meeting our birthmother

On Wednesday morning, Charlie and I headed out in the car to meet our birthmother. We had to drive about two hours and we were to meet her and our agency rep, Kelly, at a Ruby Tuesday's off the interstate.

We were nervous.

We were excited.

We had no idea what to say or what we should talk about. What do you say to a woman who will be giving you her baby? I mean, it's a huge gift, and it's impossible to convey every emotion I am feeling in one two hour lunch. We didn't want to overwhelm her or ask too many questions. We wanted her to feel free to ask what she needed to know about us.

We stopped and got her some flowers.

My heart about stopped when we pulled up in the parking lot of the restaurant. I felt so clammy and unsure, but Charlie grabbed my hand and we went in. We found the table easily and there was Kelly with the birthmom (and I don't really think I should share her name, but calling her birthmom seems so impersonal, so let's call her Vanessa.) Vanessa was shorter than us with wavy hair and a really pretty smile. She was dressed simply and given that she is 8 months pregnant, looked really great. I couldn't really tell from just sitting across the table from her that she was pregnant. She stood up later to go to the restroom, and then I actually saw her stomach!

Charlie asked if she liked sports. I was totally prepared for her to say, "um, not really," but she surprised me by saying she loved football. Well, that was the right thing to say to Charlie, since he is the Commish of his fantasy football league and they talked teams and players and hit it off. That really set the tone for the lunch and we were able to keep the conversation going from there. There were some serious moments and some funny moments, but all in all I think she got a really good feel for us and who we are.

We learned about her family and life and where she was from and what her parents did. She lost her dad when she was younger too, so I could relate to that. We talked about all sorts of things and when it was time to go, we posed for some pictures with her. Vanessa told us that she was glad she had chosen to meet with us because it helped her feel more comfortable.

We left that meeting feeling good. Adoption is a blessing, and we feel totally and completely in awe of what Vanessa is doing in helping us create a family. She will forever be part of our lives, even if we never actually see her again.

You know, adoption has really come a long way in the past 30 years. It used to be that adoptions were these hushed up things...families were embarrassed that they couldn't have kids and girls who got "in trouble" were shipped off to homes to have their babies in secret. But what people have learned over the years is that it is better for all parties if more information is shared, if the child knows where she comes from, if they can understand why the choices were made. I think this meeting will help us go a long way to answering those questions should our daughter ask one day.

There were tears, of course. Not too many, but a few. There were hugs at the end, and Vanessa waved as she drove away. We stayed for a few minutes and talked with Kelly and then we went on back our way home.

It was a good day.

nerves, nerves, and more nerves

We don't have any word yet on the birthfather. Just wanted to post an update for you loyal readers.

We go tomorrow to meet the birthmother and I can tell you that I am nervous about that, but excited too. Prayers all around that it will go well and she will feel settled in us. I want her to leave feeling confident that we will love her baby.

Thanks!

a good thing to pray about

Today I received what I thought was a very frightening phone call. It started like this: "Sissy, this is Kelly (at the adoption agency.) I wanted to talk with you about something that happened. (Heart pounding, here.) The birthfather called. (Insert panic here.) And then my cell phone went all screwy and I couldn't hear her and so I had to tell her I would call her back from Charlie's cell and meanwhile I was starting to get panicked and I could feel the tears coming cause I knew she was going to say that he wanted custody and there went my baby girl.

But no.

Once I got her back on the phone, she started telling me that he called and wanted to sign a relinquishment form. Hallelujah and Amen. If he signs this form now, then there will be less required legally later. He told her that he would be in touch with her on Monday to see about coming in and signing. I think he had been on board in the beginning (to place the baby for adoption) but he and the birthmother had a fight and they haven't been speaking.

So, include us in your prayers this weekend that he will feel peace in signing this form. Let God touch him and show him that we already love this little girl and are making a place for her in our home. I know it's a holiday weekend, but if you all could just squeeze me in and offer up these prayers, I would be so thankful.

Hopefully, I will have good news to share early next week. We do go and meet the birthmom on Wednesday, so I am nervous about that, but I know that it is something that needs to be done. She needs to feel the love, too.

Share the love, folks, and Happy Easter!

panic is setting in...

Things are moving fast. Since Friday night we have cleaned out the nursery, bought a few clothes, announced our good news to the world and been trying to get the rest of the house ready to bring a baby home.

I'm a little panicked. There is so much left to be done and a limited time to get it done. And that's if the baby doesn't come early. Oh dear, if the baby comes early, it's not going to be pretty.

And of course we're worried about the cost. Adoption is expensive and we knew what it would cost going in, but we weren't prepared for it to happen this soon. We have been saving and working hard to get it all together. We have had some donations made to our account, which has been such a blessing! Thank you, if you are one of those dear friends.

Right now all I'm asking for is your prayers. Lots and lots of prayers. Lots and lots of prayers to help us figure it out. WE are going to bring her home. I am going to trust God that He'll work it out. He's blessed us this far with a match sooner than we ever imagined, so I need to trust that it will be perfect, that I can get some rest and get ready for her.

Prayers. People please. Here me on this one and get on your knees. This economy is rough, and money isn't falling out of the thin air, but I have faith that He will come through. But a little added prayer wouldn't hurt.

Thanks a bunch.

could I possibly have better news?

It happened.

On Friday.

We were chosen.

That sounds so weird to me. We were chosen! But we were and have been matched with a birthmom and baby and I can't even wrap my mind around it. Oh my. Breathe.

Let me back up and tell the story correctly.

I took my lunch break around 12:45 and got back to my desk a little before 1:30. I checked my cell phone and I had a message from Kelly at our adoption agency saying "I have a few questions for you, give me a call if you can."

I called.

Kelly filled me in on a few things: someone had donated a check for us, they had received most of our paperwork, they were waiting for clearance from the child molester registry, oh and she met with a birthmother that morning and she had selected us for her baby!

Way to just slip that right in!

I think I said, "that's cool." My mind was blank. It was completely empty. I was frozen to my chair as I listened to her say that the baby would be born in May and it is a little girl.

In MAY. Did you hear that, people? In May! In like, four weeks from now, and that's if she doesn't go early. Wow. In May.

Um, wow.

Now, there are a million things to do. We have to finish up some paperwork and get our ducks in a row. We need baby things. We need a name. We need prayer, cause, remember, this is an adoption and anything can happen.

Whoa, pinch me.

Let me just take a moment and thank my Savior, who has watched over this baby and is placing her in my hands. Let's take a moment and thank this birthmom, who could have made a very different choice. Let's thank our adoption agency for doing what they do everyday.

Now, proceed to do the happy dance.

Oh, and start sending me your hand-me-downs. I'm gonna need em!

I won't sleep a wink...

The phone rang on Wednesday afternoon, and no it wasn't THE call. But it was Kelly from our adoption agency asking some questions. She wanted to know if we had our profile book finished (scrapbook for birthmoms to look at.) She remembered me saying in January that I had been working on it and it was almost complete. They have several new birthmoms coming in next week to chose families and they wanted to be able to show our book. They already have snapshots of us and our "dear birthmother" letter, but she wanted have our complete book to show them.

What happened next?

Um, complete panic set in.

I told her that it was almost finished (which was true-ish) and that I would see what I could do to get it to her.

I raced home and proceeded to work on it. For 5 hours. Emily tried to IM with me, but I was so focused, when the chime went off I didn't even know what it was. Sad. Let me explain something about the profile book...it isn't a paper scrapbook. It is a digital scrapbook. Yup, that's right, DIGITAL. Which means I learned how to use Adobe Photoshop CS3 in order to make this scrapbook.

There are pros and cons to this type of scrapbooking...

Pro: there isn't any mess to clean up.

Con: if you don't know what command puts text on the page, you might not get to write any words.

Pro: I can change the file as many times as I want.

Con: I can change the file as many times as I want. Oh, the perfectionism.

Pro: Sizes of things can easily be changed. I want this graphic bigger, I stretch it out. Can't do that with paper.

Con: I might have to cuss at the computer when I can get those graphics to stretch out the way I want them. No, I didn't cuss. But I clicked REALLY, REALLY hard. Yeah, that's tellin' the computer.

Do you get the idea. I slaved over this thing learning a new program and getting it right. I needed to include all sorts of things about us, our families and our house. I drove everyone crazy taking tons of pictures of them over the holidays.

Oh, back to Wednesday night....well, I worked on a couple of the pages, making sure they all had captions and such, then I prepared to upload them to a site that prints them and mails them to you. I can't print them out at home because it would take tons of ink and I can't print 12 x 12 pages in my printer. I thought Charlie might be able to print them at work, but he didn't think he could make it work either, but he had a printer friend in town that could do it for him rushed. So he ran around on Thursday getting it printed, then we laminated the pages, bound them and got it in the mail. It turned out really well. I was so proud of all my hard work.

And as soon as I can figure out how to shrink the file to post on the internet, I will show them off. I shared with several friends at work and they thought it was cute and showed who we are as a couple. I hope so.

As this week goes forward, please pray for the birthmoms coming in to the agency. These will be hard appointments for them...making a decision about the family that will take their babies home. Pray that I will sleep this week, and not lay awake thinking of baby names. Pray that I won't jump every time the phone rings.

Pray, and stay tuned.

a quick update

Just wanted to do a quick update on the adoption process. Not much is going on right now. We had to work on a 45 page form for the HomeStudy and I had finished all my answers and it was ready for Charlie. Then our social worker emailed us and told us that the state had updated the form and she needed to send us a new one.

Sigh.

So we started over. Charlie blessedly transferred my answers to the new form and answered his portion, but there are some new questions we have to answer together. And the questions cover so much about our lives and views on parenting. I think I gave you a sampling of them before, but it covers EVERYTHING in our lives, childhoods, marriage, etc.

Now we will turn this in and a couple other forms, then we get to make an appointment with the social worker. That will be nerve racking, I'm sure. After that, we will be on the list.

And then we wait.