You know how people say there’s no such thing as “sort of pregnant”?

Well, that’s actually kind of fitting in an adoption scenario.

It has been a crazy, interesting, exciting, scary, and emotional last few days.

Every time I sit down to work on this post, I get a call or an email or a text with a further development. I almost feel like I should be tweeting the blow-by-blow. But I’m not a Twitterer.

Anyway, here’s the latest as of this moment. Just know it could have further developed by the time you are reading this.

We got a call last Thursday evening with another birth mother match.

In my last post, in my own words, I said, “In an ideal scenario, we’d get a birth mother who is within driving distance and close to her due date (say, within 2 months).”

Well, we got exactly that.

Not only is she close, she’s very close. Not only is she within 2 months of her due date, she’s due in less than 2 weeks!

Say what??!

True story.

So, Thursday night to Friday morning went something like this: We got a call from a caseworker advising of the match; she sends all the documents she has. I have a Thursday night commitment I want to keep, so I’m gone a few hours. I get home and go through all the docs late into the night. When I finally go to bed, I can’t sleep. I wake up Friday morning and get kid off to preschool and dog off to groomer. We have a call with the caseworker, then a call with the birth mother, decide to move forward, and suddenly I’m sharing the news with family and friends to clue them in. And this was all before noon!

So now what?

The first question a lot of people are asking in light of our recent failure is how we are feeling about this match.

Let me first say, the caseworker (we’ve moved to a new one by the way, one we’ve never interacted with before, but so far I like her) let us know that she told this birth mother about our recent failed placement. If a birth mother were considering something similar (in it for the money or whatever), this would probably scare her off.

This birth mother instead conveyed what a blessing it is to know there are people like us in the world who are willing to love a non-bio child as their own, people who can give this baby the life the biological parent(s) wish they could.

She even went so far as to say she feels this is a baby she was meant to carry for another mommy.

The caseworker could barely get through reading us what the birth mom said without choking up. Meanwhile, I’d already grabbed the tissues.

Does that mean this is a done deal?

No. And I am not counting on anything at this point.

When we spoke with the birth mother Friday morning, we had a lovely chat. She told us that she was instantly drawn to our family and our dynamic and our pictures. She loves our son and wants for her child what it looks like we are showering on Levi… LOVE.

She was actually looking at all her potential adoptive family profiles with her other children, and they were all drawn to us. I think it’s fantastic that they made this decision together.

Since we’re so close to her due date, and she actually feels the baby could come any time, things may end up working a little differently this time around.

In California, there is typically a 10 day advisement period. Birth mom must be advised by an Adoption Service Provider at least 10 days prior to her signing any official documents consenting to the adoption.

If that’s not possible, due to the baby already having been born or if birth mom could deliver prior to the 10 days passing, the adoption can “go to agency.” If I have this right, this means the birth mom can do an “agency relinquishment” – relinquish the baby to an agency who then immediately turns the baby over to us. This bypasses the waiting period and allows her to sign consent to the adoption and make it immediately irrevocable.

Otherwise, we have to wait out those 10 days, and I imagine that can be a bit nerve-wracking.

We don’t yet know what’s going to happen there.

It’s always nice if you can make plans to meet the birth mother/parents prior to the birth. Then your first meeting isn’t, “Hi, nice to meet you! We’re here to take your baby!” Since we have such a short timeframe, we made plans to meet with birth mom on Sunday.

Unfortunately, she ended up texting me that morning saying she’d been sick and vomiting all night and asking if we could reschedule.

It’s tough for Jeff to take off work right now, but we do feel it’s important for both of us to meet with her, so we rescheduled for next weekend. It’s possible the baby could arrive before then. Also, my sister arrives in town on Friday. It’s a trip we planned a while ago. She was coming out to help with the new baby we thought we were getting last month. Hopefully, we still get to utilize her help that way, even if we won’t be fully newborn-sleep-deprived yet.

So how am I feeling about this match?

I am cautiously optimistic.

The birth mother and I were texting yesterday, and I’ll be the first to admit she was freaking me out a bit. She told me how excited she and her kids are to meet us, that the baby is ready to meet me and referred to me as mommy.

I have NEVER had a birth mother say anything like this to me. I want to trust her and have no reason to doubt her at this point, but after what happened last month, I can’t help but want to self-protect too. I cannot have my heart broken again.

The saving grace is we have a short time window this go around. At this point, I just want it to be over and either have a baby or not. These periods of waiting are the absolute worst.

Assuming all goes to plan, we could be welcoming a baby any day.

And this time, it’s a girl.

 

P.S. As always, thank you for following our story. I continue to pray it’s an encouragement and source of hope to you. Thank you to all who have generously donated to the GoFundMe set up by my friend Lauren. If you are open to financially helping us along this path and have not yet done so, we are about to have a number of large expenses related to the adoption come due. We would be hugely grateful if you would consider donating. Here’s where you can do that.