Saturday

Thursday
Friday

I suppose it's time to finish the story....

We woke up the next morning filled with all kinds of feelings, mostly dread for the phone call the confirmed they were going to parent, but I'd be lying if I didn't say there was also some hope mixed in there too.

Travis was up before me, and was in the computer room.  By the time I woke up, it was about 8:30, and I went and crawled in his lap, not saying anything, because nothing needed to be said.  We stayed like that for a while, and decided that if we hadn't heard anything by a specific time, we would text the case worker.

I texted, and got no response.  We debated going up to the hospital, because if we were gong to take him home, we needed to watch 'video classes', but we weren't really sure.  After wrestling with the what-if's, we decided to stick close to the house, and just wait.

It seems like so much of this process is waiting.  We waited for cycle's to happen, waited to trigger, waited for betas to rise... and then drop.  We waited for paperwork, and approval, and waited to be matched, waited for the next doctors appointment, waited for her induction date, and now, waiting to see, after all the waiting, if we were really going to bring home this beautiful baby boy. 

I jumped in the shower.  I had take my phone in the bathroom, just in case.  Sure enough, as soon as I dipped my head under the water, it started ringing.  I jumped out wrapped a towel around me, dried off my hand and face and answered it.  It was our case worker.  She said "Hello Jennifer..." and then she paused.  I knew.  It was a harder blow then those phone calls saying my betas dropped.  "I'm so very sorry to tell you this, but they have decided to parent."  The tears were already there, and as I ran across the house to where Travis was, he turned around, saw me dripping wet and crying, and started crying too.  I put her on speaker phone, and sat on his lap while we listened. 

She told us that they had really thought about it, but didn't realize it was going to be this hard.  She told us about the chain of events, which started with at text message from BM to the case worker, and the calls between the the case worker, the BM, and the domestic supervisor for the agency (she is the one in our corner). 

It was over.

They were taking him home in a few hours.  Some "friends and family had gotten some things together for them"...

It takes more then a damn trip to Wal Mart to raise a baby.

We hung up, and just sat together, crying. 

We called our parents and told them it was over.  We called our best friends (who had been at the hospital with us the day before).  I called another close friend, who is also an adoptive mamma, but when she answered, I had told the story so much, I couldn't do it again.  I just cried.  She knew what had happened, and just cried with me.  Eventually I got it all out, and said good bye to her.  I started to shiver, so went back in the shower to warm up.  We both crawled back into bed, held each other, and cried.

Looking back, we did a lot of our grieving on Friday, because deep down, we both knew it was over, on Saturday we were more mad at the situation.  That little boy was going to be condemned to the same life his parents had, uneducated (neither graduated high school), unsupported (no family attachments), and stuck.

It would have been better if they told us they had just changed their minds about the family, and had picked a different one.  It would have still sucked, but at least he would have been in a home with two parents, who loved God, loved each other, and loved him.

Our heart breaks for him. 

We don't know why God made us travel this road, to fall in love with this little boy, but He did, and someday maybe we will know.

We see people at church or in other areas of our lives, and they ask us how we are doing.  I don't know.  I often answer, "We're surviving."  because that's the basis of it.  We have tried to get back in the swing of our normal life.  I had so set myself up mentally not to going back to work, so that has been hard, because on the cold mornings when I'm trudging into a new school building, I think "I should be home with a little boy snuggled close to me".  I'm trying to get those thoughts out of my head, because that's not our reality.  Our reality is we still have empty arms, we are still waiting for our child. 

A few days after this, Travis said he didn't know if he could ever use the name Isaac again.  I told him that the little boy we loved on wasn't our Isaac, he was the name his parents picked out (that we were going to use as a middle name).  I reminded him that some day we will have our Isaac. 

Someday.

We've bounced back, and will continue to.  The agency said they were surprised at how well we were doing.  I hate to say it, but it's not the first time we've experienced loss.  We've lost 6 children already, this was our seventh.  The only difference is we actually got to hold him.  But yes, unfortunately loss is something not new to us.  We will get through it.  Together.