An Adoption Story | Placement

Waiting for placement during an adoption is definitely a unique experience. You have no idea when or if you are going to be adding a baby into your home. However, you have to prepare for an adoption placement as if it may happen today. Not going to lie, it’s exciting to bring all of the baby things into your home, but it is also quite depressing. It is a constant reminder of your struggles to start a family and that it still may not happen.

It’s really weird to start putting together a room for a person you have not yet met much less know when/if you will meet them or even know if they are going to be a girl or a boy! Needless to say, we painted the room yellow.

We also started a registry for the “maybe baby” and purchased all of the major things like: furniture, stroller, car seat and millions of diapers and wipes.

However, time went by and the phone did not ring.

We did not hear from the agency at all. We started losing hope that an adoption placement was going to happen so soon.

Then I received an email about attending a waiting mother’s coffee. It was on a Thursday night at the agency. There was ironically no coffee there. However, it was really neat to meet with other women waiting for an adoption placement. I was able to learn about them and their experience so far during their waits. I also got to learn what to expect at the hospital. For example, if we get a call that a baby has been born and we have been chosen to be the adoptive parents then I have 2 hours from that time to get to the hospital.

They also prepared us for a mother that has a change of heart. They said that if the baby spends 8 hours with the birth mother then we will all just leave the hospital because that’s the red flag. That is a sign that she changed her mind and has decided to parent herself. It helped to know what to expect during an adoption placement. But it was even more helpful to know that we weren’t the only ones in this weird limbo.
Shortly after the “coffee” I decided to text our agent and ask her if our book had been given to any potential birth mothers. I was curious as to where we stood and wanted to get a feel for how long this wait may be.

She texted me back telling me that she had given our book out!

She said that a girl that was in school in Illinois was in town visiting some family when she went into labor. She gave birth and met with our agent because she wanted to place the baby for adoption. She was given some books to look at and she picked us!

However, when our agent went back to the hospital to do her medical assessment and family history, the birth mother had taken the baby and went back to Illinois. She had changed her mind.

It was crazy to hear exactly how quickly it could happen! That was motivation enough for us and we started more nursery preparation like hanging pictures and buying other décor and books.
We then got a call and were told that there was birth mother that had seen our book and wanted to meet us!

She had just moved into town and felt that she wasn’t ready to be a single mom to the baby boy she was carrying. We met with her and everything seemed perfect. After the meeting, our agent asked what we thought and we told her that we would love to move forward with her as a birth mom. The feeling must be mutual because the birth mom wanted to have a second meeting with us!

We scheduled the meeting but then our agent called and said we needed to change the date and time because the birth mom had to work. We picked a different date but then the birth mom had just moved and had yet to update our agent as to what her new address was so we couldn’t pick a location until she heard back from her. The new date was rapidly approaching and we still hadn’t heard anything.

The day before the meeting our agent called…

She said that she has not been able to get a hold her and that every time she called she would just get a busy signal. I asked if it was possible that she was just out of minutes but apparently the agency provided the phone for her, so no, it wasn’t possible. She had blocked them.

We will never know for sure what happened but we do hope that she is okay and that she just had a change of heart. If it wasn’t meant to be, it wasn’t meant to be.

We didn’t hear anything from the agency for quite some time after that.

Welcome Home- An Adoption Story

Finally, four months later, we received a call from our agent. She told us there was a birth mother that was due June 22nd. She was looking to place her baby and wanted to meet us.

We set up the meeting for 1pm on Thursday March 29th. When we met there was an instant connection. She had fallen in love with us from our profile book and had already made up her mind that we were the going to be the parents to her child. So basically the meeting was less like an interview and more of a “what happens next” meeting.

She invited us to her next ultrasound and let us know her birth plan and plan for after the birth. The plan being that we will know when she goes into labor, we will be at the hospital but not in the room (we will have our own room), after the baby is born we will immediately be the caretakers and in the future she doesn’t want a completely closed or completely open adoption but she would like to get pictures and letters. Everything sounded good to us as well and we knew instantly that we had our perfect match!

We ended up going to a few appointments with her. We got to see hear the heartbeat and we were there for the gender reveal, which was…

A GIRL!

The birth mother was scheduled for an induction on the 18^th of June at 8am. We met our agent at the hospital and sat in the waiting room while she was being induced. Around 4pm she was getting ready to push.

At the last minute she changed her mind about her birth plan and I was asked to come into the delivery room! I was shaking with excitement.

I entered the room the same time as the delivery doctor. He had her scoot down on the table, told her to push, and BAM! BABY!

Our one-push-wonder entered the world!

Our birth mother had not wanted to know the name we had chosen for the baby until after she was born. So after she was out, cleaned up, and placed in the birth mother’s arms (we decided that she would be the first to hold her), she asked what her name was.

We had wanted to pick a name with meaning…

I had realized that we had our meeting in which she chose us to be the parents on Holy Thursday. Holy Thursday is the day that Jesus and His disciples shared the Last Supper. At the meal Jesus broke the bread saying, “This is my body, my flesh, which is given for you”. And then he took the cup and said, “This is my blood which is given for you”. I realized that this is exactly what this woman was doing for us. She was giving us her flesh and blood. So we chose a name that is derived from Matthew, meaning “gift from God”.