Sam’s Adoption: Part 1

I have been pretty quiet on the blog so far this year. There was a lot happening, most of which I wasn’t ready to blog about yet. Now that we’ve had some time to process everything and are getting settled in as a family, I’m excited to invite you in to hear more about the last few months!

First, a little disclaimer: For the sake of simplicity, throughout this post I will be referring to Sam’s birth mom as his birth mom or birth mama because at the time I’m writing this, the termination of parental rights have been signed. Throughout much of the timeline in this post and those that will follow, she is still an expectant mother considering an adoption plan and we respectfully referred to her accordingly. I will also be omitting parts of this story that are sensitive or private to Sam, his birth mom, or us to protect everyone’s privacy.

Now let’s get to it!

This is our adoption story. It includes only our perspective, and I’m aware there are two other sides (Sam’s and his birth mom’s) to this complex story that knit our lives together, but those aren’t mine to tell. I’m writing it here in part to share with all of you who have been so supportive on our infertility and adoption journey. I’m writing in part to help myself remember all that has happened, and most importantly, I’m writing this for Sam. I hope he will read it one day and know how absolutely loved and wanted and adored he is by us and his beautiful birth mama and birth family.

I’d like to start this post back in May of 2021. We went to Chicago for the first time in almost a year to celebrate Mark’s Nana’s 100th birthday with a drive-by party. It was so fun seeing everyone!! I was doing a silly challenge over on our adoption Instagram account where I wore a dress or skirt every day in May to help combat the lazy dressing (hello stretchy pants) I’ve been doing since early in the pandemic.

We were also approaching the milestone of being a waiting family with our adoption agency for nearly 2 full years. I was beginning to wonder if God was closing the door on adoption for us. Feeling discouraged, we revisited whether or not embryo adoption might be the path to which God was leading us to grow our family. I know this might be confusing for some of you to hear, as we previously mentioned we decided not to go down that path. (See our original post for why we decided against it at that time.)

After praying about it more, speaking to our physician for medical guidance, consulting with a trusted priest to get his advice on the morality of such a pursuit, and reading a lot from bioethicists on both sides of the issue — we decided to do it. I hinted we were considering other types of adoption back in January of 2021 and this is what we were exploring. We even signed up with an agency to start the process. We paid our first fee and completed all the paperwork. We were days away from calling our original adoption agency to let them know we needed to be put on hold, as it was the embryo adoption agency’s policy that we couldn’t pursue regular adoption and embryo adoption at the same time.

We ended up having a conflict with the embryo adoption agency and ultimately decided to part ways and look for an alternative agency. I won’t bad mouth the specific agency on my blog, but if you’re considering embryo adoption, I’m happy to speak with you privately about what happened. It is the delay caused by this conflict, which I will admit felt devastating at the time, that allowed us to still be active clients at our adoption agency and therefore eligible to be considered as prospective adoptive parents when Sam’s birth mom found us.

It was an ordinary weekday afternoon when we received the phone call. Mark and I were both working from home in our separate offices. I looked at the caller ID on my phone and was surprised to be hearing from our adoption agency. Was it already time to renew our home study again? (It nearly was.) Did we owe them a fee I’d forgotten about? It’s almost as if after 2 years of waiting to hear we were chosen by an expectant mother, it no longer occurred to me that’s what they could be calling to discuss.

But they were. We were chosen to walk alongside an expectant mother considering adoption. We were overjoyed to be considered. Initially it was probably more like 50% joy and 50% shock. Was this really happening?!?! It was wild to feel slightly panicked at the thought of becoming parents given we’ve been eagerly waiting for most of our 14.5 year marriage to grow our family. After hanging up with the agency, we immediately video called our parents on a joint call to share the news. We were being considered as adoptive parents for a baby boy due in September!! There were tears of joy all around.

The director of the agency sent over some information for us to review about the expectant mother, what she was looking for in a family, etc. We replied to let the agency director know we wanted to set up a time to meet Sam’s birth mom face-to-face.

I was more nervous for that meeting than I have been for any other first meeting, date, interview, or anything else in my life! What if she didn’t like us or thought we were weird? What questions were appropriate to ask? What do you even wear to this kind of meeting? My fears quickly subsided on the day of our meeting when we all gathered around the big conference room table to discuss the future of one very precious little boy.

Sam’s birth mom was wearing a butterfly necklace (a symbol our family warmly associates with a deceased loved one) and even her first name had a special meaning to us and brought us great peace. In our meeting, she generously let us look at some of her ultrasound photos of baby Sam. When we asked why his birth mom was considering us, we learned she saw our profile on the agency’s website. She said right when she saw our profile, she knew we were the family she wanted to choose for her son. We were very humbled by this and so grateful God allowed our paths to intersect. At the end of our meeting, we exchanged phone numbers and started texting each other the very next day.

In the next couple months, we chatted a few times a week via text. We talked about all sorts of things — everything from how we were doing that day to baby names we all liked. I wanted to text Sam’s birth mom every single day about 100 times to get to know her more, but had been advised by some other birth moms to text pre-birth at a cadence I felt I could keep up after birth so the expectant mother didn’t feel we abandoned her after she placed her baby with us if the texting cadence went down a bit. This was very good advice because now that I’m a sleep deprived new mama, texting multiple times a day with anyone is tough to manage!

Part 2 coming soon!