So, my last blog post I talked about our decision to ditch the fertility treatments and move towards adoption. Well, let me begin where I left off...
After discussing adoption with our families, we announced to Facebook land that we were "hoping" to adopt at the beginning of September. After not being able to achieve a positive pregnancy month after month and year after year, we knew it was time to turn to God and go down the path that He directed us. Knowing that it could possibly be years before we were even selected for an infant, we still were very excited to announce the news that we had started this amazing, yet very fearful process.
September was full of paperwork, finance reviews, doctor appointments, home visits, extensive background checks, hours of required reading and videos. It was full of questions like, How will we pay for this? How long will this take? What else can we do to speed this along? It was full of emotion, doubt, happiness, excitement, and frustration. It was a month of literally trying to get a license to be a parent. It was stressful, to say the least. We were "paper pregnant" and just sitting back waiting to be told what to do next and who to go see for the adoption agency to move forward on our case.
October came around and we were still in the ever so lengthy process of just getting on a list to adopt. It was an emotional roller coaster, but we still had the excitement of possibly adopting a little one!
Then there were tears...
I can still remember where I was and what I was doing when the morning of October 29th came around. I say the 29th because that's when I finally saw the message. She had sent it on the 28th, but C and I were out of the service area camping in the mountains and hunting for elk. I am sure she squirmed in her seat for those 24 hours that passed without me answering because I totally would have!
When my phone alerted me of a message, I was sitting in the backseat of a friends truck. My husband in the passenger seat and our friend in the drivers seat. I was staring at a herd of ~150 elk that were on private property. I was wearing my camouflage and orange sweatshirt, holding a 30-06 rifle, hoping that they'd cross the property lines onto state so we could put some meat in the freezer. Okay, so what, you say. That message was that important that I remember it with that much detail.
It was a childhood friend of mine that reached out to us. The first few sentences brought tears to my eyes. She was like an angel that had been sent to me from Heaven. I just couldn't believe that she reached out to me. I read it silently then handed the phone to my husband. He read it and looked back at me and said, "wow". A few minutes went by until my husband said anything else. He turned to his friend and said, "someone wants us to adopt their baby". I don't remember what else was said, I just know that there were some tears involved and we couldn't stop talking about the possibilities.
She was seven months pregnant when she reached out to us. Her baby was due January 11th. Holy cow! I don't exactly remember what I said, but I sent her a message back telling her that we would like to discuss things and get back to her. She understood. Just because we were ready to adopt didn't mean that we didn't have things to discuss as a couple, especially since now we would personally know the birth mother - this would throw some challenges our way. We couldn't even concentrate on our hunt that day. We were both so excited, my husband more so than me. I could tell I had my guard up, as I didn't want to be hurt again.
We went home that night and just talked. We talked and talked and talked. We didn't talk about anything other than this unborn child. She knew the gender, but we elected not to know until we decided on what we should/could do. We prayed that night, asking for wisdom and guidance. It took us maybe 24 hours to come to the conclusion of, yes, we will adopt this child.
I honestly don't remember how S, my friend, and my conversations went from there, I just know we had to get the ball rolling and rolling quickly.
My dream of a lifetime was trying to come true. As a whole, we were over the moon with excitement. However, I, personally, was still somewhat reluctant because I was afraid. Afraid of being hurt and heart broken like the many times before.
The next work day C immediately started doing more research and contacting attorneys in Montana and Ohio. This now would become an interstate private adoption, as it would cut out the agency's search and the baby would be born in Ohio with us living in Montana. There were many things left to accomplish, but by being persistence enough, it would hopefully kick things into a higher gear. The agency that we were working with couldn't believe our news, but they really started to move quicker on things. We got our home-study finalized and most of our fingerprints/background searches back. (We were both military so they needed one for every state that we had lived in since we were 18! It ended up being like 15 states total...).
Nearly every attorney in Ohio that C reached out to refused to do an interstate adoption, the last on the list was our last hope and she agreed to take on the challenge! Moving on to Montana, we ran in to the same thing! We finally found one that would help us, but she was reluctant. It was nerve wracking! We had now hired 2 lawyers and an agency to help us in this just to find out that we needed one more lawyer. We were to pay for the birth mother and father's lawyer. That's three lawyers and an agency. That's four entities that we were financially responsible for. FOUR.
We quickly came to realize that this would be a very expensive process, which we knew, but didn't really know. We were panicking. No idea where we would get this money from or how. Sure, we both had full time jobs, but we don't make enough to fork out that amount of cash in such little time. (If it had been over a longer period of time, like we were expecting, we could have handled it; but babies don't wait for us to be financially stable!). I, being the "finance manager", as my husband says, crunched some numbers and finally decided that we needed to ask for some help. We aren't the type to ask for help, but in order to get this thing done we had to at least reach out and try. Boy, was that hard to do. It did a number to our pride, but it takes a village, right? We not only needed help on those expenses, but now, travel expenses. How will we get across the country to pick the baby up? Or stay in a hotel? I kept reassuring C (and myself) that this stupid money thing would just be a drop in a bucket once we were holding our baby. My mom mentioned setting up a GoFundMe account and soon thereafter did. We had a great turn out of many friends and family who donated! It really helped and we were (and still are) very grateful!
Of course the, "what if she changes her mind?" question came up many many times. Not only between C and I, but it came from our family and friends. It was something we ran by our lawyers. Even after the money is forked out, she still had, by law, 72, seventy two hours to change her mind after the baby was born; that's THREE DAYS. The money would not be refunded and we would be empty handed and probably in debt. It was a risk we had to take, however, what helped me the most is S bringing up this situation. She had told me more than once that she wasn't changing her mind. The baby was to go home with us. It was helpful to hear her tell us that, but it's always a thought that lingers in the back of your mind. She had told us to go ahead and get the nursery ready. We hadn't purchased anything but one outfit. It was a gender neutral outfit that I had bought when we decided on adoption. It was time to find out the baby's gender and it was time to hustle on getting prepared for this baby!
We requested S to send us a sealed envelope of the baby's gender so we could do a gender reveal. My husband kept telling people that he wanted to do this just as if I were pregnant. He knew how important this was to me and wanted it to be just as special. Out of respect of S and so many of our mutual friends, we hadn't really told anyone that we had found a baby. Our closest of friends and family were the only ones that knew anything. I made up a special group for our gender reveal and made sure we did a live feed of the event. So, with the help of our friend (the very first one to know anything) we had an explosive target set up with blue or pink colored powder inside to shoot at. My husband took out his rifle and went to work. We were so incredibly nervous. With C already having a daughter, we were secretly hoping for a boy, but we would be happy either way! Boom. The first round was shot. No explosion, but he nicked the bag of powder (thank goodness! to his defense, his rifle wasn't zeroed in at 100 yards hahaha) and a blue cloud appeared!! We were overjoyed! We both cried, hugged each other, jumped for joy, and smiled the biggest smile of happiness. We were getting a little BOY! Malachi Samuel.
To be continued...
Click for Our video announcement.....
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