"Paper pregnant"?

I hadn't heard this one before. Prospective adoptive parents are identifying themselves as "paper pregnant" once their written applications to adopt are filed. Through adoption.com I was able to find some discussions amongst adoptive mothers about the terminology. Broad consensus was that the term was helpful to them in understanding their own "gestation" periods- the time when they are anticipating parenthood via adoption.

I wouldn't want to deny prospective adoptive parents a term for understanding or interpreting their emotions as they prepare for parenthood. But "paper pregnant"?...
Paperwork and pregnancy have nothing to do with each other. Paperwork is documentation. Pregnancy is a natural state shared by mother and gestating child.

The implication I sense in the term "paper pregnant" is that of an adoptive mother laying her first claim to another woman's child. The term would obviously be encouraged by the adoption industry as a tactic of deepening prospective adoptive parents' investment in the adoption process. Yet, to my mind, fostering the notion of pregnancy in someone who is not in fact pregnant is a blatantly unhealthy lie. It is an extension of the "as-if" illusion that the adoption industry cultivates.

The "adoption community" of adoptees and birth/first/natural/biological mothers cannot come up with a consensus on birth/first/natural/biological motherhood terminology. Our likelihood of having any sway over the terminology developed by the adoption industry is even less likely to have an impact on any one's thinking. But I thought I'd share this info with people who may be unfamiliar. Knowing ahead of time gives us the chance to not be surprised (and defensive) if confronted with the term out in the world somewhere.