Adding Parenthood to the Ol’ Resume

Warning

This post is long so get comfortable (or go ahead and leave, I won’t be mad). I mentioned in my previous post that our lives took a drastic turn when we became parents. It all happened in August 2018 and this is my version of that story.

Thwarted Plans

In my last post I said that we spent our spring and summer training for a 5-day backpacking trip in Washington that was planned for Labor Day weekend. You may have noticed there was no update and no pictures from that trip. In August, fires were wreaking havoc on Washington so I kept checking the trail conditions for our trail only to open the website one day and see a giant notice that the whole thing was closed due to the fires. I continued to monitor in the hopes that they could get the fire contained, but a week before we were supposed to leave I decided to call the USFS in WA and ask what they thought our chances were for doing the hike. He simply said, “not good, don’t come”. We quickly contacted my brother-in-law, cancelled our flights, and decided he would instead book a flight to come to Colorado. Brian quickly put together a couple backpacking trips around Steamboat Springs as a plan B. We were super bummed but glad to still be doing some backpacking.

Monday, August 13

While all this was going on we had been waiting to hear whether or not we’d been chosen by another expectant mother. We got the notification on August 13 that we had once again not been selected and I didn’t handle it well. I spent the next week throwing a temper tantrum at God. Here’s an excerpt from my Adoption journal:

That old saying, “It will all make sense when it happens” is bugging me. Will it all make sense if it DOESN’T happen? I really don’t understand what God is waiting for. I can’t even pray about it anymore... He’s heard all my pleas and prayers and I’ve exhausted all the feelings and thoughts at this point. I’m all out of words, except for one lingering word: WHY?

I just don’t get it. And every time someone says, “We’re praying for you” or “It will happen!” I can’t roll my eyes far enough into the back of my head. I’m over it. 

Literally the day after I wrote that a coworker came to my office and told me she knew of someone who wanted to place her baby in an adoptive home. My jaw figuratively dropped and my heart started to race. She had told this woman all about us and she was very interested. Could God finally be answering my prayers?! Unfortunately, the more I learned about the situation the more worried I got. There were some pretty substantial potential health risks for the baby that were a really big deal to me and I felt terrible for not feeling like it was a good fit.

There I was screaming at God, but when He appeared to respond by handing us a baby my response was, “Wellllll, not THAT one”. Ugh. I started to wonder if what God wanted for us was to potentially be parents to a special needs child and I wrestled with that thought all week. Special needs children are certainly wonderful and worth loving, but I had never processed being the caretaker of someone that would require a lot of extra support. There were lots and lots and LOTS of fears, tears, and prayers (and Googling). I’m talking full on sobbing and heaving all day and all night. I finally cried the last tear my body could muster and got to the point where I was willing to find out more information, trust God, and see what happened.

Tuesday, August 21

While that pile of hot mess was going on in my heart, we got another profile notification from our agency for a baby girl due September 9. I read over it quickly and, because I had spent the last few days working through so many worst case scenarios in my mind, this notification seemed so simple even though there were some potential risks that normally would’ve had us pondering whether or not to pursue it. I told my husband I was on board, he agreed, and we asked to have our book shown for the profile.

A few days later I re-read the notification from the agency more carefully and was surprised how calm I felt about it. Despite the potential risks I continued to feel good about submitting our book, and by the end of the week I was certain we would be chosen. I can’t really explain it but it felt like God was up to something between us having to cancel our trip to WA (which would have been right around the baby’s due date) and the sense of peace I felt about everything. Something was brewing, I could feel it. I started to think the situation my coworker brought forward was a necessary part of the process to help me work through some things so I could feel at peace with the potential risks of this new profile.

Tuesday, August 28

By that following Tuesday the baby was due in 10 days so I knew if we didn’t hear soon it would not be good news and I attempted to prepare myself for more disappointment. I really hoped we’d find out before our trip so I could distract myself with hiking if it was bad news. I told my husband, “If this one is a ‘no’ please just give me a hug and never mention it again” since I had been telling him so confidently for days that we were going to be picked. He left that evening to teach his computer class at the local college and I got cozy at home with plans to enjoy my guilty pleasure, Bachelor in Paradise. Shortly after he left, my phone rang with an unknown number. I normally ignore those calls but I had a feeling (I was full of those ‘feelings’ lately) so I answered it and it was our caseworker. She asked if I had gotten her message from earlier that day and I hadn’t (I never did receive that voicemail), and she asked if Brian was home.

At that point I knew.

My heart started pounding, my palms started to sweat, and my hands started shaking. I told her he was teaching and wouldn’t be home until after 9:30pm and she said she was really hoping to talk with both of us. That was unusual so at that point I really knew and my heart started skipping beats and I broke into a cold sweat of excited nerves. After a little pause, she said she supposed it was okay to talk with only me and told me that we had been chosen to parent the little girl due September 9.

I wish I could say my response was bubbly & joyful like all the movies and videos I’ve seen, but as soon as she said the words it didn’t seem real and I became speechless. She kept asking me if I had any questions but my brain was an empty shell of nothing other than the repeated thought, “we’ve been chosen we’ve been chosen we’ve been chosen we’ve been chosen”. She finally filled the silence by telling me everything she knew about the situation and I scrambled to find paper and write it all down. Since the baby was due in 10 days the expectant mother preferred not to plan a match meeting and would wait to meet us at the hospital.

One thing I learned throughout this waiting process is to be respectful of the expectant mother. The baby remains hers until she signs her Termination of Parental Rights which means there’s always a chance she could change her mind after the baby is born. I really tried to remain calm and collected but I hung up, jumped off the couch, and yelled to the pets, “I KNEW IT!!! I TOLD YOU!! IT’S HAPPENING!!!!” and then I just stood there in silence... with crickets chirping and 4 animals staring back at me like I was nuts.

I was home alone, I couldn’t tell anyone until Brian knew, and he wouldn’t be home for 2 excruciating hours.

That felt like torture until I realized it meant I had some time to figure out a more creative way to tell him. I ran to the nursery and dug out a little baby girl dress we had been given many years ago. I put it in a random box we had lying around and wrote a note that said, “Papa, It’s a(nother) girl!” because all of our fur babies are girls. I didn’t have time for much more but then I got teary again because I never thought I would get to experience being the only one to know we were potentially having a baby since Brian has always been so involved in every step of the adoption process. God is in the details and I felt overwhelmed that He had not only revealed the news of our potential first child that day but had given me the small gift of being able to surprise my husband with that news.

Brian got home and I tried really hard to pretend like it was a normal evening. I played it cool and casually asked him, “How was class?” all while hoping he didn’t have a long response. I impatiently waited for him to finish and then said, “That’s good. I have something for you.” {Brian says it was at that point he knew} I handed him the box and shared the exciting news. Similar to my response, he was very quiet and I think he let out a few overwhelmed sighs as we began to process what this meant and what we needed to do. We called our caseworker together to discuss the next steps and to ask her the questions we came up with. We ordered a carseat, a diaper bag, and a ‘going home from the hospital’ baby outfit online and I spent the evening frantically Googling “newborn babies” trying to learn all I could about the practical side of having a baby in my care. We celebrated before bed with a small nightcap and called it a night.

Eventually we remembered we were leaving for our backpacking trip in 2 days. We texted our caseworker and asked her what she thought. She said she’d hate for us to cancel since the baby wasn’t due for another 9 days. Brian looked into renting a satellite phone so we could be reached in the backcountry and we changed our plans a 3rd time to skip the backpacking and do day hikes instead, while camping in established campgrounds so we could easily end the trip early if needed. My husband was miraculously able to find available campsites even though it was days before Labor Day weekend and we were able to secure a satellite phone so everything was a go.

Thursday, August 30

On Thursday, August 30, we left for Denver to pick up my brother-in-law at the airport. En route we found out his flight was delayed so we spontaneously took a side-trip to Blackhawk & Central City because Brian had some old casino coins in the car from his great uncle and he wanted to see if he could cash them out. Turns out neither casino exists anymore and the current casinos stopped grandfathering in the old coins so it was a bust and we’re out a whole $2 but it felt fun and spontaneous and we got to enjoy the early fall leaves on the beautiful drive. We stopped at a random Polish restaurant we stumbled upon in Denver called “The Pierogi Factory” and had a unique, authentic experience before heading to the airport. Little did we know, that tiny spontaneous trip would be the extent of our “babymoon”.

Spontaneous Exit from the Interstate

Denied.

Central City

He loves when I ask for a selfie

Happy guy eating Polish food

Authentic (our waiter kept stressing it was the real deal)

The sunset on the way to DIA to get my brother-in-law

We gathered my brother-in-law and drove up above Boulder to camp at the Brainard Lake Recreation area. We arrived at about 9pm, set up camp in the dark, talked about our hiking plans for the next day, tested the satellite phone, and went to bed. Our plan was to hike in the area the next day and then work our way closer to Glenwood so we would be nearby if the baby was born early (the baby would be born in Grand Junction, which is 1.5 hours west of Glenwood).

Friday, August 31

At 6:14am the next morning I was abruptly awoken in the dark by the satellite phone ringing. I shot up and grabbed it only to see a text that said, “Baby is here!” Queue the shock.

I shook Brian awake and showed him the phone. He shot up and we both just kept whispering “Seriously?!” He ran to my brother-in-law’s tent to wake him up, and I’m pretty sure I heard him also say, “Seriously?!” and then we scrambled to break up camp. I could not. stop. crying. I wish I could say they were tears of joy but there were a lot of tears of terror mixed in with my excitement. I kept whispering in between my sniffling, “I’m not ready”.

None of the stuff we ordered had arrived yet, I had nothing for this baby and had thought I still had another week to prepare. It didn’t feel good and it wasn’t how I had imagined it going down. If you know me well, I’m a planner and am not a huge fan of ‘winging it’. At one point Brian grabbed me in the midst of my tearful running around and hugged me as the sun rose over the mountains. He reassured me we could do this and after so many years of waiting, I really hoped he was right.

We can do this.

Snagged a photo of our tent on my way back from the bathroom

Pawnee Campground, Site #9

We packed up the car and took off. We were 5 hours away from Grand Junction at that point so it was going to be a long drive. Baby had been born at 4am (she was almost born in the car on the way to the hospital) so it felt like we were 1,000 miles away. My husband had made a playlist of old favorites for our trip and I sat there watching the sun rise and the beautiful scenery fly by as the songs washed over me. Every song took me back to a different memory in our marriage. At one point my brother-in-law pointed out that in the short time we had been on this trip we had driven through each place Brian and I had lived in our marriage and I started crying all over again for new reasons. Our lives were about to drastically change and I felt like the music and seeing our old stomping grounds was God’s way of giving me space to grieve the life that was ending. Our 13 years of marriage sans kids was wonderful, we experienced a lot together and I felt like this was a really beautiful way to gratefully say good-bye to life as we knew it before bravely moving forward into this new phase together. Earlier I mentioned God is a God of details and this was another lovely way He showed up in the details as this very significant piece of our story was being revealed. Considering I ended up with an unexpected 3 days notice, this time was a gift.

Nervous excitement, lots of thoughts.

We arrived at the hospital around noon, met our caseworker at the elevator, and she escorted us to the birthmother’s room. The birthmother was understandably emotional and had gone back and forth on whether or not she wanted to meet us while waiting for us to arrive. She had now decided to meet us, but in an effort to be sensitive and not overwhelm her I wanted to let the caseworker enter the room first to make sure she was ready. I tried to pull Brian to the side so we weren’t immediately visible and he kept pulling me back toward the door to go in. I was frustrated that he kept trying to make me go to the door when I suddenly looked up and realized the caseworker had left the door open and the birthmother was watching our whole awkward interchange…great introduction, Jaime. We walked in (I looked like a lumberjack, because camping), she graciously handed us the baby, congratulated us, and asked us what her name was. It made me feel so vulnerable speaking the name out loud: Adley Mae.

Oh, there you are.

We had decided on the name randomly at dinner the night of our 13th anniversary in July, but we hadn’t shared it with anyone yet. Adley is the name of my 7x’s great grandfather, General Adley Brown, who fought in the American Revolution. When my mom discovered him in her ancestry quest I instantly claimed the name as a potential for a future child because it was unique and I thought it sounded nice for a girl. Mae was chosen simply because it sounded good with Adley, but we later found out this is a family name on Adley’s biological maternal side, which makes me love it even more.

I wasn’t sure if Adley’s birthmother would like it so I panicked and told her we were open to suggestions, but she gently shook her head and said, “She’s your baby”. We spent some time staring at Adley and getting to know her brave birthmother. I wish I could say I was a charismatic, friendly person but I was truly overwhelmed by all that was happening. I’m also an introvert who was in a room full of strangers so I can’t say I’m surprised that I was awkward. At one point I felt like I was failing miserably at expressing my gratitude but I was at a loss for how to remedy it. I had spent years following the adoption stories of others and saw so many tearful pictures of the adoptive mother embracing the birthmother, so I nervously asked her if she was a hugger and she instantly replied, “No.” to which I said, “Thank goodness, I’m not either but I didn’t want you to think I was being rude.” That seemed to lighten the mood a bit (at least for me). After a few moments together, we were escorted to our hospital room to start getting to know Adley and to start figuring out this whole baby thing with the help of the wonderful nurses.

After getting settled, my husband said he was going to go to Target to buy a car seat, diapers, formula, and some baby clothes. I shot a panicked look at him, “You can’t leave me alone with a baby! I have no idea what I’m doing!” I kept having the repeated thought, “I don’t know her” for the first few hours. She felt like a stranger and I kept comparing her features to all the birth-relatives I had just met. Being alone with her for the first time ended up being a sweet, helpful time for me and my confidence. I needed that time where I wasn’t relying on anyone else to care for her and I didn't have anyone watching my every move. It was then I truly felt like her mother and she became my baby. I was amazed at how calm I felt and how I was naturally falling into my role as a mom, I kept thinking, “Oh, this is how it feels. I get it now.” It turns out none of the books I read could truly prepare me for what motherhood feels like. But how could they?

My first time alone with Adley.

Saturday, September 1

We spent one tiring night in the hospital as we were introduced to the eating-every-2-hours-around-the-clock baby schedule. The nurse came in somewhere around 3-4am to take her for some additional tests and asked if I would like her to keep Adley in the nursery for a little while so we could get some sleep. I fought off my first feeling of mom-guilt as I whispered, “Is that an option?” She smiled, nodded, and encouraged me to take advantage of it since there would not be any nurses at home extending that same offer.

Adley was such a tiny little peanut, weighing in at a little over 5 lbs, so her list of tests to pass was a little longer than usual. They had to monitor her blood sugar levels for 24 hours, which translated to them pricking her poor foot every 2 hrs before she could eat. She also had to conquer the “Car Seat Challenge” (I always say that in my head all dramatic and loud like an announcer at a sporting event). They stuck a bunch of probes and wires on her, put her in the car seat, and monitored her for 1.5 hours to make sure her blood pressure and breathing didn’t drop while being in the car seat for a long period of time. Our girl rocked every challenge put in front of her and after one night in the hospital we said our goodbyes to her birthmother, were discharged, and we were home by 5pm on Saturday.

Our posse upon discharge

Home at last

Tired and soaking up the tiny snuggles

Closing Thoughts

I love our story. It’s amazing how quickly one can go from hating their hard story of becoming a mom to adoring every little piece of it. It pains me to say it, but all the cliches that I’ve been rolling my eyes at all these years are true: God’s timing is perfect. It all makes sense when it happens. You will know when it’s the right situation. It’s completely worth the ambiguous wait, the mountains of paperwork, all the money, and all the fear.

Finding Adley was a long road:

• January 2013: Realized pregnancy was not going to happen for us. Started reading about adoption.
• March 2013: Officially decided to pursue adoption. Researched agencies.
• November 2014: Settled on an agency and began the paperwork.
• October 2015: Home study approved and officially a waiting family.
• January 2017: after complete silence from the agency (no profiles), we decided to open it up to foster-to-adopt and became active on the foster family list. We started getting calls but none of the situations felt right.
• June 2017: Decided to part ways with our adoption agency and find an agency that might be a better fit.
• September 2017: Chose a new agency and began the process all over again.
• January 2018: Approved by our new agency and officially on the waiting families list.
• August 22, 2018: Received a profile notification for a baby due Sept 9.
• August 28, 2018: Were told we were selected to be the baby’s adoptive parents.
• August 31, 2018: Baby Adley was born.
• September 1, 2018: Began our journey at home as a family of 3.
• March 15, 2019: Our court date to finalize the adoption.

Six painful years are represented above, for which the painful groaning finally ceased in a span of nine days in August.

Six years of questioning, doubting, hoping, learning, crying, yelling, worrying, maturing, disappointment, and forgiveness. Six years of preparation and transformation so that we could walk forward with our new little one stronger in our faith, stronger in our marriage, and more empathetic toward people with hard stories.

Even though it had a wonderful ending I can’t make myself say I loved the process. I didn’t. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done and it pushed me way past the limits of what I thought I could handle. But I can look back and appreciate the ways God molded me and changed my heart through the refining fire of that process. The person I was in March 2013 was mad about everything. She felt forced into adoption and didn’t want anything to do with a birth family. She wanted someone to give her a baby and she wanted to take that baby and pretend like she birthed it.

I am continuously in awe at the gift Adley’s birthmother gave us; the weight of it hits me often and I cannot fathom how we get to be the recipients of that kind of bravery, love, and sacrifice. I’m so honored that I get to help Adley write her biography and I pray with all my might that I can honor all the aspects of her story in the best way possible. My hope is that she will find equal value in the biological and biographical stories that now surround her.

I cringe when I think about who I was six years ago. I love Adley’s birth family and I want her to love them, too. They are the whole reason she exists, the whole reason I get to be a mom, and they love her so much; how can I not love them? It’s okay that Adley doesn’t have my features and it’s okay that I share the name ‘mother’ with someone else. My hope is that Adley will be able to have some contact with her biological family throughout her life and I plan to support her in that as much as I can. Adoption is amazing. Definitely hard, but amazing.

If you’re still reading, thank you for coming along with me as I relived one of the most invigorating moments of my life. One thing that has been made abundantly clear to us is that we have the best support group surrounding us. The thoughts, words, prayers, support, excitement, and gifts (upon gifts upon gifts) we have received have been so humbling. We truly couldn’t have done this without our communities and I’m fairly confident that if you’re still reading this you are part of that. So thank you. Thank you for listening to me drone on and on, for allowing me to be honest, and for supporting me on my emotional roller coaster journey to becoming a mom. Seriously, thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Here’s to new adventures! (and likely the next hard thing)

P.S. A HUGE shout out to my brother-in-law, who spent his vacation hanging out in a hospital and then fending for himself in our house while we figured out how to be parents. He rocks and gets major points for being the first relative to be there to meet Adley.