Here I Am Again

It’s been quite a while since I posted. The adoption roller coaster began picking up speed a few weeks after my last post. We got “matched” with a birth mom through an agency we hadn’t planned on working with.

I use quotes because I don’t think you can truly count it as a match unless you’ve confirmed that there is truly a baby. And the agency didn’t. They called and told us “Congratulations, you’re matched!” but left out a few details. Like the fact that they didn’t even have proof of pregnancy yet. Fortunately, we hadn’t committed any money to the situation yet.

The birth mom disappeared, we moved on. Suddenly, a bunch more situations came up that we were presented for. None of them panned out.

Then in July, we got matched with another birth mom. We flew out of state to meet her. She was great, and we really hit it off. The birth father had signed his consent for the adoption months ago and was out of the picture.

The birth mom wanted to see pictures of the nursery, so we did something I swore I’d never do until a baby was home with us – we painted the nursery.

We ventured into shopping for the baby, a boy. We bought $75 worth of supplies to hand-make the announcements, because none of the pre-made announcements we could find were good enough. We washed baby clothes and baby bottles. We packed, loaded up R’s parents’ van and drove halfway across the country.

She had the baby. She called the birth father (but not us) to the hospital. The birth father suddenly had a change of heart, and they decided to keep the baby and raise him together.

Fast forward six weeks. I won’t go into details, but we’ve learned from the social worker involved in the case that “happily ever after” didn’t last long. The birth father is now in jail because the birth mom pressed charges against him. The baby is having a rough start to life, and the birth mom is in a giant mess, but she’s still planning on keeping the baby.

And here we are – a year older, thousands of dollars poorer. And still no baby in sght.