Adopting.org Discussion Forums

I know before I even start this is going to be long so bear with me. This is my first post and I hope it's the beginning of many because I know I will need a supportive communinty for all that will be occuring.
First let me introduce myself. My name is Christa and I'm 24 years old. I'm married (almost 3 years) and have a 10 month old beautiful daughter, Olivia. I have a younger brother who is 20. He had his first child at 17 with his highschool girlfriend. Last year, she got pregnant again and in April, they had their second child, a boy named Carson James. When she was pregnant with him, my husband and I offered to adopt him but they weren't interested. These two are the most irresponsible people I know and she is...I don't even know where to begin. Just believe me when I say she's totall nuts. We're pretty sure she has bi-polar but she won't seek treatment. It's a mess, needless to say. Going into how they are...well that would require about 6 pages of writing so I"m not going to go there.
Anyways, a few days ago my brother came to us and said if the offer was still on the table, they wanted us to take Carson. My husband and I discussed it and we came to the conclusion that we will take him. We have a lot of fears, concerning raising two babies who are only 6 months apart, rasing our nephew along side of our daughter and trying to treat them equally, fears of our daughter missing out on things..etc so on and so forth. Regardless, it's the best way for our nephew to have a good life plus, I have PCOS and it was extremely difficult to get pregnant with our daughter. When I finally did, I had a really terrible pregnancy and almost lost her, and almost died myself, several times.
Aside from all of that, this baby deserves what we can give him and I know that we'll love him as our own.
That doesn't stop all of my fears!!
We're not going to be doing adoption immediately...we'll beging with legal guardianship and within time, adoption will most likely follow.

This whole thing just scares me and underneath all of that, there is the smallest amount of excitement too. I'm excited to have a son...I'm excited for my daughter to have a brother...but all of my fears and nervousness are so huge right now that I'm having a hard time focusing on all of that.

I suppose this isn't asking for advice at this point...just support. Hopefully someone who has experienced this...

although now that I think about it... here are my fears...how did you handle these things?

-Treating both children with fairness and equality?
-When Carson comes to us and asks us not only why did his parents give him up but why did they keep his sister?

The last 10 months has been so focused on my daughter that I'm afraid I don't know how to be a parent to 2 children...I am afraid I'll not be able to streth myself between two babies.

Whew...that's a lot of stuff!! If anything, I got it out for now...thanks all.

Christa

A couple of years ago I was basically in your shoes. My son was 1.5 and my 9 month old neice needed a place to call home (because my sister could not care for her). I made the decision to take her in and treat her as one of my own. It was the best decision I could have made. Although she is now back with her mom (I went in knowing it wouldn't be forever) I have so many wonderful memories of having her in our family. I am now in the process of adopting her younger brother (something my sister has wanted since day one of finding out she was pregnant for the 5th time). I wish I could have adopted both of them but things didn't work out that way.
My son and my neice are 9 months apart and having children that close together can be challenging at times they form a closer bond and play better together (in my opinion).