Love and Loss {Part Two}

Missed Part One? Catch up here

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I couldn't believe what just happened.  Had I dreamed this? Had I actually just approached a perfect stranger and offered to adopt their unborn child? Am I crazy? Am I brave? Will I ever see her again?  Will she have me arrested?  Committed?  What is Kain going to say? About 487,000 thoughts raced through my head.

Waiting for the doctor, I sent Kain a text that quickly summed up what had just happened and told him that I was shaking and my heart was racing (perfect for getting your blood pressure checked, right??).  We sent each other a few texts and then I settled in for my appointment.  All that was running through my head was "is this for real? Is this for real?"

While I was getting blood drawn after my appointment I received a text message from the woman in the lobby (let's call her "C").  It said, "Can I call you in like an hour so I can tell you my story and we can go from there?"  I almost died right there in the lab.  I got in the car to head home and just started to pray.  I realized that it was the first time I had stopped to talk to Jesus about what had happened in the last hour.  Humbled, I paused before driving just to apologize for not having Him at the forefront of my mind when my life started to change.  The drive home was spent talking to my Savior.  I thanked him, praised him, expressed my fears, pleaded my desires, and ultimately told him that I wanted to live inside of his will.

That afternoon, "C" called me.  We spoke for maybe 20 minutes.  She told me about her life, her two children, her divorce, her wild lifestyle after her divorce, and her completely unplanned pregnancy.  She told me that she had been on birth control and had only found out that day that she was pregnant, having a baby boy, that she was about five months along, and that my note was an answer to her prayers because she knew that she couldn't take care of a baby right now. She asked if I could meet her at another doctor's appointment the next week so we could talk more in person.  She asked a little about our life and why we were adopting.  We ended our conversation with the promise to speak again soon.  I melted into the couch, overwhelmed by the day.  Kain and I sat in silence for a while.

A few days after "C" and I met, I contacted an adoption attorney to gain some guidance and wisdom.  She was wonderful to work with.  She, herself an adoptive mother, celebrated with me on the phone, saying that our story gave her chills.  She pointed me in the direction of a social worker to get our home study started and told me that she would represent us and would find an attorney for "C". I had a plan.  I felt confident and excited.  Everything was falling into place.

I met "C" at the doctor's office for her second appointment.  When I first got there, she hugged me and gave me the baby's first ultrasound pictures.  I was immediately in love with him.  His perfect profile melted my heart.  I traced the shape of his face with my finger over and over, dreaming of what it would be like to stroke that round soft cheek in real life soon. "C" spoke surely and matter-of-factly.  She knew that adoption was the right choice and she didn't want anyone but me (and maybe Kain) in the delivery room.  It was surreal.  It was perfect.  It was overwhelming.

We spent the next several weeks over the moon.  We talked baby names and nursery themes.  We heard from "C" almost every day.  She would text me, send videos of her baby belly rolling around, call to chat here and there.  She referred to him as our baby, not hers, and always called me his mother.  We scheduled another doctor's appointment when she would have a second ultrasound.  We were falling deep and hard for this baby.  We loved him already, in an inexpiable way.

Slowly, we told our family and friends.  Everyone was amazingly supportive.  It was a dream.  When we told our community group, our closest friends sat in our living room and wept in joy with us.  They lifted us up in prayer, they were as supportive as we could hope. Our families reactions were equally wonderful.  No one had anything but encouragement, optimism, and love to offer us.  We soaked up every moment.

Kain and I had a discussion about being excited.  We knew that we had two choices.  We could either: 1) allow ourselves to fall in love with this baby, be excited, tell everyone, and risk the heartbreak if anything would change.  Or 2) be guarded, optimistic, but guarded.  Ultimately, we decided that we would go with option 1 and allow ourselves to be vulnerable and experience all that this situation had to offer.

At the recommendation of our attorney, we quickly contacted a social worker and scheduled our first home study visit.  We knew that things needed to move quickly, we didn't want to wait around to get the process in order, we didn't want to be scrambling at the last minute.

Life was bliss.  We had a baby on the way, and an unbelievable story about his entrance into our lives.  It was just absolutely above and beyond what we could have imagined.

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