As Theo got healthier, we all wanted to hold him, feed him, sing to him, or just sit by his crib. But the healthier Theo got, the more we felt like we were in the way. The new rule was that when we were switching out, we had to do it outside the unit so that there were never more than 2 of us in the room at the same time. This often meant extra scrubbing so we could all talk to decide what combination of parents should be at the bedside. We understood and did our best to comply with the request.

We had our “chatty” nurse from the day before, who started sharing her perspective on how birth families should be handled. She was very nice to Mama S and B when one of us was with them, but very dismissive when we weren’t there. We made sure that one of us was with a birth parent at all times after that, though it shouldn’t have had to be that way. We wanted Mama S and B to have some private time with Theo without us there, but we also didn’t want them to be treated badly by the staff– which seemed to be happening every time they were alone with Theo.

I tried to see it from another perspective. The nurses at this particular hospital deal with adoption on a daily basis because multiple agencies deliver babies there. I suppose it must be easier to place blame for the situation rather than to empathize with birth parents who put themselves through so much pain and sorrow in the hopes of providing the best possible lives for their children. It’s much easier to blame birth parents for getting pregnant in the first place than to hurt with them as they said goodbye. Our family didn’t fit well into their normal paradigm and it must be hard to have well-constructed defenses shaken in that way.

It certainly wasn’t easy for us either… and our nurse that day made it even more challenging! At one point she said, “Why are you guys here so much? There’s nothing to do except watch the baby sleep.” It dawned on me that we were really the only family in the unit. We didn’t see a whole lot of other people coming or going. They weren’t used to having a family be so present. Did families stay away because they felt unwelcome?

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We thought that would be a good time to go grab some lunch. The four of us went off campus now that Mama S was finally discharged. We were so easy with each other by now… teasing one another, no longer making sure we were choosing the right words. At lunch we talked about agency politics and life in birth mother housing. We got to hear all the details about their decision to place. It was a pretty eye-opening talk. From the discussion, it seemed that Mama S and B might have regretted their decision and I couldn’t let that pass. When we returned to the hospital, I shared my concerns with Mr. Jacks. He agreed that we needed to explore this further, so just before we went back into the unit we sat S and B down.

I looked them both in the eye and said, “I know this whole process hasn’t been what any of us expected. We were all rushed into making decisions during a time when we should have been focusing on Theo. The more we talk, the clearer it becomes that you really wanted to figure out a way to keep Theo with you. If that is really what you want, together we can figure out a way to make it happen. We don’t have to go through with placement if you don’t want.” I was bawling my eyes out at this point, because I simultaneously really wanted Theo to grow up in their home and in our home. I knew there was a real risk that they could say they changed their minds, but Mr. Jacks and I couldn’t live with ourselves if we didn’t make 100% sure that they wanted Theo to live with us. We didn’t have to do this from a legal standpoint, Theo was officially our child… but from a moral standpoint, we felt there was no other way.

My little speech was met with silence at first. What kind of can of worms did we just open? We saw them visually check in with each other. Then S said, “This is harder than anything I’ve ever done, but spending this time with you has made us so sure that you were meant to raise him.” We hugged, and it was in that moment that I finally felt like Theo became my son… all the while knowing that his becoming mine made him no less S’s son.

Adoption is so amazing that way!  Your heart stretches in weird ways to hold both a deep well of pain and an overwhelming endless reservoir of love. The juxtaposition of those two simultaneous emotions left us all profoundly altered and searching for private ways to come to terms with what we had just experienced– for me, that meant writing this story.