From the time I was a little girl, I just wanted to be a mom. In fact, when I learned that I could graduate high school in just three years and head off to college, I did. I was all in on getting my Mrs. Degree. I met my husband at college, and after a few years, we were engaged and shortly after, married.
He was in grad school and I was ready to be a mom. It took us five years to get pregnant with our firstborn. We endured unexplained infertility. The journey was filled with IUI, IVF, miscarriage, and loads of tears.
We considered adoption as we entered our last and final round of IVF. The IVF worked and we soon learned that we were expecting our daughter. We had two more daughters with no assistance within the following three years. Having three kids in four years was a lot, and we stopped talking about adoption.
Once the girls were all in school and we had more time back in our lives, we started to dream about adoption again
We talked to the girls about it in the summer of 2015. All agreed that we were ready and excited to move forward. We researched agencies and found Hope Cottage in Dallas. This agency was local and we loved that it did a lot of education along the way — both for us as an adoptive family, but also for the birth family as well.
We started the home study process alongside the AES (Adoption Education Seminars) in September. We learned a lot about adoption and I loved the education surrounding open adoption. We were in the infant adoption program and were warned that it could be a long wait. We completed our home study and we were approved in early November.
We received our first call about a possible match for a baby girl
We waited all week and then were told that her birth mother had chosen another family. We were heartbroken but also encouraged that we had gotten a call so quickly.
On December 4, we got the call we had been dreaming about. The call wasn’t as much of a “Would you like your profile shown?” but rather “We have a baby boy for you!”
I was shell-shocked
I called my husband who was at work and… he didn’t answer. I texted him “9-1-1” and still no reply. Little did I know he was in the middle of a sales presentation and his phone was in his laptop bag on silent. So I said yes. We were to pick up this little bundle of joy the following morning. WOW!
We had decided early on that we were not going to tell our daughters that we were chosen until we had the baby in our arms. We wanted to protect them in case something changed at the last minute. They knew we were adopting — just not how it would all play out.
So we decided to keep it a secret for one more day
We got them to bed that Thursday night and I snuck off to the store to buy all of the things that we needed. We had very little already on hand. We hid it all so they wouldn’t see it when they woke up the following morning. After sending them off to school, we got it all out and got the house baby-ready, then off to the hospital we went.
Upon arriving at the hospital, we were told that the baby needed to do a car seat test due to his size. This meant that we got to snuggle him for a few minutes but then had to then sit in the waiting room while he sat in the car seat monitored for the next 45 minutes. Those 45 minutes felt like a lifetime. We tried to come up with a plan on how we would tell our three daughters about their new baby brother. We scoured the internet, checked Pinterest, and asked our family and friends for ideas. We came up shorthanded.
After arriving home, we only had a few minutes before the girls would be home from school
I was sitting with him on the couch when the doorbell rang and before answering it, my husband suggested I put him under the Christmas tree. I gently slid him near the tree and sat close by.
The girls came in, and one by one were elated to see the precious gift our family had received from a very brave birth mother. One jumped uncontrollably, one cried. It was a precious moment.
We all have viewed these past six years as a gift
Our son has brought so much joy into our home. He is so fun-loving, energetic, and witty, and we are so blessed by the gift of adoption. We know it’s a privilege to be raising him, and although his birth family isn’t ready for an open adoption, he knows he’s adopted, and we hope one day that he can meet both of his birth parents if they all decide to.
