Our Second Little Miracle

It’s been nine months since my last blog entry, and eight months since our little world changed again. I have been meaning to sit down and write the story of our second adoption, but the whirlwind and subsequent day to day life of raising two little boys has somehow prevented that from happening.  Until now.  I thought it was time to sit down and finally tell the story of this second little miracle.  I am going to try to keep it as brief as possible, and touch on other aspects of it down the road.  Today, I just want to tell you how it all came to be.  It is such a little miracle.

If you haven’t already read my last entry, written just weeks before this second baby came,  “ComeWhat May and Love It” was about accepting and embracing the fact that I might only ever have one child, and that I was okay with that.  Haha!  I think God has a way of waiting until you have truly given in, before giving you the thing you desired in the first place.  And, after years and years of fighting it, I had truly gotten to that place.  And then…..bam!

aby came into our lives, you should read it.

I think the timeline is kind of funny, so I will share it with you.  My friend, who adopted three children from the same birth mother, messaged me Facebook.  Here is how the conversation went:

May 13

MY FRIEND: Hi Susan. I know u haven't heard from me for a long time, but would u mind giving me your number so I can call you?

ME:  Sure!

MY FRIEND: Hi Susan. I'll call u at around 2pm. If you're not available then, I'll try again later. Not to be mysterious or anything. Just want to talk to you about adoption.

We had a phone conversation, in which she told me that the birth mother of her three children was expecting any day now, and they just couldn’t take a fifth child and would we be interested.  Now, let me tell you that a lot of people might have been super excited.  But, I honestly had no idea that this would really go through.  I mean, the birth mother didn’t even know us.  And, considering our past experience with a failed adoption, and knowing that people had approached us before about “a sure thing” and we had never heard from them again, I did not even think twice about it.  I said yes, we would be interested, and then I thought I would cross that bridge when a paper had been signed.  The mother didn’t have a due date since there had been no prenatal doctor visits since very early on in the pregnancy. 

A week passed and I got this message on Facebook:

May 20th

MY FRIEND:  Hi Susan. Just wanted to update u. I still haven't heard anything from ####, the Birth mom. I spoke to ####'s mom this morning and she hasn't heard anything as well. Sorry for the delay of information. Hope all is well for you.

ME:  No problem. Like I said before, we are used to things not coming through so we aren't holding our breath! But, thanks for thinking of us. I talked to our adoption social worker and she said it would be a private adoption, so we would have to figure out how to pay for it. But we will cross that bridge when we come to it. Thanks!

Just as I suspected.  It wasn’t going to pan out.  Glad I didn’t spend any time looking at baby clothes!

Four days later, on Friday afternoon, May 24^th, I was at the park with D and I got a call from my friend.  She said the birth mom had spoken to the social worker and had given her our names.  Okay, now it was a little more serious, but still…..call me when someone has signed a piece of paper and when a baby has been born!  I hung up the phone a little more anxious, but still not getting my hopes up.  I thought about the whole possibility for a few minutes, when the phone rang again.  It was 4:30 in the afternoon.  This time it was the social worker, Christine.  She told me that the birth parents had spoken with her and given her our names and they were sure they wanted to place the baby with us.  Okay…this was even more serious.  But, she hadn’t been able to get a meeting with them to get papers signed.  It was Memorial Day weekend, and she said she would try to get it all in place this weekend and update me next week.  I hung up and started thinking that this really could happen.  However, still….call me when someone has signed a dang piece of paper!  I went home and told John and we chatted about it for a minute, but knew nothing was set in stone, so off to bed we went.

Saturday morning, May 25^th, 8:00 a.m.  I was getting dressed for work when the phone rang.  It was Christine.  The birth mom was in labor and on her way to the hospital.  Long story short, she had to get an adoption plan in place and signed by them before the baby was born.  They suspected the baby would be born positive for drugs, and the county would take it away if an adoption plan wasn’t already in place.  If the county took the baby, the birth parents wouldn’t have a say in where it was placed.  But, we also had to have a lawyer’s signature.  God steps in on these little miracles, I know He does.  Christine just happened to be in the process of adopting a baby herself, and because of the circumstances, even though she was a social worker, she needed an adoption attorney.  She said “the only lawyer I have in my phone that will answer my call at 8:30 on a Saturday morning is the one we are using.”  I said I trust that an adoption social worker knows how to hire a good adoptions attorney and that I trusted her judgment.  She said the only other hang up could be if the county social worker decided this adoption plan hadn’t been put in place soon enough, then she would have the right to take the baby, if and when it was born positive for drugs.  She called back thirty minutes later and said everything was in place.   The lawyer was on board and the county social worker said she was fine with the plan and had no intention of disrupting it.  One hour later, he was born.

 

I didn’t know about him until 12:30 that afternoon.  I was at work with butterflies in my stomach.  I was texting and calling family and friends and the lawyer and the social worker and my friend.  At 12:30, Christine called and said the father had called her and said he had been born at 9:33 a.m., 22 inches long, 12 pounds and ready for school!  Haha!  He was huge!

 

And the kicker?  He was born on my son’s birthday.  D and baby S share the same birthday.  Isn’t that amazing?  I had decided to have D’s birthday party the previous Wednesday, and I don’t know why.  His birthday was on a Saturday, and that would have been easy to do.  But, I had chosen not to.  And now I know why.  D was born at 7:33 a.m. four years earlier, and S was born that morning at 9:33 a.m.  It was, and continues to be a miracle.  I got to drive up to Anaheim that night with a friend, and see this little miracle ten hours after he had been born.  A baby I had no idea was going to actually come into my life just the day before, and I was sitting in the hospital nursery holding him.  He was beautiful and huge and precious and mine.  There is more to the rest of the story, but I will save that for another post.  Just know that I know that God knows each of us.  He knows us personally.  He answers our prayers, and sometimes that answer is “no.”  And sometimes the answer is “not right now.”  And sometimes the answer is “yes.”  And all the “no” answers and all the “not right now” answers make that “yes” answer just that much more precious.

 

A child lives here (finally)

I went in to my little boy's bedroom today to try to wake him up from his extra-long nap, and this was the scene.  Most people would probably think about how messy his room is.  But, I teared up, and went for the camera.  Trains and tracks, a ball, an Elmo, his tricycle that is supposed to be outside, and several other random things were strewn about, and in the middle of the room sat his little bed, with a fast-growing sturdy little boy sprawled across it sideways, one leg hanging off, sawing logs.  I had to snap a picture.  Maybe in someone else’s eyes this is a messy room, but in my eyes, a room cluttered with toys says "a child lives here." 

One wonderful thing about spending seventeen years of your life trying to have a child is that when it finally happens, you find joy in some of the things that others find annoying or repetitive or mundane.  I'm sure if I'd spent that seventeen years cleaning up after kids, I would probably feel the same way.  But I didn't, and I don't.  There was a time when I really wondered if a child would ever live in my home and splash in my bathtub and run through my house with all the gusto of a charging elephant.  And, when our first adoption failed, and our sweet baby boy was returned to his birthfather, whatever glimmer of hope I had left faded even more.  I knew it was in God’s hands, and that I had done everything I could do, and that if it was going to happen, it would happen, and if not, then it wouldn’t.  Sometimes it’s hard knowing you can’t do anything else about it, and sometimes it’s a relief that you’ve done all you can and it’s out of your hands.  Either way, it is a long and difficult lesson in patience.  But it’s oh so worth it.  It’s been two and half years since our little guy rode home with us for the first time.  I still often leave his toys spread across the yard as if documenting the fun we had that day.  In my mind I can see the dotted lines connecting his random path from bike to sandbox to balls to the bushes, over the rocks, up to the deck and back to the bike like an old Family Circle comic, and I smile at the crazy randomness of little kids.  And instead of cleaning everything up and getting back to the grown-up yard it was before, I leave everything untouched, and listen to those toys reassuring me that “yes, a child finally lives here.  You’re long-awaited child lives here.”

 (If you want to read about our failed adoption mentioned here, check out my post "Giving my baby back.  The Worst Day of my Life.")