My Journey To Become a Mother.....Part Four

January 2005

It was time to become parents.

We were terrified.

We felt all alone.

Even those who loved us most couldn’t help us or make this any easier.

There were so many uncertainties and no guarantees.

We could only feel secure in knowing that the lawyer we chose was quite capable, an adoptive parent himself who had been doing this for over 20 years.

Our adoption was going to cost approximately (including travel etc..) $40,000 (after tax dollars).

Costs:
Our lawyer, home study, social worker visits, birthmother’s lawyer, birthmother’s monthly expenses, birthmother’s medical expenses, birthmother’s counseling, airline tickets (at a moments notice), hotel, car rental.

We spent the next 75 days doing paperwork: financial paperwork, criminal background check, child abuse clearance, a full day seminar with a home study group, a social worker visited our house several times, we both had physicals, and we assembled our profile “book” to be sent out to birth mothers.

April 1 our book started going out.
One week no calls.
Two weeks go by no calls, three, four, five, six...
Every time the phone rings we jump.
At nine weeks a birth mother chose us. We had a conference call. We liked her. We decided to move forward with the match. She went to the doctor, heard the heart beat again and changed her mind.

Two weeks later another birthmother chose us. We had a conference call. We decided to move forward. Then we were given some additional information about the situation and decided not to pursue this situation.

We kept waiting. On September 14th we got the call. You’ve been chosen and her due date is November 7th—Kipp’s birthday. The sign we’d been wanting. She was having a boy and was due in 6 weeks.

We had the conference call.
We arranged to go meet the birthmother two weeks later.
We met her.
We liked her. She liked us.
We created a nursery.
We found nurses for when we came home---neither of us took a maternity/paternity leave since we knew we would have to be away for 2-3 weeks.
We stayed in touch with the birthmother.
We packed our bags.
We got the call the morning of October 29th.
We were able to get on a flight that left Philadelphia in 2 ½ hours.
A friend gave us a ride to the airport.
We arrived and rented a car.
We drove an hour to the hospital.
I was in the delivery room.
Our son was born.
We called the baby store and had them ship up the car seat and porta crib---the thought of traveling with these items and no baby yet was more than we could bear.
We stayed in the hospital for two nights.
The birth mother had 48 hours after his birth to change her mind.
We were all discharged and went to our hotel with Jake.
We lived in this hotel for three weeks while the legal work for both Maine and Pennsylvania was completed.
We couldn’t leave state lines for three weeks.
We rented our car for three weeks.
We had a dog sitter at home for three weeks.
We did laundry in communal coin-operated machines for three weeks.
Kipp’s company gave him three weeks leave with pay.
My clients were very kind while I was away.
We got a call one November afternoon telling us that we could come home.
We called the airline and were on a flight 1 ½ hours later.
We flew back to Philadelphia and we were home.

It took 46 months to have our first child.

Love much.
xob