On this day my love was born!

I'm skipping ahead a bit in the story, but our birth mom has 3 other children who were all delivered past her due date and she had to be induced.

So on this day, two years ago, at 6:30am her water broke. No contractions as far as I know, but she decided to head to the hospital at 6:30pm. 12 hours later. Triage took one look at her and heard her story and sent her immediately to the OR. S was born at 8:05pm via C-section. Four pounds six ounces (2000 grams exactly) and 17 inches long.

We didn't know about her two years ago today.

Unexpectedly, S's birth mom had called birth dad to attend the birth. We had not gotten (and were not legally required to get) his permission for the adoption. But since he had shown up for the birth, we legally couldn't pretend we didn't know who he was. All of the sudden the agency wasn't sure if the adoption would go forward. So they didn't call immediately.

The agency actually didn't call us until 10am the next morning. I was standing in my classroom (prepping for the next school year) and my cell phone rang. Our case manager asked if I was sitting down. She told me that my daughter was born last night. I said, "My what?" So she repeated herself. She briefly told me that S was in the NICU and doing well and that we could head down to the hospital to meet her. I also remember her telling me that our birth mom was upset and worried that we wouldn't want S because she was so small.

I was so flustered that I don't even remember if I called my husband first, or raced out of the school first. (Sorry Honey if it was the latter). I ran into my assistant principal and principal and told them that "I've gotta go. My daughter was born last night!" and I raced out the door.

I do remember hyperventilating a bit on the phone with M. The hospital was more than an hour away so I believe that we met down at the hospital and drove separately.

We stopped by to see C (birth mom) first before we went up to the NICU. She was NOT in good shape and had apparently lost a lot of blood during the c-section. Nothing life threatening, but she certainly was medicated enough to vaguely recognize us.

Then we went up to the NICU. It was a smaller NICU and S was still in a warming bed. And she was beautiful and tiny. Here are our first pictures of her and with her.

Here are two video clips that give you some sense of perspective on her size. The first is her first ever feeding. A whopping 5ccs of formula. I adore the kitty sounds she's making in the second one.

Later on in the day we got to come back and hold her for the first time. I would be lying if I didn't admit that it was a magical moment for me and for M. Pure bliss.S was a dream come true.

So S has gone from 4 lbs 6 oz and 17 inches long, to 28 lbs and 32 inches long. She can walk, run, talk and has the best giggle. She amazes us with her new "tricks" and is the light of our lives.

Happy Birthday Baby Girl! We love you!

The Story of S Part Three

Read Part One or Part Two to get more of the backstory.

After we attended the adoption workshop in August, we had a lot of things to discuss. One of the things we really wrestled with was if we wanted an open or closed adoption. A closed adoption is one where you have no information about the birth family and never meet. And open adoption is one where the birthparents and adoption parents know each other and remain in contact after the adoption. There are many, MANY variations of open adoptions that include letters, visits, prior contact before birth, actually being there for the delivery and several permutations of these options.

Side note, both M and his sister were adopted and have very limited information. Both of them handled this lack of information differently. M knows nothing about his birthmom (except her name which we discovered when we filling out international marriage information to get his visa) and doesn't want to know.

Ultimately we decided to go with a semi-open adoption. This would allow us to have information about the birthparents, meet them, potentially be at the delivery, and then remain in contact after the birth. This was standard practice at our agency. We were scheduled to send pictures every 3 months for the first year and then twice a year after that. We send things directly to the agency and they send them out to the birth parents. (I would have been comfortable with more direct contact, but ultimately because of who S's birth parents are – this was the safest, healthiest option for us. More on this later).

We spend most of the fall discussing our options and I got the initial paperwork to fill out in October when we finally decided to move forward with this process. We received the extensive documents to fill out for our homestudy. I believe it was 50 pages total (health physical forms to be fill out by our Dr.s, financial info, and MANY questions for us both). If I remember correctly it was questions like:

How was your educational experience in elementary, secondary school?
How were you disciplined as child?
How do you plan on disciplining your child?
In what faith do you plan on raising your child?
And random questions about our past, marriage, financial health, etc.

I dragged my feet on answering this questions because I was in the middle of teaching and we didn't want to get a placement TOO early. (which is laughable to me now...what in the heck we we waiting for?) Ultimately we finished all of the homestudy paperwork and turned it in just prior to Christmas. Actually we didn't even turn it it. My best friend took us to the airport to depart for Christmas in Europe and she ended up taking our paperwork to the agency for us because we (as usual) were running late to the airport.

We spent a nice Christmas in Europe with M's family and then we we returned we got a phone call from our case manager to schedule our homestudy visit. January 23, 2007.

Oh as a side note: when we first started this process, they told us it would be an 18 month to 2 year wait for a caucasian newborn. Umm...yeah, not really, eh?

To be continued...

The Story of S - Part Two

To read Part One – click here.

August 2006

It was the first week of school. For those of you who are/might know teachers…this is a stressful time and nutty to say the least. My cell phone rang during the day and it was a call from my mom. My mom, RARELY calls me at work so I figured it had to do with her health – so alarm bells started sounding. She left a message that she read an article in our local paper about adoption and that there was a workshop about adoption being held THAT night. I called M and we met downtown and attended the workshop.

It was supposed to last 2 hours and we stayed for 5 hours!!

We were, by far, the youngest in the group. I was 29 at the time, and M was 28. There were three main speakers, an adoption facilitator, an adoption agency, and an adoption attorney.

The facilitator was very knowledgeable, but we decided for financial reasons – we weren’t going to use one. They basically help develop your profile (a book that tells prospective birth parents about you) and hold your hand. All for a whopping 2,500 bucks. Um…no thank you!

The Adoption agency spoke about the hardships of adoption and some of the pitfalls, cost, b-moms changing their minds, etc. They seemed pretty knowledgeable and would ultimately be the agency we went through. They walked us through a workbook on discovering the type of placement we would be willing to accept. We decided to pursue a full Caucasian newborn with no drug or alcohol exposure. The “no drug or alcohol exposure” came from years of working with exposed children in the classroom and seeing the ramifications of that drug/alcohol abuse. We wanted our child to have the best possible start. As a side note: most birthmom's smoke. All of the ones we came in contact with did, including S's birthmom. So excluding this wasn't an option.

As for adoption a full Caucasian child, we wanted a child that looked like us. Simple as that. We wanted the first comment out of people’s mouths to be “What a cute kid!” and not, “Where did you get him/her from?” Ultimately we ended up with S – who I could (and do) swear is genetically related to us. People NEVER ask if she is adopted and are ALWAYS surprised when they discover that she is.

We LOVED the adoption attorney. She was sassy and sarcastic and one of the reasons that we chose the agency – because she was their resident lawyer. She also is an adoptive mom, so she could relate. We didn’t end up meeting with her at all actually, until the finalization of the adoption months after we brought S home.

We had a lot to ponder after the workshop was over. M was apparently distracted as he tried to drive down a one way street the wrong way (in front of a COP no less!) I(N) was TOTALLY on board. M had some soul searching to do. Did I mention M was adopted?

Time passed. Then in October…

The Story of S - Part One

A little background:

M and I met in 1997 while traveling with an international group. We were friends for years although we lived on different continents. While talking online for many months, we were discussing what we wanted in a partner. It was then we realized that we were talking about each other. But he was in Germany and I was in the US. How could this ever work?

It would work (and still is).

It was MEANT to be.

After a whirlwind courtship (two days from exiting airplane terminal to talk of marriage) we were in engaged in August of 2002. We married in M's hometown in Dec. of 2002.

I(N) have polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) and was diagnosed at 19 with the most severe case that my doctor had ever seen. My ovaries were scarred and covered with tiny cysts and did not create viable eggs.

Fast forward a few years. Wedding. Honeymoon. Move. Another wedding. Another honeymoon. Another move. Still no baby. A very frustrated N and M. We charted, medicated, visited specialists, etc. But still no baby. I was heartbroken and felt like a failure. Every month. Not good for my mental health - let me assure you. Still no baby.

One summer (2006) while sitting in Panera, I was lamenting to my mother about all the fertility crap we had gone through. M and I had had discussed adoption a bit, but it was VERY cost prohibitive. In an off-hand comment to my mom about the cost of adoption, she said that she would end our fertility battle and pay for our adoption. (I would later learn that she said that in hopes that I would "relax" enough to get pregnant on our own). But she did mean it and I raced home to tell M about it.

He wasn't thrilled.

You see, we (M and I) grew up in different countries with different values. In his culture, you don't buy things you can't afford, you save for a while until you can do it yourself, and families don't usually loan/give large sums of money to each other. It just wasn't on his radar that this was an option.

So I let the conversation drop, but continued to dream about becoming a mom. Because there was still no baby.

And then in August, the phone rang....