We spoke to the birth mom. We had a conversation.
My anxiety going into the conversation was higher then I think it’s ever been in my life! And that’s not an exaggeration. Seriously.
What does one say to someone who plans to give you the gift of becoming the mother you’ve only dreamed to be? What do you say to someone who intends to go into the hospital with a baby and leave with empty arms? How does one fully and appropriately acknowledge the incredible magnitude of adoption?
Well, evidently we talk about the weather! We also talked about favourite colours and foods.
Then we talked about why she chose us. And the irony of the entire thing is that she chose us (in part) because of the photo of our nursery. Taking that photo meant we had to buy a crib and do a few things that we simply weren’t ready to. Above the crib hangs a custom piece of art work that was the first thing we ever bought for a child, and she loved that piece of art. But, I cannot help but laugh at the irony that we truly hated every second of preparing for that photo. And, it turns out, that was a critical piece of her decision. It’s funny how life works sometimes.
Then we talked about the possibility of a pre-baby visit (which is still to be determined).
We discussed how she is feeling and about upcoming ultrasounds and doctor appointments. She promised us updates after each appointment.
We talked about baby’s sex. And the health of her and the baby (which are both great).
We also talked about names. In the last few months I’ve had a lot of anxiety about naming our adopted child, because it’s often not as straight forward as naming a biological child. She adamently wants us to name the baby. We told her what we are thinking, including the fact that we want the baby’s middle name to be part of her name. It works perfectly, sounds great and is just a nice name. She was touched that we wanted include part of her name, almost at a loss for words. For us, it just made sense that our child share part of their name with their birth mother. And, to make it even more amazing, she loves our first choice for babies first name. Absolutely loves it. I had tears of joy as we talked about names. Honestly, in this conversation, somehow I just felt like our match is perfect.
She is a very nice women who I am excited and honoured to bring into our lives. I firmly believe that we will always have some sort of connection with her and so I’m glad our first conversation with her was so positive.
In the end it wasn’t a terrifying phone call. To begin with it was nerve wracking, but we all settled into a nice pace and the call went well.
In fact, the phone call just felt right.
We still have a long way to go to bringing baby home with us. There are a lot of uncertainties, and absolutely no guarantees. But, today I am trying to push away the fears to focus on the hope and the excitement that I was feeling just the other day.
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Yesterday morning, about 30 minutes before our call with our birth mother, we got a message from friends. The timing could not have been worse. Instead of going into the phone call excited, we went in nervous.
They are also adopting. They had a match. In fact, the baby was born and they had begun parenting.
But then, everything that could go wrong did go wrong. Evidently the agency didn’t show up to get consents signed. The documents weren’t processed correctly. The legal team and the social workers were not communicating. The extreme struggle she went through sounds exceptionally bad. In fact, it sounds worse than my worst nightmares
Ultimately, the birth parent changed their minds after a few days. They are now dealing with a failed adoption.
I cannot speak for my friends, but I think I can confidently say it sounds absolutely horrible for everyone involved.
In the end, regardless of whatever exactly happened all I know is that my friend had a baby and now she doesn’t. She is heartbroken. From my perspective as another waiting adoptive parent, I appreciate her heartbreak, even if I cannot truly understand it as I have not actually been in her shoes. (Note, that I also fully respect the birth parent’s right to change their mind, but that’s not the focus of today’s post).
A failed match has been one of our biggest fears, but now thanks to our friend’s experience we have another one: Incompetent people running our adoption.
I am incredibly worried. We are trusting the exact same people to process our adoption and it sounds like between everyone involved they cannot put 2 and 2 together. This all seems like a bit too much. I’m afraid for what this will mean to our adoption. Or rather, I’m petrified.
When we travel for our child, we will not be in control. No matter how hard we try, these people are. And if they don’t know how to be competent, then we are kind of screwed!
And yet, I have to remind myself that our adoption is different. We have a different birth mom. We have different state laws. We are different people. Our situations are truly different.
But, whenever I think about the agency involved, there’s an old saying that I just cannot push out of my mind.
Past performance is generally the best predictor of future behaviour.
I’m scared and I’m worried. And I also know that this is completely out of my hands and I have to find a way to let it go and not eat my alive for the next little while.
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My Perfect Breakdown 