A Relantionship Begins

After a voicemail message and a few texts, I just had my first one-to-one conversation with our birthmother. I was a bit nervous at first, but as the call went on I calmed down. A LOT of what I said was "That must be hard." She has SO much going on in her life right now....newly divorced, impounded car, late traffic tickets with an impending court date, kicked our of her mother's house....just to name a few.

 My care-taker personality takes over and it was very hard for me not to jump in with "let us fix that for you!" or "let us help with that". Defining my own personal boundaries with this situation but also maintaining a familiar comfort with her is very important but also very difficult! Brenda, our adoption agent, has been so wonderful and helpful to me through all of this. Right now, she tells me, it is important for our birth mom to feel like we not only care for her baby but care for her. So that's what I'm trying to do.

I ended the call by tell her to keep me posted on her job interview on Friday and house hunt today. We talked about how often we might "chat" and she told me that she was available "whenever". :) I just pray for my words to be genuine and caring and that I can forge into this relationship with good personal boundaries. Let the journey begin!

"The Call"

For the last three months I would find myself daydreaming about when I would get “the call”. I would lay in bed at night and think about where I would be and what I would be doing. What would they say? What would I say? What would I do? Would I be in the car and have to pull over? Would Carlie and I be together or apart? It was a lot to think about and a lot to hope for.

My daydreaming came to an end on Tuesday, January 4^th around 2:00 p.m.  Let me tell you…for the last month I ALWAYS had my phone with me and it was ALWAYS turned on. You know…just in case. J  But as most people do, I become complacent with it and began to feel I was overreacting to the circumstances. So on this particular day my phone was out on my desk, but it was on silent. Around 2:00, I clicked my phone on to check to see if I’d missed any calls and sure enough! I had a missed call and a voicemail from Brenda in Iowa. Now…just about 24 hours earlier I had emailed Brenda about Carlie and I rescheduling our trip to meet her. I immediately assumed the voicemail was in response to my email and because of that decided to listen quickly to voicemail while my students were finishing up an activity. I stood at my desk, looking at my students, and listened to Brenda say something along the lines of this: Hi Katie, this is Brenda from Abby’s One True Gift. I did get your email and wanted you to know that I just responded but I am actually calling because I have a birth mother situation I think you might be interested in. I am eager to speak with you today so if you could call me back that would be great. Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh. There as an aide in my room who I knew I could leave my kids with, but recess was in ten minutes. I could wait ten minutes, right? Wrong. I walked to my classroom door, anticipating that I would wait the ten necessary minutes until my students went outside but by the time I got there, somehow I’d changed my mind. I don’t even remember walking to the door or opening it! I told the aide I would be back and to take the kids outside when it was time, and I was out the door looking for a room to make my return call in.

As you read, the next five or six hours were a blur.

Add this to the list of life-changing events that have happened in my classroom.

We've been matched!

Exciting News! Almost three weeks after Abby's One True Gift received our application, our agent called us yesterday (1/4/11) about a possible "birth mother situation." We are in complete shock. When Katie and I started the process, we fully anticipated we would be in this for the long haul. Certainly not three weeks later. Tonight (1/5/11) Katie and I participated in our match call with our birth mother. Tomorrow based on the birth mother's and our agent's feedback we will send in the letter of intent to the agency. Once they receive that and our initial fees, the match will become final and we will move forward to finalize all the details. Our birth mother currently lives in Las Vegas. She is due 5/13/11. Both Katie and I know the time will fly by so fast.

The call went really well. We both can't imagine what this woman must be going through. It is obviously a hard decision, but the birth mother appeared to know she was making this decision out of the best interest of the child. As the call started, we could tell we were all nervous. Katie started off by thanking the birth mother for her time and for considering us to adopt her baby. From there, we reiterated a little information about ourselves. A highlight for me is when I mentioned I grew up on a farm, the birth mother said she had a farm connection in Joplin, MO. We spent a few minutes talking about our experiences there. I think that bit of conversation really lightened up the mood. She then started to tell us a little about herself, which for privacy reasons, we won't share on here. After a little while, our agent cut into the call and asked that the birth mother share a little about her pregnancy so far. Our birth mother indicated she had been pretty sick the first trimester, but now was past that, but was experiencing major heartburn.

The birth mother had an appointment and had to cut our call off at about 35 minutes. It ended positively. The birth mother told our agent, "You can give them our phone number." That seems like a good sign to us! Brenda called us back privately about 10 minutes later just to debrief after the call. Brenda said we handled the call really well. From there, we talked for a bit about how quickly it happened and what are the major next steps for us. We told her we were "kind of planners," and she responded by saying, "This will be the most unplanned event of your life." Ha Ha. Lots to do, and lots to think about, but this is a huge step forward!