Hellobee

Our first year as a family is a bit complicated, and it’s easier if I focus on one part at a time.  First I will tell you about our adoption journey, then I will get back to the twins.

My husband and I got married in 2006, and we decided that we wanted to try for children right away. I had very irregular cycles, so we knew it might be difficult to get pregnant.  After a year of trying, we sought fertility treatment. We did that for several cycles when I knew that it was not for me. My heart was being pulled towards adoption; the child did not have to grow in my belly for it to be mine.

After looking into all the options, we chose a full service agency that took us from the beginning to end of a domestic infant adoption for a flat fee. We didn’t want hidden birth mother fees with no guarantee of a baby. We went to our first meeting in November 2007, and they gave us everything we would need to get the process rolling.

We tried to finish all our paperwork and home study as fast as possible so we could start the waiting game.  We completed everything and were ready to be shown to birth mothers in March 2008.  During the summer we had one failed match — before she went into labor, she decided to parent.  We hadn’t gotten very far in the process with her, but it was still pretty emotional and made us very weary the next time. In October we got another call saying we had been matched again with a young woman who was due in a few weeks and wanted to meet with us.

Our meeting was fairly awkward — like a blind date — but we were hopeful that this would be it for us.  Sometime in the next month we could be parents.  It was also difficult to think that in a few short weeks, this woman would have to say goodbye to the child she had carried for 9 months. We were excited, but guarded, as I think most adoptive parents are.

On November 8th, we got a call in the morning saying the birth mother had gone into labor and we could come to the hospital.  It was a bit intense since her whole family was there, but we had some time to get to know them and they seemed to really like us.  They were sad to have to say goodbye to the baby, but they wanted to support the birth mother’s decision. She ended up with an emergency c-section late at night, so we didn’t get to hold our son that night, but we did see him in the window for a few minutes.  My heart was so overjoyed, but I didn’t want to get my hopes up because she hadn’t signed the paperwork yet.

In California the birth mother does not sign the relinquishment until she is being discharged from the hospital.  So for our birth mother, it would be almost four days later that she would sign away her parental rights. We came in on the 11th when she was being discharged and she was in the process of going over all the paperwork.  We couldn’t believe it was happening; we were going to go home with this beautiful little boy in just a few hours.

After she signed and left the hospital, our social worker sat down with us and our new baby to go over our paperwork.  She notified us that the birth father was unreachable.  He would be sent a relinquish form and had 30 days to contest.  But in cases like this where the family had attempted multiple times to reach him with no answer, most often the 30 days comes and goes with no notice and his rights are terminated. Each state has its own rules and regulations for parental rights and adoptions. I live in California, so the rules for parental rights and terminations only hold true in this state.

We went home and had a great homecoming.  Both sets of our parents, my sister and some of my cousins were all waiting for us to welcome our new baby.  He was beautiful and I was finally a mother. It was all I had ever wanted.  That was a Tuesday.  On Thursday we got a call from our adoption agency that would change everything.  Our birth father had contacted them and wanted to meet us and his son.  We made an appointment to come in the next day, but all I could do was cry.  What if this went horribly bad?  He was already my son and nothing would change that.

We came into the agency on Friday and were taken straight into the Director’s office with our son.  They said that they felt awful but that it was a failed placement, and they were going to have to take the baby back.  We could feed him one more time but then he would go to the birth father.  They had called the birth mother to have her come in. In our state they cannot hand over a child to the father — only the mother can take the baby from the office.  So she would have to come in and take the baby, then leave the building to hand him over.

We were distraught. I cried the entire time he took his bottle. Then the director took him away.  The social worker came in and started talking to us about waiting to grieve, and then being placed on the waiting families list again. I couldn’t even process what she was saying. When the birth mother came in, she apologized.  She told us that she wanted the adoption to take place. She didn’t want the birth father to parent. She had picked us and that was her decision. She was a strong girl that day. This was the second time that she had to officially give up her child.

We were introduced to the father so that he could meet us. Immediately he said that he hoped we burned in hell for stealing his baby.  The director tried to calm him down and said that it was not our choice, but the birth mother’s.  He continued to call us baby stealers, so we were escorted out of the room.  Our director called a lawyer and had her explain what this meant for the future.  She was the top adoption attorney in our state and if we  chose to work with her, she said we had a fairly simple case.

In California there are two types of fathers: those that are in a relationship with the mother and active in the pregnancy, and those that are not. Those that are not have essentially no rights. So we would go to court for a contested adoption. All parties would get a free lawyer except for us — we would have to pay for our own lawyer.  On average it could cost an additional $40,000. I just broke down and cried. We had spent all our money on the initial agency fees, and we did not have that amount.  Luckily both sets of our parents said that they would help with the lawyer fees. He was their grandson and they would do whatever it took.

My son was with me the whole time except for a few hours that day at the adoption agency, but we found out it could be over a year before finalization, and it would require multiple court dates and appearances. We were officially in one of our agency’s rare contested adoptions.

We had to go to court about once a month to find out more about our case. We had to go to interviews of both the birth father and birth mother. Awful things were said and we found out way more than we wanted about both of these individuals. They were at each others’ throats most of the time. We found out that the birth father didn’t have a very pleasant past. We had to take DS for a paternity test because our birth mother claimed it could have been multiple people. She wanted to go through with the adoption, but she wanted more visits than the birth father and said that she would tell the court that she was coerced by the agency to give her baby up if we didn’t allow her to have 12 visits a year. It was an awful mess.

We also had to go through psychological testing for the courts.  Someone had to speak with both my husband and me separately, talk to us together, then observe us together with our son.  It was so awkward to play with my child while being watched.  We had to take written personality tests.  And we had visits with both the birth mother and birth father during the whole process.  Our visits with the birth father were observed by the social worker with our agency so that we didn’t have to be there alone. During this time I was also struggling with my difficult twin pregnancy.  I was a complete mess for most of 2009.

Our lawyer told us that no matter what happened, they would not take my son away.  DS was appointed a lawyer and a guardian ad litem (someone to speak on behalf of the child) that would not agree to the child being in the father’s care.  I still had this horrible nightmare of them taking this little boy who had been in our home for months away.  Our lawyer did say that we would end up with court ordered visits for both parents.  It took two months to get those sorted out, then they finally agreed and signed their rights to him over to us.

On November 5, 2009 he legally became my son, which I had known in my heart since the day I took him home.  It was just three days shy of his first birthday.  Our court order is to give each of his birth parents 3 visits a year.  This year we had to increase his birth mother’s visits to four.  Each one is two hours long in a public place that we determine.  So far we always go to the same park or the mall playground if it’s raining.

My son will be four this year and I am trying desperately to open my heart to the people who gave my son life.  The hurt that they both caused that year is hard to get over, but they are my child’s biological family and I have to respect it.  We are different people but we are tied to this little guy for life, so I am working on my own heart as that is the only thing I can control in this situation.

I hope this in no way deters people from going through adoption.  I would do it all over again in a second if I had to. We were an exception to most adoptions.  Our agency says our situation only comes up every few years.  No matter what we struggled through, it was worth it and he was meant to be in our family.  The joy that I feel when I look into his eyes is far greater than the pain we went through during that year of court.  He is my first child and no one can change the love I feel for that little guy.  I have had three biological children since, and the love I have for him is exactly the same.  I am his mommy and he is my son.

to be continued…