Seeking God Knows What

Last night we went to one of the required adoption classes for adoption #2.  It was about open adoption from an adoptive mother’s perspective.  They really had a roller coaster ride with the natural father contesting, then the natural mother wanting the baby back after 10 weeks while still in the legal risk period, then both of them changing their minds after another 2 weeks and letting the adoption go through.  They now have a very open adoption with both sides of their son’s biological family.  The talk itself was interesting but that wasn’t where I learned something.

It was at the end after the other couples attending the class had left.  You see, the adoptive mother was (and still is) the pregnancy counselor at Catholic Social Services that worked with L.  She also does some homestudies for the agency we are using this time since she has a connection with our social worker.  Needless to say, they adopted through a third agency because of conflict of interest using either of the other two.  Anyhow, we were standing there talking with her afterwards and she was amazed at how big Widget is now.  She didn’t know we were going to be there although we did know she was the speaker.  We talked a little bit about L and how things have been going.  And then she told us she would never forget Widget’s birth and placement because L didn’t want to hold or see her right after birth. So she was the first person to hold her.  Then after the nurses cleaned her up and did her newborn check, she gave Widget her first bottle.  She said she had never had that happen before, nor has she since then.  We had no idea.  We knew L didn’t hold her or see her right away, in fact it was several hours later before she actually did decide to see her.  We just assumed that the nurses took care of Widget right after birth until we got there.  I thought it was cool to hear that part of Widget’s story, something we might never have heard if we didn’t happen to go to that meeting last night.

In fact, I wish I had taken a picture last night of Widget with her to put in her “First Years” scrapbook, which is no where near finished