I am currently a walking open nerve on the verge of either vomiting or bursting into tears at every given moment.

I don’t even know how to begin recapping what’s been happening since my last post. We got the call with a match two weeks ago today, yet it feels like a lifetime ago.

For starters, I need to stop prophesying my own story.

I wrote, “…here’s the latest as of this moment. Just know it could have further developed by the time you are reading this.”

Literally 3 minutes after I uploaded that post, I got a call from our caseworker.

“Birth mom showed up on one of the scam boards.”

What?!

Apparently, she was working with another agency that doesn’t give birth moms or adoptive families any say in who they are matched with, which I guess is pretty typical. She got matched with a family and an attorney who she ended up not particularly liking. The family was placing demands on her to get all kinds of testing done, threatening to never let her see the baby, etc. And the attorney didn’t make things any better.

She wanted out. And as far as I’m concerned, in a situation like that, she’s entitled to change her mind. She had no say in the match and was getting uncomfortable with it. But instead of being up front and saying all that, she basically ghosted them.

Could she have handled it better? Yes. Did she do anything fraudulent? It didn’t appear so. There was no overlap in expenses collected, and the other agency corroborated her story of what happened. They didn’t accuse her of scamming, they just put her up on the boards and advised anyone else she might contact to call them and get their side of the story.

We had a call last week with the founder of our agency, an attorney who’s been doing this for 20 years, and we all agreed we didn’t have much to lose in moving forward. Since birth mom was so close to her due date, he recommended we wait it out and see what happens.

But then things started to further unravel, and the drama has continued to develop almost hour by hour ever since. I could probably write a book about it at this point.

Birth mom’s actions have not matched her words. She has canceled meetings with us and with the social worker who was supposed to meet with her. She hasn’t provided requested documentation for expenses. We still don’t have medical records. And she always has an excuse for all of it.

We were starting to wonder if she was a real person, if she was really pregnant, if she’d already had the baby, or whatever else my mind would dream up.

Thankfully, she finally kept our third attempt to meet her in person, which happened last Saturday. I won’t go so far as to say the meeting went really well, but it went about as well as I think it could considering the circumstances. We confirmed she’s a real person and that she’s pregnant. Beyond that, who knows what’s going to happen.

Without going into all the details, I’ll just say there’s been a new story, new drama, new decisions, new information, new needs, new things to consider… every single day this week.

I don’t know how many hours we’ve spent on the phone with the caseworker, the birth mom, Jeff and I with each other; how many texts and emails have gone back and forth between all parties. Birth mom’s due date has come and gone (yesterday). And despite all of it, we’re still no closer to knowing if we are getting a baby or not.

My sister is visiting this week from Ohio. The trip was planned months ago. She was coming out to help with the first baby we thought we were getting in September. He would have been about 6 weeks old, and we would have been in full sleep-deprivation mode and welcoming the help.

After that placement fell through, she agreed to still come out and we were just going to have some sisterly fun.

Then we got the call with the current match and thought it could be great if Sis could help out with Levi and be here when this baby arrived. It doesn’t look like that’s going to happen though, and all the drama has put a bit of a damper on her visit.

I feel completely distracted and unable to give her the time and attention I’d otherwise want to. At the same time, I don’t know what I’d be doing if she weren’t here. At least I have someone here to distract me throughout the days that Jeff is at work and keep me from going down a dark, ugly mental and emotional spiral.

This has seriously been one of the most stressful experiences I’ve ever been through in my life and I just want it to be OVER, baby or not.

If we bail now due to all the red flags, the thought of starting all over again makes me sick to my stomach.

If the birth mom turns out to be a fraud, I don’t know how I’ll ever be able to trust another one again.

The further away we get from 11/1 with no baby, the closer we get to deciding we should probably walk away.

We are standing on the middle of the teeter-totter and don’t yet know to which side it’s going to fall.

And it’s getting harder and harder to keep our balance.