Chosen AGAIN! | Open Adoption Stories

A year went by after our approval and we still hadn’t heard anything from the adoption agency.

Then our daughter turned two in June and I was starting to get extremely antsy. Yes, with COVID we are practicing social distancing and Madi isn’t playing with many kids, but she literally started talking to her Mee (her lamb wubby) and her dolls like they are her friends. This girl needs a sibling!

(The 1st of our Open Adoption Stories:)

Open Adoption Stories | The Process

Open Adoption Stories | Placement

This is “Mee” in time out for hiding in a tree during a game of Hide N’ Seek…

On July 1st 2020 I was rocking Madison to sleep for an afternoon nap when my phone started ringing and our adoption agent’s name flashed across the screen. Although she wasn’t quite asleep I, of course, answered the phone. When I did, our agent told me that there was a birth mother that made the decision to place her baby for adoption! She wanted to meet Steve and I as well as two other adoptive families!

We met on Monday, the 6th of July. It turned out that she was not even given our book (a book I made about our family for potential birth mothers to look at if we would be a possible match for their baby) but she actually picked us from our small blurb on the agency’s website. So during this meeting we basically just told her all about us including the fact that we had just recently decided that I am not going to go back to my 9-5 whenever the governor deems it safe but I am instead going to be a stay-at-home Mom.

Her mom was at the meeting with her and she happened to also be a stay-at-home mom and was actually the one that told our birth mother that she was pregnant and should take a test to find out. Obviously, she was right and she was already five and half months along (ironically the same time that Madison’s birth mom found out that she was pregnant).

She told us, too, that the birth father was known and had also agreed to the plan to place for adoption, which is HUGE, and that she wanted the adoption to be semi-open. (There are typically three types of adoptions: closed, semi-open, and open. Closed there is no contact after rights are signed away. Semi-open is typically pictures and letters but no in-person meetings. Open is four in-person meetings a year.

However, with any adoption with any degree of openness ,that degree can be adjusted continually depending on the relationship.

So she wants pictures and letters but doesn’t want to meet in person after the birth. However, she said that if she (meaning the baby) wants to meet her birth mom sometime down the road than she would be open for that as well. This is exactly how Madi’s adoption is with the degree of openness too!

So overall the meeting went very well and we thought that we had a great connection but she still had two other families to meet as well before she made a decision.

Steve and I sat on egg shells the whole week after the meeting waiting for her decision. Then, on Friday morning our agent called me. She called to ask me for a letter that stated that I was not going to return to work and that I was going to be a stay-at-home Mom. She said that she just wanted this as confirmation because it was the basis of the birth mother’s decision.

I quickly wrote and sent her the letter. She replied with a “thank you and congratulations”. I didn’t know whether this “congratulations” meant that we were matched or just a congrats of deciding to be a stay-at-home Mom… and then we didn’t hear anything from the agency for WEEKS! However, I did notice that our website blurb came down…were we really matched? I was pretty sure but I didn’t want to let myself believe it until I heard it from the birth mother.

Finally, on the 20th of July we heard from our agent and she told us that the birth mother wanted to meet with us again and that she did in fact choose us to be the family she was placing with! We met again on the 8th of August and I brought her a copy of our book that she never got and she brought us ultrasound pictures!! They were from the gender reveal ultrasound.

I don’t know about you, but I totally believe in signs from God and I just knew that I had been given one the morning before we met the birth mom for the first time…

So my Mom had given me a Hibiscus tree for Mother’s Day this year. I put it on my porch and every morning my daughter and I go out to water it. Each morning it will have A flower, MAYBE two flowers blooming at a time and they are of all different colors: white, yellow, orange, pink, red…

The morning before we met for the first time, Madi and I were watering the plants after our morning walk as we always do and when we got to the Hibiscus tree we noticed it had FIVE flowers bloomed! And not only that… ALL five flowers were…PINK! I just had a feeling that this meeting was going to go REALLY well and that the baby was going to be a…

Photo credit to: Traci McReynolds Photography

As with all adoptions nothing is absolutely certain until the finalization, but there are a couple things that help adoptive parents feel more confident that they will successfully adopt. With an adoption from birth the birth mother has 72 hours after the birth to change her mind and choose not to place and a birth father has 6 months after the birth to choose to parent. (The birth father has this period of time because in some cases the birth father isn’t known or isn’t told of the pregnancy and this gives him the time to be found/come forward. ) However, the birth father, if known, can be assessed by the adoption agency and sign off his rights to the child before the birth of the baby (like Madi’s birth father did).

It just so happens that we were blessed AGAIN to be in a situation in which the birth father is known and is signing off before her birth! After that the birth mother will still have her 72 hours after the birth until she also signs off her rights. After meeting and getting to know the birth mother more we are cautiously optimistic (I would compare this feeling to that of couples in their 1st trimester of pregnancy) that everything will go as planned. She is an incredibly strong and smart girl that has made a very well thought out and educated decision with the support of her family.

So now we are getting the house ready for her arrival in early October!

These next 5 weeks will be full of preparation to get everything and everyONE ready for a new baby in the house! So I’ve been decorating and painting furniture for Madison’s new room and getting the nursery ready again for a baby! We are just so incredibly blessed!

(For the next part of this open adoption story, read my post: Open Adoption Stories | Welcome Home!