It is hard to even put into words the journey Tom and I traveled for the entire length of 2013 but I wanted to get down as much as I could so I would never forget this amazing journey. In January 2013, Tom and I were frustrated, as we had not gotten pregnant after 2 years of trying. We had all of the necessary tests, underwent some basic fertility treatments, and had several other procedures after which the doctors all insisted “next month would be it”. There was no medical reason found for our infertility – it just wasn’t happening. During this time, 2 of my facebook friends (one, an old friend from Chicago, and the other, one of my professors at Texas Tech) had recently adopted infants domestically. I found myself drawn to their stories, drawn to the pictures of their beautiful babies, and I felt a stirring in my soul that I can’t explain. Tom and I talked about domestic adoption and both decided that before proceeding in that direction, we would have a fertility workup done at Texas Fertility Center. February 2013 we had our appointment with a fertility specialist who insisted he could have us pregnant in 2 cycles with minimal procedures. We were very excited to have a new plan. Before proceeding, part of the protocol was for me to have a genetic testing panel done to see if I was a recessive carrier of some very serious diseases, ones that result in a very short life for an infant. Of course, I barely batted an eye at doing the screening because the diseases being tested for I had never even heard of and knew were not in my family. Imagine my surprise when in early March my tests came back showing me to be a recessive gene carrier of Spinal Muscular Atrophy, a devastating disease that results in infant death as early as 2 months. I took two days off work to absorb this news, as I was very upset and cried for 2 days straight. The next step was for Tom to be tested. If he was also a carrier, then any biological child we conceived would have a 1 in 4 chance of having the disease. If he was not a carrier, we were in the clear. There is about a 2.5% chance that a Caucasian carries this gene. There is an infinitely smaller % that BOTH partners would carry this gene.
Two weeks later, on April 7, 2013, we learned that Tom also carried the gene. I was sitting in my car in the garage when the nurse told me this and I was STUNNED. The nurse asked if she could transfer me to the IVF nurse in charge of embryo testing – I said “no, we are done here.” Embryo testing crossed the line for us. We were DONE.
At this pivotal point in our journey, our Sovereign God clearly showed us that we were to MOVE ON from fertility treatments and pursue ADOPTION. The direction that we had prayed for, the writing on the wall, the “sign from God” we had asked to see – it was here. And we felt relief, we celebrated, we ate lobster and drank champagne, because what else does one do when God SHOWS UP BIG?
Just weeks after we received this news from the fertility center, when we were grasping on to hope and to our Faith that the Lord was up to something… somewhere in San Antonio… Abigail Marie was conceived.
I immediately contacted my friends who had adopted domestically to see what agency they used. We wanted an agency in Texas so we didn’t have to worry about putting a newborn on a plane after placement. Plus, Texas has some of the BEST adoption laws and a 48 hour birthmother relinquishment period. My professor at Texas Tech recommended Adoption Angels in San Antonio – he and his wife were very happy with them and their precious son was proof enough. Tom and I drove down in mid April to meet with the agency and immediately started the adoption process with them. We put together our scrapbook, which would be shown to birthmothers, did all of the necessary paperwork, financial checks, background checks, home study, etc. in record time - by early June, we had received our approval letter. We were in the game. The average wait time to be matched with a birthmother at the agency is 6-12 months, and matching typically occurs when the birthmother is around 20 weeks. So we assumed we still had some time and kind of put it at the back of our minds and celebrated our agency approval by spending a month in Hawaii.
I kept telling Tom all summer that I pictured us with a little Hispanic baby girl with dimples.
Just a little over two months later we received a call that there was a birthmom in prison who wanted to put her baby up for adoption. The gender was unknown, but they did know the baby was 8 weeks exposed to meth and the birthmother was on a low dose of methadone. Because the case was so heavy, the agency was asking couples if they even wanted to be considered for this birthmother. We prayed about it, and decided that we would let God decide if this was our baby. We said yes, please show us to the birthmom (although I was riddled with a lot of anxiety over the case, never felt peace). The following Wednesday (mid August) , the agency called me and I immediately assumed the prison birthmom had chosen us. I took a deep breath and answered the call.
It turns out another birth mom had seen us on the agency website and asked to be matched with us. We said yes! as the birthmother was clean and there were no heavy issues to consider on this one. We were ecstatic – but she was still very early (18 weeks) and had not yet had her 20 week ultrasound – the gender was unknown. We accepted the case, even though we knew we had a long match period ahead of us. For a week after accepting the case, I felt anxious and nervous… uncertain somehow. Was this normal? Am I supposed to feel this even if this is the baby God has chosen for us?
A week later, the match fell through because the birthmom decided to move to Georgia. For some reason, I felt relieved. Also, the prison birthmom had already been matched with another couple, and I felt super relieved. I realized that God had taken us out of the running for the prison case by giving us this other case instead. I felt a strange peace about both cases having fallen through - I knew our YES from God was just around the corner.
We were back to square one and had learned quickly that matches do not always work out. Tom and I realized we needed to be more guarded with the next one and not tell anyone outside immediate family until we were sure it looked promising.
September 17, 2013, we got another call – a birthmom named Lisa had picked us. We received her case file and I immediately felt drawn to her. She was completely clean and not only that, she was in school pursuing a nursing degree. She already had 3 children and was a single mom so she knew she couldn’t care for another child while working full time and going to school. She was fully Hispanic and carrying a baby girl. We were sent pictures of Lisa and her kids. She is beautiful with a captivating smile. Her children are so adorable that my heart skipped a beat. She and her children all have dimples.
Be still my heart.
We had our commitment letter signed and notarized and sent back to the agency via fax within 24 hours. We were on our way. The next step was a phone call with Lisa and the agency social worker on October 2, 2013. I was so nervous I couldn’t eat or sleep for 2 days. The call was short but we got to talk a bit with Lisa and exchanged phone numbers so we could start texting each other. Lisa told me via text the next day that once I started talking, the baby kicked in her stomach and that’s how she knew she had picked the right parents.
I cried tears of joy.
I immediately knew there was something special about Lisa, that she would say something like that to me, so sweet and kind, given all that she was going through. The next day Thursday, October 3, 2013, Lisa texted me to ask if we had thought of names for the baby. I said yes, we liked Abigail, Avery, and Anna (with Abigail being the top choice, but I did not tell her that). I asked her which one she preferred. She immediately texted back and said she liked the name Abigail, and could we name the baby Abigail Marie, as Lisa’s middle name is also Marie?
I cried tears of joy. “Of course!” I told her. We had just named the baby together. And so Abigail Marie was officially named on October 3, 2013. It all started to feel real after that text conversation. And I started to realize that not only was I beginning to love the baby Lisa carried, but that I was also beginning to love Lisa.
Lisa and I continued to check in with one another every few days after our initial text conversation. We had our first Skype call with Lisa on October 21, 2013 and again, I couldn’t eat or sleep for 2 days prior! Only this time I found that I was nervous, yes, but also excited to see her face on the screen and talk to her “in person”. What was first intended to be a brief meet and greet kind of call, quickly turned into a 2.5 hour chat-fest – it was so natural and easy to talk to Lisa. We laughed, joked, showed her the house (as best as you can via skype), talked about life, her dreams, the baby, and everything under the sun. The social worker actually had to come in and tell Lisa we had to get off the phone because she had another meeting. I felt such peace in talking to Lisa, as if we were long lost friends. A lot of this is due to her outgoing, friendly personality, but I also believe that something much deeper was beginning to take root – a bond between she and I that neither one of us ever expected, and one that will never be broken. We talked about what kind of adoption we were looking for (closed or open) and we told Lisa we were interested in having a more “open” adoption situation if that is what she wanted to do. Lisa agreed and we immediately began planning a face to face visit in San Antonio.
We decided on November 8th, 2013 as the day we would meet and I told her to pick her favorite place to eat. She picked Big Lou’s pizza place. A couple of days later she asked if her mom could join us – “of course!”, I told her, as I was super excited to get to meet her mother too. A few days after that, she texted to say her aunt and Grandma also wanted to come. Again, I was very happy to hear this, as it brought us great peace to know that her family was in support of the adoption plan.
The week leading up to our visit with her and her family was one of the longest weeks of my life! I was so excited and SO nervous – I mean, this was the birthfamily of the baby girl we prayed was the one God had chosen for us! The plan was for us to meet Lisa at the agency in San Antonio at 3:30pm that afternoon, so we could have our initial face to face meeting on agency ground (this is standard practice for all birthmother/adoptive parents initial meetings). We got there a few minutes before Lisa, and man was I nervous. The minute she walked through the door, my nerves instantly vanished. Her boyfriend Daniel was with her, along with her two boys Izaiah (4) and Elijah (2), both full siblings to Abigail. We hugged, introduced ourselves, and sat down to chat for a bit. It was just so easy from the get go, we laughed, talked easily, and watched the kids run around. Lisa referred to the baby she was carrying as Abigail and that warmed my heart beyond belief. We left for the pizza place around 4:30pm and arrived just as her family was also arriving. We met everyone – Grandma Josie, Grandpa Manuel, her mother Becky, her father Rene, her aunt Bernice, her niece Angelina, and her 7 year old daughter Mariah. It was like meeting a part of your extended family you never knew you had. We laugh about it later, how we were all so nervous and uncertain of what to expect, but after about 30 minutes, we all settled into the situation and really started enjoying ourselves. At this point in the process, we had no idea if Lisa and her family were Christians. Lisa knew that we were, as our adoption profile has a whole spread devoted to our faith, but she and I had never talked about it other than casual mentions of our church here in Austin.
Imagine our AWE and SURPRISE when Grandma Josie asked us all to hold hands before dinner in the middle of Big Lou’s pizzeria so she could say a blessing over our time together that evening.
I’ll never forget that moment, that prayer, that picture of unity we experienced with Lisa and her family. The rest of the dinner was so much fun – lots of laughs, pictures shown of family, questions answered about our lives, and other things shared with ease and comfort. There was no doubt in our minds that not only had God shown up BIG TIME at the dinner with Lisa’s family, but He was CLEARLY showing us that Lisa and her family were meant to be in our lives... and the idea of having an open adoption with Lisa began to grow in ways we could never have imagined. God was not only calling us to adopt the baby Lisa carried, but also to “adopt” Lisa’s whole family into our hearts and our lives.
What exactly this would look like after the baby was born we did not yet know, but we knew God would figure out the details for us.
I think it took at least 2 weeks after our visit with Lisa before I came down from cloud 9 and settled back into reality. I did know that I wanted to see her again in December so I told her to look at her schedule and let us know what worked for her. At the time, she was juggling work and finals so I didn’t want to press her too much. She made my day by texting me in early December and inviting us to Elijah’s 2 year birthday party at Chuckie Cheese on December 10th, 2013. Of course without hesitation we said we would be there. We drove down to San Antonio on the 10th and had a blast playing at Chuckie Cheese with Lisa and her kids. Her mom and dad were there too and we had some great conversations with them about the adoption. That was the night I was able to bond with Lisa’s mom and listen to her story. Lisa and I also began to talk more openly with each other about what our open adoption would look like after placement. I was once again amazed at how God works – the ease of conversation with Lisa, the level of comfort, trust, and genuine enjoyment we felt in each other’s company. We left that night feeling a strong enough level of belief that this adoption would go through, that I began to look at baby stuff online… the first time in our 3 year journey to being parents that I have ever allowed myself to look at baby stuff.
This was the biggest personal step for me in our adoption journey. With the help of my sister, I started a baby registry and we started to buy the baby basics. Not only was this beginning to feel more real, but I was becoming more invested not only emotionally, but physically as well. I knew in my heart that I owed it to Lisa to trust her in her decision to place the baby with us, as she was trusting us to love and care for her baby for the rest of our lives.
The holidays came and went with Lisa and I checking in on each other as per usual. Lisa’s most recent ultrasound showed her to be measuring a couple of weeks ahead of schedule so we started preparing for an early arrival of Abigail (Lisa delivered early for each of her other 3 children so we knew the chances of her delivering early this time around were high). Abigail’s official due date was February 8th, although Lisa was adamant that she was coming earlier than that based on how big she felt. We started sleeping with our phones right next to us.
On New Year’s Eve, Lisa again made my day by inviting me to have lunch with her in San Antonio. Of course, I was so excited to have one on one girl time with Lisa. We met at Olive Garden on December 31, 2013 and stayed there for 3 ½ hours talking! We talked about absolutely everything – asked questions, shared stories, and got to know each other even better. I left that day thinking to myself, Lisa is my FRIEND. Not just the birthmother of Abigail, but my FRIEND whom I genuinely enjoy hanging out with. I smiled the whole way home.
On the morning of Saturday January 4th, 2014 I received a text from the agency social worker saying Lisa had gone to the hospital the night before with contractions. They sent her home but she was already 1 cm dilated. Tom and were infused with a jolt of adrenaline and spent the whole day getting more stuff ready for the baby. The next morning Sunday, January 5th, 2014 we received a call at 7:30am from our social worker saying Lisa’s contractions were coming stronger now and she was at the hospital, we should make our way down to San Antonio. We jumped out of bed, threw stuff in suitcases and were on our way. We got to the hospital and learned that Lisa was 4cm dilated but that the contractions were slowing down. We knew from her past deliveries that she does deliver her babies extremely fast so we planned on sticking around to see if she progressed any further. The hospital did end up sending her home, but the nurse on call told us the baby would probably be here that week. We decided to get a hotel on the Riverwalk and stay in San Antonio, expecting the baby to arrive any day. On Tuesday of that week we had lunch with Lisa and her boyfriend – since we were already in San Antonio we wanted to spend as much time with Lisa as we could. Still no baby. On Wednesday Lisa asked me to go to her doctor appt with her. That was the first time I heard Abigail’s heartbeat and the tears rolled down my face. What a BLESSING that Lisa had asked me to come with her to that appt so I could experience that. I had prayed all week that God would show me the purpose behind us being in San Antonio just waiting… and it became so clear. This time was for us to continue building a relationship with Lisa and her family. At the Wednesday appt, Lisa’s doctor confirmed that she was 4 cm but indicated she could stay there for a few more days without progression. We again prayed that God would show us a clear sign whether we should head home. God gave us the sign in that I got terrible food poisoning that night and we headed home the next morning, where I stayed in bed for 2 days.
We used the weekend to rest and recuperate but Lisa kept having contractions on and off and insisted that the baby was coming soon. We decided to head back down to San Antonio the following Monday to be close to her and support her during the wait. We were able to spend time with her and the kids at Chuckie Cheese on Tuesday night and again continued to grow the relationship. We were packed to head back home on that Thursday, when Lisa’s mom called to say Lisa was in the hospital with high blood pressure. We went to the hospital right away and spent the whole day and evening with her, laughing, talking, and hanging out. They tested her for indicators of pre-enclampsia, but we would not know the results until the next day. We stayed the night in a hotel and then waited with Lisa the next day, Friday, up until mid afternoon when they confirmed that she was fine and sent her home again. I don’t think any of us expected them to send her home that day and it was disappointing, especially for Lisa who was so ready to have this baby. We drove home feeling a bit depressed from it all… super tired too from hotel living and hospitals.
Monday morning, January 20, 1014 at 6:15am, we received a text from Lisa’s mom – “we are headed to the hospital!” We sprang out of bed and were quickly on our way back to San Antonio, this time praying that the lonely baby seat in the back of the car would come home FULL this time!
We arrived at the hospital around 8am and Lisa was in the process of being admitted to a room. Lisa’s mom quickly informed us of what had transpired the night before – Lisa continued to have contractions and discomfort all through the night and had driven to her mom’s house at 5am that morning to be taken to the hospital. We were all happy because she was now past the 37 week mark, which meant that the doctor could induce her if her blood pressure happened to be elevated again. Lo and behold, we found out soon after that her blood pressure was elevated – we were having a baby today! We went to Lisa’s room to keep her company, everyone was very excited. They broke her water, gave her a little pitocin, and at 1:29pm on January 20, 2014, we heard Abigail’s first cries. We were all crying at that point, it was the most beautiful sound I have ever heard in my life. At that point, Tom, myself, and Daniel (Lisa’s boyfriend) were behind a partition in the delivery room until Lisa was cleaned up. A few minutes later, we were able to come over to her bed and see the baby. Holding Abigail for the first time was completely surreal, like an out of body experience. I can’t even explain what we were feeling at that point, as words do not do it justice. The rest of the day was a blur – Lisa’s family came up to see the baby, Tom and I had a few moments with the baby by ourselves in a room next to the nursery, and we focused our attention on spending time with Lisa and making sure she knew we were there for her. As much as we wanted to soak up Abigail’s beautiful face for hours and hours, we knew that Lisa was to remain our first priority until she was discharged. Adoption is not just about “getting a baby” – this was easy for us to remember, as we had grown to love Lisa genuinely at that point, and our social worker emphasized the importance of giving Lisa the time she needed with Abigail, to say hello and to say goodbye. The great thing about Lisa though, is she wanted us in the room with her the whole time! I mean, by this point, we were all so used to being around each other that it would have seemed unnatural to not be in there with her. Abigail was also in the room and Tom and I did most of the holding, feeding, and changing of her. Lisa did hold her a few times and I wanted her to have that time with Abigail. It was important to me that one day I can tell Abigail how much Lisa loved her from day one, and that Lisa also held and loved on her in the hospital. One of the most special moments we experienced on Abigail’s birthday was when Lisa’s Grandma Josie asked us all to lay hands on Abigail so she could say a pray for us. I will never forget that moment and thinking, WOW, God, WOW!!
With all of that said, Tom and I did not sleep one wink Monday night or Tuesday night. The level of anxiety, nervousness, excitement, adrenaline, vulnerability, and fear that we were experiencing is indescribable. It was the most intense concoction of emotions I have every experienced in my LIFE. We were falling in love with a baby who was not yet legally ours…a baby to whom we had no rights whatsoever… only Jesus could have pulled us through that 48 hours relinquishment period… and HE DID.
Wednesday, January 22nd 2014 at 1:30pm, after 4 months of being matched, 2 ½ weeks of back and forth to San Antonio, 2 different hospital stays, 2 different hotels, one bout of food poisoning, several hours of watching TV in Lisa’s room, way too many meals at McDonald’s, lots of sweat, a few rounds of tears, lots of laughs and love, anxiety and excitement beyond anything ever experienced before, a last minute open CPS case issue that just about sent me OVER.THE.EDGE, and watching ourselves fall in love with a precious little baby girl for whom we had prayed for 3 solid years…
Abigail was made legally OURS. Praise be to God!
After saying goodbye to Lisa (which was more of a “talk to you later!”), we then had to go to the agency and sign a million different papers that we have since had to go back and reread because we were complete zombies at that point. After completing the placement paperwork, we headed back to the hospital to wait for Abigail’s discharge.
You should have seen us trying to figure out how to adjust the straps on the Graco baby car seat, after 2 nights of no sleep and 3 days of anxiety…
Somehow, someway, by the Grace of God, at 6pm on Wednesday January 22, 2014, Abigail Marie arrived home, and my sweet parents were at our house when we arrived to literally hold us up as I ran to my Dad and sobbed in his arms for I don’t know how long.
We were home and our family was complete.
God had answered our prayers. God gave us more than we could ever have asked for or imagined. We waited on the Lord, he heard our cries… mounted us up with wings like eagles… Our strength was renewed, our Faith given new Life. For this child we have prayed… and waited… and prayed… and waited…
And God said, you know what? I’m not just going to answer your prayers for a child, but I’m also going to bring into your life a precious birthmother and birthfamily who you will also love… and I am going to give you an ADOPTION STORY with the potential to impact SO MANY…
I look at my Abigail and have to wonder, if she has already impacted so many lives in just a few short weeks, HOW MANY MORE will she impact throughout the course of her life?
This little peanut is destined for great things
PRAISE BE TO OUR GOD.
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