I mentioned that while we were on again, off again with
Isaiah, we went through two other fall-throughs. The first was with a birthmother named Kaylee
(name changed), who contacted us via our Parent Profiles account. I remember reading her initial email over and
over again at work, where I first got it, trying to read into it to sense her
true intentions and the meant-to-beness of this match. After a few more emails back and forth, I
spoke with Kaylee on the phone and once we learned a bit more about each other,
we arranged to meet. She lived locally,
only about a 45 minute drive from us. We
agreed to meet in a fast food joint near her home. We arrived, scoped out the place to see if we
might catch a glimpse of her before she sees us (we did not), and we settled in
to wait for her to arrive. After about a
half hour, we tried calling but didn’t get a hold of her. We got stood up.
But she wrote to apologize and asked for another
attempt. She couldn’t make it the first
time due to family drama (of course).
She was a young teenage wife, already with an 8-month-old, and sounded
like her husband may have been abusive. We were understanding. We agreed to meet again after the holidays,
in January (of 2009). We went to visit
Mount Vernon as we waited for this next meeting. Everything about what we’ve talked about
indicated that she was definitely interested in placing her son with us, that
she was definitely not a scammer, and that we were several weeks away from
being parents. I remember standing in
line at Mount Vernon thinking about my son-to-be, and being so excited about
the prospect.
For some reason, I couldn’t get to sleep the night before we
were meant to meet up. I logged onto my
email account to find an email from Kaylee .
Not only was she cancelling our meeting, but she was backing out of the
adoption plan. As it turned out, over Christmas
she found out that her aunt and uncle were interested in adopting her baby boy,
due the following month. Of course, we
were all for children staying with their original families whenever
possible. We are happy for the little
boy, but sad for us.
A few months later came another “sign”. My friend Melissa told me about a lady she
knew who was looking for adoptive parents for her unborn grandbaby. I remember the moment Melissa told me about
Becky (name changed). I was at her house
and we were watching a YouTube video of Gianna Jessen, a woman who survived her
own abortion. It took me a minute to
realize that Melissa was giving us a lead.
I took the information, went home and contacted the grandmother (note to
self: grandparents have no legal rights
to their grandchildren). The very next
day, I was on my way to meet the birthmother at her grandmother’s
workplace.
Becky and her sister were finishing high school while
living with their grandparents. You
guessed it – drama at home lead to this living arrangement. Becky was only a couple of months along, but
she was happy to meet with me. I took
her to the food court at the mall, and we chatted over lunch. During our conversation, Alex called. He didn’t know we had another lead. I told him where I was, and I remember what I
said: “I’m having lunch with a young lady considering placing her baby for
adoption with us.”
We proceeded to spend a lot of time together over the next
three months. She came to our house,
went to work with me, we went out to eat, and took her and her sister sightseeing
in DC. At one point, we got to talking
about names. She wanted to know if we
had thought of names, and we shared what we were thinking of. She didn’t like the names. Then she shared her ideas, and we didn’t like
those. It was an odd conversation,
because parents name their kids… if she wasn’t trying to parent her baby, why
was she thinking of names?
I made contact with the baby’s father, who was also on board
with the adoption. We never worried
about someone else adopting their baby due to the unique circumstances of the
baby’s conception. Becky’s mother had a
baby she placed for adoption before Becky was born. We actually thought this was a good sign that
Becky had first-hand experience already with adoption. But wait, there’s more. After Becky and the baby’s father “hooked
up”, it turned out that Becky’s new boyfriend was the very long-lost brother
placed for adoption many years earlier.
Many people worry about babies conceived through incest, but we never
really worried about it. The chance of
birth defects only goes up something like 1 or 2%, which we thought was not
significant enough to pass on this lead.
At any rate, the whole family seemed to be on board with the
adoption. On one occasion, Becky’s sister mentioned what she thought the baby
might look like, except that she made a point to say to us “your baby”, not
“her baby” or “the baby”. We thought,
great, so the sisters are talking about this, and she sounds like she’s not
attaching too much to the baby.
Let me stop right there.
I was actually happy to hear that this baby’s mother was not attaching
to him. This is the sort of mentality
that develops when you try to adopt. It
is so easy for it to become about you and your needs, and not the best interest
of the child. The best thing that
could’ve happened to that baby was that his mother figured out a way to make
things work and keep him. And that’s
exactly what happened the moment she turned 18.
She moved back to her mother’s in Florida, and we found this out through
her status updates on Facebook. When I
contacted her to see what was going on, she matter-of-fact said that she
decided to parent.
I stayed Facebook friends with her for another year, during
which time she had another baby, apparently to keep her sister company during her
sister’s pregnancy. In retrospect, I was
relieved to have dodged the bullet of an open adoption with the drama in that
family. Little did I know that there was
drama coming to my very own family as well.
(Part Four to be continued...)
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