Guarding Our Hearts and Getting Excited

That night we became expecting parents with a birth mom. Wow! Life is good!

We continued to email and text our expecting mother. We shared with her our excitement and our family and friends excitement for us.

I was trying to be cautious of getting too excited. I didn’t want to go all out on buying baby stuff, just in case there was a change of events. I guess I’ve heard too many failed adoption stories (when people find out we are trying to adopt they tell us stories of who they knew who adopted, whether it is good or bad. Some advice for people, don’t tell us those bad stories). I was trying to guard my heart. But how could I? We were so excited! So happy! Everyday just brought us closer to being parents. And everyone around us has seen us wait so long to have a baby that they were just as excited for us and wanted to buy us baby stuff too.

Before long I was clearing out our office to turn into a nursery. Then it filled with a crib, a rocking chair and a changing table. I didn’t plan on getting a nursery ready. We thought, we’ll just get a car seat for now and buy the rest when we bring the baby home. But our expecting mother was so firm in her decision to adopt, and everything about this felt right. This felt like our baby. And I love to plan, so I wanted to have stuff ready for when we brought him home. It didn’t help either that when we were at the store we’d walk past the baby aisle and we would both be drawn to it. I saw how excited Daniel got looking at baby stuff and finding things he wanted to get for our little guys. It melted my heart.

It was baby season in our families and with our friends. There was at least one baby born a month and for once our hearts didn’t break when we saw them. It was exciting because we were seeing the cousins that our little guys would grow up with. We were seeing what we would have in a short time, a baby, a family.

We were able to visit our expecting mother one more time. Daniel was missing getting to do all the parent/dad stuff, so he asked her if we could come to a doctor appointment with her and maybe see an ultra sound and hear the heartbeat. She is such a sweetie and said yes we could. Her appointment wasn’t until the afternoon, but we all wanted to spend time together as friends. She suggested we go to the lake, which was perfect. It was warm out, the lake wasn’t busy; we got to have a fun, relaxing time. At the doctor appointment we got to meet her doctor and talk with him. They even were able to do a quick ultra sound just for us. The baby’s head was down and he was being bashful so we didn’t get to see much besides the top of his skull and his spine. The doctor pointed out a fist too. It was really neat, getting to see that. The only ultra sounds I’ve seen are of my non-ovulating empty ovaries. So this was much better. You could see rib shadows and blood pumping through his arteries. She was so great to share this experience with us, we are just so grateful.

After the doctor appointment we were able to take her and her mom out for dinner and visit some more. We made sure to take some pics of her and us since we forgot to the first time we met. We talked about names and about everything she was going through.

Summer has a way of going past way too fast, but expecting this baby made it fly by. We did a lot of fun things this summer. It is nice having summers off. Daniel did some farming, but the rest of the time we were helping do projects at his mom or grandma’s house. And we watched bands and fireworks, went camping, boating and picked huckleberries. We took motorcycle trips with our cousins. The truth is we were trying to keep busy, waiting for the birth due date. We packed our travel and hospital bag and kept them in the car. We were ready and waiting for that phone call from her saying that she was in labor.



Here are a few pictures of us keeping busy this summer.






Playing with family and listening
to the band before the awesome
 fireworks show.



Out on the lake with the family.
Enjoying summer, wakeboarding,
tubing and swimming.

Hahahaha! This picture is so funny!
His head fits so perfect in there.
 Oh it is so weird/creepy/funny!
We love going to the fair with
family.





Camping - we left the rain fly off the
tent so we could look at the stars.
And that's our dog, Diesel.



Picking huckleberries. It was a good
year for them, we hit the jackpot.




Open road on the motorcycle.

Our cousins and motorcycle buddies.

Looking cool in our leathers and bandanas.








The Blind Date

Have you ever been on a blind date? Have you ever had an interview for your dream job? Have you ever had a dream about going to school without your clothes on? Have you ever been on a crazy rollercoaster? Or puked after a really long, hard run? Can you remember the excitement of Christmas morning as a kid? Well, add all those emotions together and you might get close to how we were feeling the day of our meeting.

The plan was to take her out for dinner. A good spot to chat and see each other in person. We told her to invite whoever she wanted, that way she’d be comfortable too. Well, as comfortable as anyone can be. And if things were going well we’d go miniature golfing after dinner.

We got to the restaurant at the same time as her. I was so nervous, I’m not good at selling myself, but luckily Daniel is a people person and can put anyone at ease. We knew who each other were from pictures. She had brought some family along. This also made me nervous because not only do we have to impress her, but we also have to win the family over, especially the ones who aren’t thrilled about her decision to adopt. Seriously, it was like a first date on steroids. I only had like five bites of food because my stomach was so knotted up from all my anxiety. But even with how awkward I felt, things were going good. It was fun to meet her in person. It was nice to chat and get to know each other more.

By the time we headed over to mini golf I was letting go and just enjoying myself. Danno was charming the pants off of everybody. We all were having a really fun night. Her family eventually headed home and it was just us and her. The conversation turned more personal after her family left and we talked about her plans for the baby, the birth father and how her family felt.

“We are going to be turning off the lights and locking the door,” the mini golf attendant told us, trying to nicely kick us out. It was late and the place was closing for the night. We had spent the whole night just talking. This night had gone very well.

Then it happened.

We were walking out to the cars and she said she had something for us. Then she handed us a gift basket full of baby stuff she had gotten for us. She was telling us…

…WE WERE GOING TO BE PARENTS!

She had chosen us! She loved how we had similar interests as her, but more importantly, that Daniel was involved.

Shock. Pure Shock. I squealed, Daniel stood like a statue. I hugged her and thanked her, then Daniel hugged her and I didn’t think he’d ever let go. How do you ever express the feeling that we had. Someone had just chosen us to raise their child. We would finally get to be a mommy and daddy. Daniel has wanted kids his whole life and tonight this beautiful, kind young women told us the best news in the world.

Never in a million years would we have guessed that our first meeting would have ended like this! We had been chosen for adoption. We would have a baby in less than two months. Happy, Happy, Happy! We were so happy! That night we texted our family and friends to share the good news; we were expecting parents with a birth mom!

These are the items that were in the
 gift basket she had given us telling us that she
had chosen us as the adoptive couple. Isn't it so adorable?

Happiest night ever!! So happy and
deleriuosly tired. Not the best picture, but
we wanted to document that night.

 

Popping the Big Question

Seven days. It had only been seven days since we had responded to the first email. But things had really progressed in a week, we had a new friend. We decided to pop the big question: Do you want to meet?
I know it seems fast to be offering to meet, but we felt like it was the right time. And since she lives in a different state and we were going to be in that area in a few weeks we thought we'd ask. And she said sure!
The plan was to meet up after we got back from vacation. We had standby plane tickets to Peru, but as luck would have it we never were able to get on the flight from Florida to Peru. We called up our prospective birth mom and asked if we could move the date up. She was cool with that. So instead of our ten days in Peru, we got a week vacation in Florida and meeting her sooner. Obviously we wanted to go to Peru, but we still had a great time in Florida. Our hotel was right on the beach and we got to go to Universal Studios and Harry Potter World. But the best part about our plan change was that we got to meet our prospective birth mom sooner. Honestly, she and adoption was all that we could focus on anyways.

Sunny Beautiful Florida

The beach by our hotel

Hogsmeade at Universal Studios

Hogwarts Castle

Waiting for a Reply

PURE AGONY: waiting for her reply. Luckily she didn't take as long as we did to respond. It was two days later.
I was at work and had been checking our email every hour, you know, just in case. I got back from lunch and, of course, I checked my email. There was one from her! I opened it up, but didn't finish reading before I grabbed the phone to call Daniel's classroom and tell him we got a second email.
I could tell he was very excited, but he couldn't read it until he finished working with some students. I was able to calm down enough to finish reading the whole email. I was ecstatic! I couldn't take it anymore; I went down to Daniel's class and pulled up the email on his computer so he could read it as soon as he was done.
He was just finishing up what he was teaching when I came in. He asked me if it'd be okay if he told the class. I said he could, the class knew we were trying to adopt. His class was so happy! Someone asked if it was a boy or girl, we told them it was a boy. All the boys were so happy and the girls were disappointed. They each hoped we'd name the baby after them if we got the baby. So cute.
It is a good thing we got the email towards the end of the day because neither of us could focus, we were just so giddy.
This second email had lots of info about herself. It felt very honest and open. All the questions we had wanted to ask her, but didn't feel we should yet (like age, location, how far along in the pregnancy she is), she answered in the email. We couldn't be more exited! She honestly could fit right into our family with all the thing she likes and does.
We made sure to write back that very night, we didn't want another pause or she might think we weren't interested.
We couldn't stop thinking about her and adoption. A few times when I was bored at work I'd sneak a peek at baby stuff online. We told a few family and a very few close friends about our good news.
From there we started to create a relationship with this prospective birth mom. We emailed back and forth every few days. She told us that there were other couples that she was getting to know besides us. This scared us because we didn't want any competition, but at the same time we were glad that she was because if we were her couple then she would never have to wonder who else is out there. If I were in her place of course I'd want to talk to multiple couples so I knew I had the right one in the end.
Every email got easier to write. Yes, we still agonized over everything we wrote and obsessively panicked as we waited for her reply and read each of her emails a hundred times. But we were creating a friendship with this girl. I was glad that there was a connection between us because we all wanted an open adoption and this bond would make that easy.

The Day Our Lives Changed

This is going to be a hard story to write. I will be opening my heart to you and making my heart break all over again.

Memorial Day, May 26, 2014

"Daniel! We got an email!"
"Umm...Okay."
"We got an email from a girl!"

This was the day our lives changed.

We had been camping for the holiday weekend with some friends and their kids up by the lake. It had been a fun weekend, but we got rained out the last day so we packed it up and went to our friend's house that Monday. I was on their couch checking email when I saw one from a girl through LDS services. I was so excited I screamed and shouted out to Daniel.
It was a short email, just saying she'd like to get to know us better, but we read it over and over. She had sent the email on Wednesday night. I was stressed that we hadn't seen it soon enough and had lost our chance. We needed to respond quickly and explain why it took us so long to respond. Luckily we had a good excuse - camping. Monday afternoon we went home and composed a letter.
That was probably one of the most stressful letters we've ever had to write. We wanted to sound interesting, not pushy or way too excited (like we felt), and really we had no idea what to say. This was the first girl to contact us about adoption.