I really thought the next time I would write a blog entry, I would have good news to share. Unfortunately, this next chapter of our adoption journey doesn't have a fairy tale ending and I'm beginning to fear that this horrible streak of bad luck will never turn around. But before I get too ahead of myself I will rewind back to where I left off last time.
Within a week of Sawyer being taken from us, our adoption agency had two potential birth mothers that would be picking adoptive families soon and wanted to know if we wanted to be in the running to be picked. The first birth mom, "J", was 19 years old, immature, had no other children, claimed to have no desire to parent her baby, was practically homeless, and the birth father was in jail. The second birth mom, "Y", was 37 years old, had 4 other children, didn't feel like she could support her baby financially, and the birth father was not in the picture and never would be. Ron and I had a difficult time picking which birth mother we should pursue because we were still grieving the loss of Sawyer and only wanted him back. We decided that we wanted to be considered by 'J' when she was ready to pick an adoptive family. 'Y's story seemed too similar to 'C's story (the birth mom in our first failed adoption in August 2013). We knew we were unfairly judging 'Y', but we couldn't help it. We felt that if 'Y' already had four kids, what's one more? In the beginning of January we found out that we had been picked by 'J'. She was due January 31 and was having a boy. I wasn't happy. In fact, I cried for hours and hours. When I had got the call that afternoon and was told by the adoption agency they had good news, I had let myself think that Sawyer was coming back. So naturally I was crushed when that wasn't the 'good news' they had for us. We had prayed and prayed that God make his 'Yes' and 'No' very clear to us so that we would know if we were making the decisions He wanted us to make. A few days later the agency informed us that they had 'unmatched' us from 'J' because they found out that she had been lying about her current relationship with the birth father and was already wavering on her adoption plan. They told 'J' that if she still wanted to make an adoption plan after the baby was born to contact the agency. I was so relieved and happy when we found out that we had been unmatched. God's 'No' couldn't have been more clear.
A couple days after we were unmatched from J, I got an email from our social worker that started with the words, "Please don't shoot me. I know you already passed on this birth mom but it just so happens that she decided not to pick a family until after the holidays... If you still don't feel good about it then delete this email and forget I brought it up again." Because we are so cautious now I asked an annoying amount of questions and tried to get as much info on this birth mom as we could. We prayed and prayed and didn't feel like we were getting a clear yes or no. So we did what any mature adults would do... We flipped a coin. The coin said, "Go for it!" With more prayer we decided that we should go for it. After all, it didn't mean that she was going to pick us anyway. We had faith that if God didn't think this was the right birth mom that He wouldn't let her pick us. It's not every day you get a redo on a decision you already made. Once we realized that 'Y' and 'C' are not the same person, we started to feel better about her. Just because 'C' broke our hearts didn't mean that 'Y' would break our hearts as well. On the day 'Y' was supposed to pick an adoptive family, she narrowed her decision down to us and one other family. She said she needed some time to think it over. We were told that most birth moms look at a few pictures, don't read the 'Dear Birth Mom' letter, and choose a family in under 5 minutes. We were glad she wasn't making a hasty decision. Relinquishing her baby would be the most difficult thing she would ever do and we wanted her to be 100% sure of her decision. A week went by and we hadn't heard anything. We assumed she picked the other family and we were okay with that because that would be God's way of telling us 'no'. We were very surprised when we got the call the next day that she had picked us. A moment that should be a joyous one, was not. We felt indifferent. All our previous experiences had hardened us. Why be excited about a baby that she will probably decide to keep? If we didn't get excited about this baby, then it wouldn't hurt as bad if we don't get to keep him. It was our way of guarding our hearts.
A couple of days later on 1/24/14 a conference call was setup between 'Y' and her social worker & Ron, myself, and our social worker. The social workers felt it was important that she hear our voices, ask us questions, and hear that we are real and more than just two people in a picture. The phone meeting went very well. She had great questions to ask us. One of the questions she asked was, "Could we love a baby that might not look like us?" It took every thing in me not to tell her about Sawyer and how much we loved him. I knew the time wasn't appropriate, but I knew that if she heard our story that she wouldn't have any doubt in her mind that we would love her child more than anything. She also asked, "How would we handle telling him that he is adopted?" We told her, "He would always know that he was adopted. It wouldn't be some huge secret. He would know about his birth mom and how much she loved him. We told her he would always know how grateful we were that she chose us to be his adoptive parents." As we were wrapping up our conversation, I was blind sided when she asked me if I would be in the room with her when she delivered her baby. I told her, "I would love to be there when he was born, as long as she was comfortable with it." Her due date was 2/21/14 and would be delivering in Davis, CA. We felt a lot better about the whole situation after we spoke with her. We were still very guarded, but let ourselves feel a glimmer of hope. Adoption works out for adoptive families all time time, maybe this time we would get our forever child. Maybe our streak of horribly bad luck would be over.
Ron and I decided that this time around we weren't going to tell anyone, not even our families, that we had been matched with a birth mother again. We didn't want to get anyones hopes up. Plus, we thought it would be easier to not have a bunch of explaining to do when it didn't work out again. We didn't want to be so negative about the situation, but can you blame us? When we found out that she was going to be induced on 2/14/14, we realized we were going to need a dog-sitter for our spoiled dogs. Ron's parents always watch the dogs for us when we go out of town. So two days before inducement we told our parents. They were more excited than I thought they would be. They definitely weren't guarded like we were. We asked them not to tell anyone.
It felt like Valentine's Day would never come, but it did. We left the house at 4am, arrived at the hospital by 7am, and put on our brave faces. We were going to meet 'Y' for the first time and hopefully we would meet our forever child a few hours later. Little did we know what a stressful, emotional and exhausting day it would turn out to be.
Until next time...
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