Our first Adoption

I’ve had a lot of people ask for a detailed story of our son’s adoption! I love sharing this stuff and I also know how helpful it can be when you’re waiting for your baby through adoption or when you’re looking in to choosing adoption to hear stories. I remember searching blogs, books, YouTube, social media and even asking people I knew for their stories. Not only did I want to hear stories from people who had adopted, but also birth parents and adopted children. It’s just so important to have a look into everyone’s perspective in something like this. I can share bits of what I know of others perspectives, but at the end of the day, all I have is my own perspective.

We were home study approved in December of 2021. This means, we had done all of the necessary classes, interviews, paperwork, background checks, had our home inspected and everything was cleared by a licensed social worker. Once you’re home study approved then this means at any moment, you’re approved to welcome a child into your home. The way most agencies do it is they will have your information on their site for possible birth moms to reach out for a specific family that way. They also will have perspective birth moms reach out for assistance in a general sense and the agency reaches out to all waiting families that way. On our end, we would get a message with some anonymous information, demographics, health history, and some general information regarding that birth mom, birth dad and baby. They give enough information for you to get a general idea, but nothing too personal as it is someone’s personal information and health history so they don’t share photos, names, or any identifiable information. We are sent this information and then have a certain timeline on how fast we have to give the agency a yes or no decision. Once you give your yes or no, the agency will either show your profile book or not based on what you say. They usually give you a time limit on how long you have to reply based on how quickly they’ll be meeting with her. Sometimes it’s a few days, other times it’s 30 minutes.

All of that being said, we were approved in December and within a few weeks we received our first synopsis, she chose another family. We went on to have this happen in January, February, March, and then nothing for a while. In the midst of this we were doing some fundraising because adoption legal fees, birth mom support and medical bills, and paying the social workers isn’t cheap. Some criticize the cost of adoption and it is unfortunate because it’s a deterrent a lot of times for good families, but also it’s a hard thing to get around. Social workers work tirelessly for these babies and birth moms and deserve to get paid. The lawyers are necessary to the court process and they also deserve to be paid. The agency renders ongoing care to adoptive families and biological families so they need funding in order to do that. Then, of course all legal, medical and living expenses needed for the birth mother should also be paid for because she shouldn’t be placing a child for adoption, but also be stuck with a financial burden. So all of these fees that adoptive parents pay, go to something significant. There are agencies out there that cheat that and misappropriate funds, however, and don’t render the services that they say they do. I would ensure that you look in to that and make sure an agency takes care of its birth parents and offers support to all. Adoption has gotten a bad wrap at times because women feel as though their babies were just bought off of them. They feel like they were coerced into placing their child for adoption, then once the adoption is final they are left in the dust with nothing. This is an example of an agency that is using adoptive families for their money and using birth mothers and babies just to make money. This can fly under the radar at times and adoptive parents can sometimes be blind to it because at least they got their baby. This is WRONG and I would encourage anyone seeking adoption to truly look into the practices that these agencies are using before choosing to work with them. Our agency truly provides a lifetime of support for us, our son, and his birth mom when it’s sought out.

Back to the story, we were fundraising and waiting. We had also decided to sell our house and build on some land we were graciously gifted. So, we sold our house, and decided to go on an amazing trip to Iceland. We had always wanted to go and we booked the flights about a week before we left because it was a very spur of the moment decision. We had a while before we needed to be out of our house, had no perspective adoption on the horizon, and we didn’t know what our future would hold. We decided to seize the moment and go while we had the chance. We could have a baby any time so if we had the opportunity, we knew we should go. We spent a week backpacking and camping in Iceland and just enjoying each other’s company. It was the most amazing trip and while we were there, after a few months of no activity, we received two different synopses. We said yes to both and were curious to see how they turned out! After a week of amazing views, food, laughs, and adventure we headed home having no idea that our lives were about to change forever.

We went back to our normal work week, but had taken Friday off to head a few hours north to a little mountain town. My sister and her now husband were having a combined cabin weekend for their bachelor/bachelorette weekend. We are a really tight knit group so we were just ready to have a fun weekend celebrating them! One of my other sisters, husband and I were driving up together and we received a text about another synopsis. This one said we had 30 minutes to respond which was the fastest we’d ever had to make a decision. Here we are going up into the mountains with limited service, and I’m rushing to open this synopsis and get the information we need.

The synopsis said there was a baby boy born the night before, May 19th. He was born via emergency c-section, but was perfectly healthy. His birth mom had requested that she’d like a Christian family, which was the first time we’d seen that as a specific preference thus far. She also had requested to name him, which worked for us because I had always struggled with boy names. We loved the name so much so we were in on all of it! I responded yes, and went about our drive. I double checked that the response email had sent. We were one minute past the deadline and I realized it hadn’t sent. We lost service and still didn’t have any! My sister was in the backseat and announced that she had service! I frantically dial the social workers number into her phone and call hoping that they’ll be able to still get our book in to the pile to pass off to his birth mom. Thankfully, they hadn’t left to go meet with her yet and were able to grab our book once they realized our response hadn’t sent. We let out a sigh of relief and then, went on about our day trying not to think too much about it. We had said yes to multiple other birthday moms, but they had chosen other families, so we never went in feeling too confident or excited. We knew that whatever God had for us wouldn’t miss us. We knew that we hadn’t been chosen because we weren’t who was meant to be that baby’s parents. Whenever that moment came for us, it would be because the birth mom had peace from God about us being that baby’s parents. We had just seen how this process went and never tended to get too excited because you just can’t allow yourself to get attached to each idea of this being the one or it’ll emotionally exhaust you. We also wouldn’t tell people that we were even waiting to hear back because it was easier to just keep it out of our mind and not get too invested if we didn’t tell people. Since my sister was in the car, she knew and was way too excited. We had to explain to her that this meant nothing and that we needed her to not tell anyone because there was nothing to get excited about yet.

We get to the cabin and start to decorate and get settled in for the guests of honor to show up within the next hour or so. We were busy and distracted so it was a great way to keep our minds off of it, but it was hard to not have it in the back of our minds that here we are getting ready for a fun weekend that we originally expected to go one way, but also knowing it could completely change any moment. This baby was already here so you’d assume she’s probably going to make a decision in the next day or even within a few hours. Our agency will email you to let you know when another family was chosen that way you know you weren’t chosen, but they will call you if you’re chosen. I hadn’t even thought to check my email yet because we were busy getting the cabin ready and it had only been a few hours. Completely unexpectedly, my husband subtly says “can you answer that?” and hands me my phone. He said it so casually to not draw anyone’s attention, but as I looked down at my phone, my heart skipped a beat. We casually walked into our room, closed the door and quietly answered the phone so no one could hear us. “Hello, Danielle, are you and Blake available to talk?” Stunned, I respond, “Absolutely!” They go on to tell us that his birth mom had chosen us and since it was getting to be later in the evening, we should stay for the night and head out in the morning. She was aware that we were out of town and both she and the baby needed to stay another few nights in the hospital due to the emergency c-section so there was no rush to drive back a few hours in the dark. We couldn’t believe it, we were parents within minutes!

Of course, my sister had seen us walk into our room. As we opened the door, all it took was for us to make eye contact with her and she started bawling. I started crying, and our youngest sister was watching us in panic having absolutely no idea what was happening. We filled her in, she’s crying. We fill in my sister’s friend, we’re all freaking out and stunned. My other sister is going to be here any moment and I have to break it to her that we have to leave early, but also let her know she’s going to be an aunt. We also felt bad to be taking away from their moment a little bit, but we also knew that they knew we had no control of the timing. We all devised a plan to announce it to her during a game, who’s most likely to. Of course, yet again, we’re all crying as she finds out during a game that she’s going to be an aunt. We made the most of that night trying to celebrate the soon to be married couple, not taking away from their moment. We were thankful for the timing to be able to celebrate them and not abandon them on their special weekend. Truthfully though, all we could think about was getting to meet our baby.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that I had a baby two and a half hours south of us that I’d never met. We hadn’t gotten a picture or anything and just wanted to meet him for the first time in person. I can go in to this at a later date, but God has always given me very clear signs. Sometimes it’s been visions, not in the That’s So Raven type of way, but just a very clear image of something kind of like a dream but it’s not always when I’m asleep. Other times I’ve audibly heard something and sometimes it’s a dream, other times it’s been revealed through someone else. This isn’t anything special to just me and is something that anyone who knows God can ask for when it comes to clarity or understanding, but it may look different for everyone. For me, in this particular moment, it was a voice. All night long, any time I would have a moment where I’d drift off to sleep, I would so clearly hear “he’s here for a massive purpose.” Over, and over, and over this booming voice would repeat in my head. It felt like such a sign to me that this was it. God had his hand in this and this was going to work. As I had previously mentioned, she had also preferred a Christian family. From the moment I saw that, I just had a different feeling about it than I had any of the others. It just felt like a nod from God to prepare for the news, but I tried to not get my hopes up. Between that gut feeling I had and this voice in my head all night, I had minimal worries. Most of the time you bring a baby home that has been placed with you, parental rights aren’t terminated yet. This usually takes a week or so for the birth mom or birth parents to legally terminate their rights in front of a judge. This can be a nerve wracking situation because as you’re falling in love with this beautiful baby, it isn’t officially your child yet. It’s most likely your child, but legally the birth mother or birth father has the right to change their mind before termination.

We anxiously left the cabin early that morning to head to the hospital. On our way, I looked up the meaning to our sons name and it means “the Lord exists”, another nod that gave us even more peace. The Lord exists and his hand is in this whole story. We could feel it so tangibly! We arrive at the hospital and are greeted with a congratulatory hug from our incredibly sweet social worker. She’s telling us how adorable he is and how excited she is for us to meet him. We’re slightly in shock that this is about to happen, and despite all of our peace we felt, it’s hard to get fully as excited as you want to be. You want to be able to confidently go in as emotionally available as you can be and meet your child with the same level of confidence as you would after you birth a baby, but it isn’t as much of a for sure thing. She let the nurses know that we were ready for him, and here our son is being wheeled in his little bassinet to meet us for the first time. They wheel him in and he was the most perfect thing I’d ever seen.

We nervously picked him up, me not having held a baby for many years and my husband never having held a baby this young before. We awkwardly fumbled around getting him in to a good position and just held him and stared at him for hours. I couldn’t stop looking at him. He was sleeping basically the entire time and even just the slightest movements he would make were the most adorable thing I’d ever seen. He hiccuped and you would have thought he just ended world hunger with the way I looked at him. He was and still is the most amazing blessing I’ve ever received.

We didn’t end up meeting his birth mom that day since she had obviously just been through a lot and just wasn’t up for meeting anyone that day. We ended up staying at the hospital with him that night and being discharged the next morning. The most epic of all surprises was my sisters knowing, but my parents didn’t know yet. They couldn’t post anything on social media get because then my parents would have wondered why we weren’t in any of the pictures. We all devised a plan to have one last dinner at our house before we packed up and moved out. Our plan was a success and we were able to get my parents over to our house having no idea that their first grandchild was ready to greet them on the other side of the door. It was a tearful and absolutely epic surprise! They were so unbelievably shocked and absolutely in love from the moment they met him. To this day, this child is so loved and cherished by everyone.

Our family and friends had some nerves about us adopting because they just had no experience with it. It was a very unknown experience for them and they just ultimately didn’t want to see us go through anything hard or to see us get hurt. We worried about how that would look or if their inexperienced view on adoption would somehow change how our future child was treated. This proved to be completely unnecessary worry because our son and his story has impacted everyone’s view on adoption. They now all see it for the redemptive, beautiful gift that it is. He’s only two and a half years old and has already lived up to his massive purpose that I knew he was here for. I cherish every moment I have as his mom and would never wish these young years away, but I also am so excited to see who he grows in to and all the amazing things he will achieve to fulfill that purpose God has put on his life even more than he already has. I won’t share the details of his story or his birth parents because that’s his story and their story to tell. That’s something I will always keep private for him, and for our family. What I will say, is we have a beautiful open adoption. We have visits about 4-6 times a year and do everything we can to facilitate relationships between him and his biological family. We didn’t go in to this to keep him to ourselves or keep him from those that gave us the gift of being his parents. They’re the only reason that he exists so we never want to keep him from that part of his life as long as it’s healthy and possible for everyone. One of my greatest joys was at his second birthday, I was pregnant and very sick at the time. We wanted to take him to a petting zoo and just keep it low key on how many people we invited. We wanted the day to be all about him and not entertaining a bunch of people. We invited just his biological family that we have a relationship with, my immediate family and my husband’s immediate family. We didn’t invite friends or even extended family members, just the bare minimum amount of people that we absolutely had to invite and it was nearly 20 people. It just made me so happy that because of adoption, this kid has an inner circle of 20 people who love and support him and that doesn’t even include so many others that are also so near and dear to us. It brought so much joy to my heart just to see how loved and supported he is and that this inner circle will just continue to grow as our family does. Seeing so many people love your kid is just such a blessing and that’s one of the many beautiful things about adoption.

Thank you for being here and following along! Your love and support is so appreciated ❤️