The rest of the story

As I promised Seriously?! during our adoption interview project, here is a bit more of Isaac's story.

If you've not read this post, Isaac William, or about our Whirlwind month, read those first, then come back and read the rest of this post.

While we were waiting for a match, we were entertaining the idea of taking in a foster placement.  The baby was still in utero at the time, but we had met with the caseworker and they were taking immediate custody once the baby was born.  We knew the baby's biological siblings, and loved them.  To make a very long story short, and without getting into many details, we never felt peace with this decision, even after many many prayers.

I was home alone when I got the phone call that we were matched.  To be honest, I wasn't quite sure how to react, since we knew we wouldn't be able to take both the foster placement and the match.  For so many months, we had been discussing the foster placement, as the baby came closer and closer to term.  I told our agency I needed to talk to Travis.  I drove to his office and just sobbed.  We called the agency together, and found out some more details of the match.  In any other situation, we would have been thrilled, but the foster baby weighed heavily on our heart.  It was about 3pm on Tuesday, and we asked for some time to talk and pray about it.  They gave us until 8am the next morning, and then they would need a decision so they could either plan the match meeting, or re-match the birth family.

We prayed, and cried, and talked.

At the beginning of the year, when we found out about the foster placement probability, we decided then, that no matter what, we wouldn't jeopardy a match with our agency for this possible placement.  We kept coming back to that comment during our discussions.  It was almost as if God was trying to tell us "No, you are not supposed to take that foster placement, what do I have to do, put another baby in your life?!"

We made the decision late that night to accept the match, and then called the next morning to let them know.  This is Wednesday, if you're keeping track!  The baby boy was due August 10th.

They set up a meeting for that Friday.  It was an 8 hour trip there, so we left EARLY that morning.  After our failed match, to say we were uncertain would have been an understatement.  We arrived at the restaurant and changed clothes (we were in 'traveling clothes', yoga pants and sweats).  The local caseworker and the agencies domestic supervisor met us about 1/2 an hour before his birth parent's met us.  It was nice to get to know the caseworker (we hadn't me her before), and get a bit of her history with them.

The lunch went well.  We defiantly wern't BFF's, but there was a mutual respect, and appreciation I think.  They were both well spoken, and had made some decisions about the birth, and their plans at the hospital.  The night before, she had a dream, and she saw the baby's eyes, and wanted to keep him.  That reinforced the idea that she didn't want to spend time with him at the hospital.  She said she knew she was going to be emotional, and didn't want the emotions to get in the way of the decision she already made.  We could respect that.  They told us of their desire to have a semi-open adoption, and we told them if at any point, they wanted to have a fully open one, we were ok with that.

We left lunch (three hours later!) taking a few pictures, and then we said our goodbyes.  On the way home, we talked a bit about how we felt.  They seemed to have a better plan on how to deal with the emotions they would be going through.  But we were just sorta in suspension.

We had been burned before.  We had gotten to excited.  We planned to much.  We weren't going to let that happen again...

We found out less then a week later, when she went on Thursday for her ultrasound that we were not going to have an August baby, but he would be coming soon.  Her amniotic fluid was low, so they were sending her for an induction.  We quickly made arrangements for our dogs, and headed out about Midnight so we would be there about 8am.  She labored through the night, but didn't progress much.  We found our hotel, and were able to get into our room early and slept for a few hours.   I think the rest of the story picks up on this post for his birth story.

Since then, we haven't had any contact with his birth parents.  We've sent a letter at 1 month and 3 months, and I just sent off a Thanksgiving card that has his feet prints as the turkey feathers.  They were going to move, and didn't want anything forwarded to them until they got settled into their new place.  I've found them on facebook, and I saw that they just moved, so hopefully we'll have a letter back from them by the first of the year.