Long, Long Post--Part One

I am so sorry to have kept all of you in the dark for the past week and a half. I attempted to fill you in last week, but the children's hospital where Baby Cara is, does not allow social/networking websites on their complementary parent-use computers (which begs the question--What good are they?!) Oh, how I longed for a lap top! A few nights, I tried to scribble a log, and will eventually load those posts here, but life is super crazy right now. I'm going to have to play catch-up.
Debbie mentioned that our announcement was a surprise because she thought we were on hold with our agency. Well, we were. We never called our agency and told them to start showing our profile again. First, we were waiting for the master's prosthesis. Then, we were waiting for our tax return and stimulus check. Then the master comes home one evening and says that he is ready to go back in to the pastorate. OooooKaaaaaay....he sends out resumes to different churches all over the state. Now we may be moving? Everything in our life was catty-wumpus, and I couldn't see how an adoption would fit into it. How could I look a birthmother in the eye and say we wanted a fully open adoption, and then take her baby to live hours and hours away? Where we live now is very multi-cultural. Would our next town be? Since we fully expected to adopt an African-American infant, these were important considerations. Would our son or daughter be the only black child in the church? In the neighborhood? In their kindergarten class? I couldn't do that to a kid.
At some point, I resigned to the fact that the adoption was not going to happen even though it hurt (see Worthless post below), and I still felt like someone was missing from our family. We took the money we had been saving for the adoption and paid off our credit cards. I postponed posting that decision, telling the kids, or notifying my agency. Calling them would be admitting to myself that the adoption was really over. I figured they would be sitting around the office one day and someone would say, "Hey, whatever happened to the Su____'s?" and then they would phone, and I would have to be honest with them and ask them to close our file indefinitely.
When the phone rang on Tuesday morning (June 24th) and I heard the voice answer,
"Hi, Jessica, this is Denise from ________," I thought the dreaded call had arrived. My heart sunk to my stomach. But her next words made it go straight through the floor, "We have a baby for you!"
I started to cry. "But we don't...."
"No. Don't start crying. It is going to be all right. We know you were supposed to be on hold, and we know that you do not have the money right now, but this is a God thing. We will work the financial part out later. This is your baby. Now, do you want to hear about her?"
A baby girl born the day before. Caucasian. *Though we now think there is a good probability she is part Hispanic. Just look at that beautiful head full of black hair!* 34 weeks gestation. 4 lbs. 5 0z......
As she went on, I felt transported in time to Marina's referral meeting. Except that one baby was born in Russia, and the other born right here in our home state, it was the same history, exposure, and diagnosis. The hair on my arms stood up. This was our daughter. She couldn't be anyone elses. Nothing about what Denise had to say (and believe me, alot of it wasn't pretty) frightened us, because we had heard it all before.

Later, we would find out that the ladies at the agency had a similar reaction. When they got the call from our birthmother, they had it on speaker phone. Denise talked with the birthmother and Anne jotted down notes. As soon as the phone clicked, they looked at each other, and with the same breath exclaimed, "The Su______!"

Just as we were wrapping up the conversation, she got a call from the birthmother. Now she said that she wanted to interview with another agency in addition to ____. Denise was on her way down there, with our book alone, but the other agency (if they would accept her as a client) would likely bring a prospective family's profile as well. We would be left in the agony of suspense for another 24-hours (read: an eternity). But deep down, it felt so right. A perfect fit. How could she not be ours?
Debbie, if you thought you were surprised, imagine how the master felt, when I called him at work and told him he had a brand-new baby girl!