Parenting an EA child

One of the things that I worried about when I was pregnant with Maddie was if it would be odd to not only give birth but to parent a child not genetically mine. Would I see characteristics in her that were glaringly obvious to belong to another family? Would she look so different from us that we would wonder who these other people were all of the time? Would her genetics be a part of our daily life? Maddie is now 3 1/2 years old and I can only laugh at some of those thoughts.

Parenting a child born via embryo donation/adoption is, well, parenting. Normal, every day parenting. Maddie just happens to look just like us. It is almost eery how much she looks like us and hubby's family. She even resembles her aunt's baby pictures. And by living with us she acts just like us. Actually, more like hubby then anything. We are both sarcastic and crack jokes a lot. Maddie does too. She has sarcasm down to a science. She makes songs about everything which is something that hubby does all of the time. Its actually annoying when he does it but she is too cute. Hubby is deaf in one ear and often says "Huh? What? What did you say?". Unfortunately Maddie does this too. But it is more "Huh? What you say? Say it again, mommy". I could go on and on and on. No matter her origins she has morphed into us. Poor kid!!! lol

There are times though that I will see something that makes me wonder where it came from. One of which is her love of horses.  We don't have a love of farms and farm animals. Don't get me wrong, I like animals and all, but I have no dreams to be a farmer's wife. But Maddie loves horses. She has a few plastic toy ones that she constantly plays with. She also rides a broom like a horse. She adores them. I know little about her genetic family, but I do know that they and their extended family have a lot of property and a farm about 2 hours south of us. I believe that she gets her love of animals and horses from them. Instead of this making me sad, reminding me that she is not genetically mine, it makes me smile. I love that she has that from them. I love them for giving her a start in life and giving us the chance to be parents. My only thoughts of them are those of gratitude.

My daily life with Maddie rarely consists of thoughts of her conception. I do think of the wonder of it often, but usually I am just too busy telling her to get clothes on or to quit making a mess to even think about it. Yesterday Maddie told me "Mommy, I am marvelous!". And you know what? She is! She really is! Her genetic parents are marvelous. Her conception is marvelous. And loving her is marvelous. She is just your average toddler and parenting her is truly marvelous.