-6 months, but we were told to be prepared to match fast since we were open to biracial children. That is why we went ahead and bought a crib and carseat because we knew it could happen fast.