Seeking God Knows What

2004 did not start well…

Shortly after our match failed, we found out a couple we are friends with (I’ve known her since preschool and then, we reconnected in college) had a miscarriage. Very sad since she was almost to the end of her first trimester.

T started a new job, so we had the “stress” of that to deal with.

The first week of January, we found out the couple we are closest to, she was pregnant (due September).
The third week of January, we found out T’s brother and his girlfriend, she was pregnant (due August).
The beginning of March, we found out my older sister was pregnant with her third (due November).
Mother’s day we found out my younger sister was pregnant with her first (due January).
End of May, early June we found out the couple who had the miscarriage, she was pregnant again (due in December).

All that time, nothing, no profile showings, no phone calls, not even that many expectant women interested in adoption were coming into our agency office.

I tried desparately to be happy for everyone and really, I was but it was so incredibly hard for me to hear over and over again pregnancy talk.

The depression I had been struggling with kept weighing me down and I was angry with God and I pushed myself further and further away from my church upbringing.

For the most part, I quit going to church, only going on when I felt guilty that I hadn’t been there in months.

We moved that summer about 30 minutes from my family and closer to our friends (not sure if that was the smartest idea but it was closer to T’s new job).

By August, underneath I had completely fallen apart. I kept up my “surface” self and smiled, bought baby presents, went to baby showers and wondered why no expectant mom/couple was choosing us- we were on the web, we were willing to match out of state, we were willing to be far more open than we had originally said, but still nothing.

When our friends’ baby was born in September (Rosie who I watch now), I remember getting off the phone with her dad, calling our CW and just bursting into tears. She did help but still said that there was not much happening in terms of placements. Not a bad thing, since women were finding themselves capable of parenting, but still hard for me (well, really us).

T and I started to talk. Did we want to switch agencies and try somewhere else? Would this be a good decision or should we just wait out where we were? Finally, we decided to at least research a couple of agencies we did not look at before because they were not where we had lived.

I opened the phone book to jot down the number of one agency we thought we would look at and the ad for another one jumped out at me. I thought, “Oh, it is another small agency. We won’t have much luck there.” I called the number of the first agency, and well, felt unimpressed and not interested in that one. I honestly felt something pulling me to call the other agency. Finally, after debating with myself for nearly an hour, I thought, “It can’t hurt.” So I called.

I got the adoption coordinator/CW, who said they were incredibly swamped with moms looking to place. They had three who wanted to pick adoptive parents and only had a couple profiles available to show them. I explained our situation, that we had had a failed match but had an active homestudy we could transfer. She then explained the basic circumstances surrounding the pregnancies of the three moms and wanted to know what we thought about open adoption because she was a big advocate for it- the more open, the better.
I said I would talk to my husband and call her back but we were interested in an open adoption if that was what the mom/couple wanted.

So T and I had a long talk…

It wouldn’t cost us much more to transfer than we already would have to pay the current agency if they matched us and we had a placement that finalized. Of the situations the new agency had, only one was what we considered the “ideal” situation, another was close and one was not an option for us. We hemmed and hawed, played phone tag with the adoption coordinator. Finally, we decided that even if we didn’t match with either of the two that we would be open to having our information shown to, we would only be making a lateral move and they had fewer families to “compete” with if other moms looking to place came in. We arranged a meeting for October 28, which also turned out to be the day my older sister had her third child.

The night before the meeting, I got a call from the adoption coordinator wanting to know if we would like to fill out their profile form prior to coming in and possibly bring some pictures so they could show our information as soon as we were ready. We said ok and hurriedly filled the forms out and threw some photos in a photo album. Our profile was still at our old agency but we did get a copy of our homestudy to take with us.

We get to the meeting and it goes really well. While we were there, the pregnancy counselor comes in to meet us and to talk to the adoption coordinator. Turns out one of the expectant moms was coming in that afternoon to look at the profiles they did have, the pregnancy counselor wanted to be able to show ours too. The problem was in order to be able to show us, the adoption coordinator had to physically come to our house. We set up for her to come at about 3:30 that afternoon, since I was off work that day anyway. She comes and walks through the house- we are good to go.

At 6:30, I got a phone call…

The expectant mom, L, (who was actually the “ideal” situation) chose us and wanted to meet us. I just about fell over in shock because I never considered that it might actually happen that way. We arranged to have dinner at her parents’ house the following week. We found out the mom was due on my Grandpa’s birthday, November 21 (and I’m born on my mother’s grandpa’s birthday) and the baby was a girl.

We met her and her stepsister for dinner, and we also met her dad and stepmom that following week. Then another week later, we had them to our house to see where we lived and what kind of environment she would be raised in. We talked about names and told them the first name we liked and asked if she would like to pick the middle name. She chose her own middle name, which I thought was sweet and wanted to use the first name we picked on the birth certificate, even though we told her she could name her whatever she wanted.

Then on Sunday morning, November 21 (right on time), at about 6 am we got a phone call that L was in labor and at the hospital. Once the baby was born, we would be called. We actually went to church that Sunday because it was a “special” service my dad and brother were a part of. T and I drove back home waiting for that phone call. Finally, about 3:30 pm, we got the call that Widget had been born an hour before and we could come to the hospital and see her.

We got there and saw L first. She was so sweet and looked pretty good for having just been through a long night and day of labor. I hugged her, we chattd for a few minutes and then her dad came in, so we let them talk (he had been on his way to Oklahoma and turned around when he heard she was in labor) and went to see Widget. She was an hour and a half old. We watched her first bath and another check over. Then we held her and sat in awe of this little baby we might be going to raise (well, since I’m calling her Widget we do get the thrill of raising her!).

And that is how she came to be in our family, along with her birthmom and her family.