5 Hours

Dec. 3rd, 2005 at 3:33 PM

5 hours: that’s how long I talked to our birth mother(*) yesterday. How do I make a long story short? If I knew that, Max and countless other friends would be insanely happy.

After two false starts and one vague idea, we had a meeting with an expectant mom who, apparently, really loved our profile. After talking to her for about an hour, our adoption counselor (M) said we needed to get off of the phone. We exchanged email addresses with S and said good-bye. During the meeting, we felt that M was far too interested in retelling her story of placing her baby for adoption. We were tiptoeing around because no one told us that the match was a go. We finally talked to M the next evening: Yes, S does want to place her baby with us!

We emailed back and forth a couple of times. I had a lot of questions about what happens at the hospital that much no one I asked could address. We were told that we would get medical records of S’s pregnancy, and an ultrasound. Calling and emailing M didn’t seem to do any good. Finally, M called us and freaked me out. S wanted to have the baby in Missouri, where she lives, instead of Kansas, which has more flexible adoption laws than MO. The county that S lives in will not allow out-of-state couples to adopt. M is going to put us in touch with a lawyer, blah, blah, blah. The result is that S has to change hospitals, and, according to M is moving in with her mom (as opposed to her dad). We still don’t have any medical records, not even the legally required proof of pregnancy. It’s not that we expect anything to be wrong; we want to know the due date, what kind of prenatal care S has been getting, and it would be nice to have a copy of the ultrasound picture. We finally get ahold of M, and she’s fairly useless. She does offer to call S and ask if we can have her phone number. Max and I tell M that she can give our number to S.

S calls about an hour later, just as I’m about to go into the hot tub. For the next three hours, I pace around the living room/office in a bathing suit and towel, talking and listening to S. We babble about a lot of stuff, some adoption-related, some not. S sounds like my friend Theresa, with a little of Paula thrown in. She loves to say the word “ornery,” only, with her accent, it sounds like “awrny.” It’s awesome! That’s the word I used a bazillion times: “Awesome!” Because it was. It was like the epic conversations with Annemarie in high school, or with Joanne now. S is younger than we are, but I never really thought about that during the call.

With regards to the adoption, she asks for letters and pictures. She asks if it would be too much to send him birthday and Christmas cards. Of course not! Later, she mentions visitation, and I tell her that we could arrange to see each other once a year or so. She thinks it might confuse the baby. I don’t know. As we tell each other constantly over the phone: I haven’t done this before.

S is happy at the idea that I want to make a “First Family Face Book.” Our baby will have so many family members to love him. That’s what S wants him to know the most. She asks that we tell the baby why she needed to place him as soon as he’s old enough to understand. When I relay this to Max, he tells me: We’ll tell him before he knows words. I should have said that. What I did say was: Of course we’ll tell him. And we intend to put a photo of her in the nursery, and how we think that she’s the most selfless person we’ve encountered.

Talking to her, it becomes apparent that she has wanted to talk to us. Our counselor (remember M?) never told us that she wanted our number. She also told S that, if we didn’t get the medical records, we were going to change our minds. The only even remotely good thing about this is it got S to call us. When I heard that, I was livid. I had no idea why M would want to scare S so badly. S briefly thought of breaking off ties with the agency. Instead, on Monday, I’m going to call our initial counselor and see if she can help.

Back to the call: S tells me about her pregnancy and the baby kickboxing. I make cute noises and apologize for being too excited. She says that she likes to know we’re excited, and would be upset if I weren’t. We finally get off of the phone only because I have to go to the bathroom.

Max and I have an early dinner/late lunch at 4pm, during which I mostly talk about the phone conversation with S. The phone rings again around 7pm. S has called to tell us that she’s talked to her mom about our conversation, and everyone is now happy to be on the same page. I end up spending an hour on the phone with S’s mom. Now I know where S gets her strength. Her mom is incredibly supportive, and sounds like a neat lady. Earlier, S had told me that her mom said that we looked like cool parents, thanks to the profile scrapbook. S’s mom tells me that I have to teach her how to scrapbook. The three of us are now excited about coming to MO a little bit early to meet up and see the sights.

All of this makes me want to call S again. It’s 6pm her time now — dinner time. Maybe not. But having the option is reassuring. The past couple of weeks, between the legal issues and the M issues, I’ve been thinking that this isn’t going to happen. Now, I am far more sure that we will be bringing our baby home from the hospital next month.

Wow.

* The term birth mother isn’t technically correct until the baby is placed. To avoid confusion, I’m using here to mean the woman who wants to give us her baby.

Current Mood: ecstatic
Current Music:People Are People, Depeche Mode

Holding to the Ground

Trying to keep sane as the rules keep changing

5 Hours

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