We flew to Detroit, Michigan on Friday afternoon. Before departing we had a lot of paperwork to sign, get notarized, and fax. Between that, packing, and arranging things for our dog-sitter, we were pretty frantic. All the while we were just anticipating the phone call to tell us the birthmom had already changed her mind. We purchased travel insurance on our plane tickets, rental car and hotel reservations.... we weren't taking any chances. We were sort of hoping that if it was all going to fall apart, that it would happen before we got ourselves all the way out to Michigan.... that wasn't what happened. We'd spend nearly $1,000 in travel expenses before learning it was all for nothing.
We arrived near midnight in Detroit, so we talked to Adrianna (the birthmom) and asked her if she'd prefer we wait to come to the hospital in the morning. We were a bit relieved when she said 'yes.' We were exhausted and hungry, and we knew we'd feel more calm and confident if we had a good night's sleep before we faced her and the baby. We were just grateful she was still talking with us- it was a good sign. Every minute she didn't change her mind was a step forward. We didn't sleep very well that night.
The next morning we arrived at the hospital around 9am. We knew Adrianna would be meeting with the social worker from a Michigan adoption agency at 10am. (B/c it was to be an out-of-state adoption, we had to work with both a CA and a MI adoption agency, plus our own adoption lawyer, and a hospital social worker... there were a lot of people involved and a lot of checks to write- fortunately most all the money was refundable.) We tried to eat something from the hospital cafeteria but we were too anxious to eat. We went up to her room about 30 minutes before the social worker arrived. On the way up the elevator we were both so nauseas and tearful. We'd never gotten that far before...
Before entering Adrianna's room we met the hospital social worker, Sandy. She instantly made us feel comfortable and we knew she was advocating for us. We formed a fast friendship. She'd had some good talks with Adrianna already and she assured us that everything would be okay. When we met Adrianna and her mom, neither were very talkative or even seemed to be interested in who we were. It was incredibly awkward. She did, however, ask us if we'd like to see the baby (down the hall, in the nursery). We said we would, but after we left her room we decided to hold off on meeting him until she'd met with the MI agency's social worker. We ran into Sandy on our way back down the hall and she invited us into the nursery to meet the baby... we told her this was our fifth time trying to adopt and that all the moms had changed their minds on us... we were trying to be very cautious and we didn't want to see him until we felt more confident that things would pull through. When she heard this, she teared up (causing us to tear up too). She just couldn't believe we'd been through so much already.
Back down in the lobby we met with Jill (the MI agency social worker) and signed a pile of paperwork. We were blessed by her as well, in that she set us at ease immediately. She was honest and upfront, and she was very sensitive to the fact that we'd been through this before. She met with Adrianna for a couple hours, asking her some tough questions and walking her through different scenarios. When Jill met up with us afterward she said she felt pretty confident that Adrianna was set in her decision to place the baby for adoption. Though she was young (19), she understood that she simply couldn't provide for a baby without a job, education, or financial support from family. Emotionally she was struggling, but she knew adoption was the right thing to do. Jill encouraged us to spend more time with her, and though it was hard, she wanted us to meet the baby and start bonding with him. Adrianna needed to see us with him in order to feel comfortable giving him to us. I began to cry just at the suggestion. "Do you know what you're asking?" I said. I wanted to keep my wall up until I knew he was really mine to keep. I couldn't bear the thought of holding him and bonding with him only to walk away.
We filled our hours in between hospital visits with phone calls home, keeping our parents and close friends in the loop as best we could. We were exhausted in every way possible, physically, emotionally and spiritually. The stress of not knowing what the next minute or hour would be like was awful. We kept saying, "I just want to know one way or the other. If Adrianna's going to bail out, she just needs to do it already and stop wasting our time. I hate being dragged along like this!"
That evening we returned to the hospital, checked in with Adrianna and then headed to the nursery. Sandy was there to introduce us to him. He was on a breathing monitor so we couldn't pick him up (we realize now the Lord was protecting us in this way), but we could touch him and talk to him. Zach reached out right away and grabbed his little hand, stroked his thick black hair and began talking to him. I stood back and watched, completely terrified. Sandy kept saying, "It's okay, he's yours. Go ahead." But he didn't feel mine. She set us up in a private room with him and she took some pictures. We asked a lot of questions about his health, what to do when we'd have to travel with him, etc. We had been told that Adrianna smoked marijuana regularly during her pregnancy so they were keeping the baby under watch for any side effects. We spent a full hour with him, and when we left we both agreed that while he was a beautiful baby... he just didn't feel like he was ours yet (again, a protective shield from the Lord).
Adrianna was being released from the hospital the next day and we weren't sure if we'd see her again, so we stopped in her room one more time to ask her what kind of contact she'd like after the adoption. She just shrugged and said she hadn't really thought about it. We left to head back to our hotel, and we anxiously counted down the hours until she would be out of the picture so we could freely spend time with the baby and not have to step around her. From the time she would be discharged, she'd have 24 hours before signing away her parental rights to us. We knew we wouldn't be taking a deep breath until that happened.
