Our marriage has an amazing quality: it bounces. Jamie and I are separately very happy-go-lucky, generally laid back people (him more so than me) and together those qualities are multiplied. We have faced many different types of adversity in the time we’ve been together and we always come out the other side intact and stronger than before. So although the failed adoption kicked our feet out from under us, we knew we would keep going. We knew there was a baby out there for us, and we knew that no matter when we moved forward on it she would find her way to us. So we decided to be still, and work on healing.
A few months later we got another call from our Tennessee agency. There was another birth mother and father coming in to look at profiles. They were pregnant with an African American girl, and they chose to meet with us and one other family. That time Jamie and I were a little jaded to the process. We were still hurt from the previous attempt. We were very calm going into the meeting. We had already discussed that we wouldn’t worry so much about winning them over. We would just be ourselves and give a true representation of who we are and what life would be like with us as parents. We met them in lobby on the way in and by the time we were sitting down with them we were all laughing and enjoying each other’s company. We all told stories about our families and found a lot of similarities in the way we grew up. Especially with our birth mother and Jamie. They both grew up eating the same things in the country.
It’s kind of like finding love. Before you’ve experienced it, you don’t know what it is and may think you’ve found it when it’s not even close. Then when you find real love it smacks you in the face, and you say, “Oh.” Some people find love without having to try too hard. I had to have my heart broken a few times before I figured it out. And the same is true of my adoption experience I had to have my heart broken before I could really understand what it felt like to meet the real mother of my baby. The only thing I was worried about was showing her just how much I loved her, even though we’d just met, and scaring her off. I did (and do) love her though. I knew she was going to change my life and give me something I could never have on my own.
They loved us back. I’m not sure when they actually decided that they were choosing us, but after talking with them for an hour or so they told us. And to seal the deal she handed me ultrasound pictures of a tiny baby. Jamie and I were in shock from that moment until we were halfway home. We kept looking at each other and asking, “Did that really happen?” and, “Could it be that simple? It just felt too…right.”
We felt a lot more secure in their decision than we had in the previous possibility, but we chose not to make the information public yet. We liked keeping it between us and the key people in our lives (family, close friends, and work – to prepare for time off). We got to spend some more time with the birth parents and got to know them more. The more time we spent with them, the more we liked them. She was even going to let me be in the room with her when she gave birth. I had never dreamed that I would be able to be in a hospital room when my baby was born. Even though it wouldn’t be me in the bed, I was thrilled.
We debated on what to name her. The first time around we had chosen Mia, and the birth mother chose the middle name of Olivia. It hurt to think of naming another baby Mia. It felt like I was just swapping out babies like we had swapped out Brother’s beta fish: Optimus Prime, Optimus Prime #2, Optimus Prime #3… At the same time, Mia was my name that I chose for my baby.
We asked Brother what he wanted to name the baby and he said, “Mia.”
We said, “No, that was the other baby’s name. We need to pick out a new name.”
He shook his head incredulously. “My sister’s name is Mia.”
It’s hard to argue with the logic of a five year old. Her name would be Mia. (Mee-yah)
Somehow in the middle of all of this, we decided to build a new house. Our old house – that we loved – was just that, old. We had taken on the project of remodeling it, along with my dad. We were making progress on it, but we realized that it would never end. We would always have to spend all our money on keeping it up and we would always have to spend all of our time working on it. With a new baby coming, we wanted to free up our schedule a bit so we would be able to enjoy the family we’d worked so hard to build. So we put our house on the market and started building a new house.
We didn’t have much trouble selling our house, we had a contract on it in less than a week. We were hesitant to count our chicken that wasn’t fully hatched though. Our history with buying and selling houses has more bumps than our history of trying to add children to our family. We’d had contracts on other houses before that never panned out. We’d started building two houses that we never got to move into. We knew better than to count on it. After the contract came the inspections and then more inspections. It was an old house and the buyers wanted to be thorough. We finally had a closing date. We signed our papers, but our buyers had a death in the family and couldn’t do their part. They had to mail the signing packet to them so they could sign. There was a lot of confusion and we didn’t know if or when our house would actually close. This wouldn’t have been that big of a deal, but we needed the money from the house to finish paying for baby’s adoption.
We hadn’t planned on making the ten hour drive to North Carolina for Christmas that year. The baby was due the second week of January, and I had a feeling she would come early. (Maybe I just really wanted to hold her as soon as possible.) The week before Christmas Jamie’s grandfather died. There wasn’t a question on whether we would go to the funeral; we would. The question was to drive ten hours or fly for less than two. We decided to fly so we could get there and back quicker in case we needed to rush home for the baby.
The funeral was on a Friday. It was good, if funerals can be good. There was closure happening and family coming together. There was sadness, but there was peace in it. Afterwards the entire family went back to Jamie’s grandfather’s house to eat. We were all spending time together, visiting with cousins and nieces and nephews, some I had never met. We started sharing the story of our Christmas miracle that was waiting for us at home. Everyone was so excited for the possibility of a new baby in the family. Jamie’s sister and I had gone out earlier that day and jokingly said that once we got to the point where we couldn’t get an earlier flight out, our birth mother would go into labor.
A wise person once told me that the Lord doesn’t always work quickly but he always works suddenly. Our flight was to leave Saturday at 6:00 p.m. Friday night right after the only flight earlier than ours, Jamie got a call. Our house had finally closed and our money would be in our account on Monday. During that call, someone called through. It was the adoption agency saying our birth mother was in labor.
We were trying to think of how to get home. We’d flown so we didn’t even have our car to drive. We thought about renting a car or borrowing one. Papa jumped in and just said, “Let’s go. Road trip.” So at 10:00 p.m. Me, Jamie, Brother, Papa, and Mimi all piled into Papa’s car. We all took turns driving and Maddox slept flopping his head from shoulder to shoulder depending on who was next to him in the back seat. There was snow in the mountains so we decided to take the south loop through Atlanta. We couldn’t chance getting stuck in a blizzard; there were babies to be held. Well, one baby for me to hold anyway. While we were passing through Augusta, Georgia, at around 1:45 a.m. my phone rang. It was the birth father. Our baby had arrived. He let me hear her cry into the phone. She was minutes old.
We finally made it to the hospital around 7:00 a.m. and went straight to the nursery. We saw her through the glass. She was tiny. They had her bundled up tight and in a couple of blankets so it was hard to tell just how tiny she was. We just saw a little round head covered in straight black hair and a tiny red bow on top. I couldn’t wait to get my hands on her. When I unwrapped her I saw just how tiny she was. 4 lbs 6 ounces, 17.25 inches long. No one could understand from the pictures just how tiny she was, so we took this picture for comparison.
We all fell in love with her immediately. She was my Christmas miracle. We even brought her home on Christmas Eve.
I wrote in an earlier post that an adoptive parent should protect their children's stories because it's their stories to share. It's more than that though. It's a story shared by the child and their birth parents. The details represent the special bond between baby and her birth mother and father, and that is something that is precious and not to be disturbed. I love my children's birth parents for the brave decisions they made and for the heartache they endured (and maybe still endure) so that I can have a family. It is the greatest sacrifice anyone has ever made for me or for my children and it's a beautiful thing. Out of their great pain, I was given life and love.I can't wait for my children to grow to an age where they can understand how beautiful and love-filled the process is so that I can share this with them.
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