Meeting Mama J

It’s hard to believe that Aiden is already 6 weeks old! We haven’t updated this blog in quite some time, partly because we’ve been busy with Little Man, but mostly because we’ve been debating how much of what has happened over the last 12 weeks is our story to tell and how much is Aiden’s story to own and tell when he’s older. Over the next few posts, we’ll tell you how we came to learn about Aiden’s birth mother, meet her, and bring him home from the hospital. We’ll reflect on everything we’ve experienced in the last 3 years to build our family. But there are pieces of the story that do not belong to us. They belong to Aiden, and he’ll share those pieces when he’s ready to, with whomever he’s ready to.

There is a joke in some adoption communities that goes something like this: An adopted child and his cousin/friend/classmate/whatever were playing together and got into mischief. As their respective mothers were scolding them, and the kids pouted, the adopted child looks at the other child and says he know he won’t be in as much trouble because “my parents CHOSE me, your parents are stuck with you.”

The truth of the matter is that, at least for many domestic infant adoptions (i.e., the only kind I’ve experienced personally), the adoptive parents don’t choose the baby. In fact, it’s quite the other way around: the birth mother chooses the adoptive family. And being chosen was the most thrilling, humbling, exciting experience we’ve ever had. I don’t really have the right words to describe the feeling, and frankly, if you haven't experienced it, no words will suffice anyway.

On February 21, while at work, I got a call from one of our agency’s case workers. “I have a birthmom who is interested in meeting you,” she said. She went on to tell me a little bit about what she knew of the woman we now call Mama J. I feverishly scribbled notes and asked what I’m sure were not very intelligent questions. I hung up the phone and frantically called Brian at work. We chose a few dates that we were free for lunch, and set it up with the agency. We were going to meet our child’s birthmom.

We met about a week later for a late lunch. It was such a joy to get to meet this woman, who is smart, funny, caring, and outgoing. We were nervous going into the lunch. I told Brian I imagined this is how first dates must feel, times about 100. The only problem is that neither of us had been on a first date since we were 16! Luckily, our case worker was there to help when the conversation slowed. (Note: conversation rarely slows when Mama J is around…she’s great at keeping it going and made us feel comfortable from the beginning.) We left lunch with a hug and her noting that she felt bigger than any of her previous pregnancies, and that she thought she’d go into labor soon.

We held off on telling a lot of people about Mama J. Things can and do change suddenly in the world of adoption, and we wanted to be as sure as possible. We called our parents and siblings the day after we had lunch with her to let them know that baby would FINALLY be here…sometime soon. Our supervisors and work teams knew that we would be going on leave…sometime soon. And only a very few close friends knew that they were on call to take the dogs to the boarders…sometime soon.

We didn’t know what “soon” meant, but our case worker told us she thought it would be “one to four weeks.” We got out our calendars and circled the day 4 weeks from the date we had lunch. Finally, we had something of a due date to work from. The only problem was that in that month, I had my biggest meeting of the year at work, another event to coordinate, and Brian was going out of town for a week of training in rural Virginia. Luckily, we have great supervisors and teams who were willing to pick up our slack if we had to abandon work at a moment’s notice.

We made it through Brian’s work trip and my craziness, and finally started to breathe easier. Now, the baby could come at any time and we were both more available. We spent weekends trolling Target and Babies R Us for any last-minute needs we could dream up. Our families and friend had been so generous at baby showers that there weren’t many. But now that we knew baby was coming sometime between Valentine’s Day and Easter, we could get some seasonal items we had been holding off on purchasing.

And we waited. Four weeks came and still we waited. We left work every day with a “hope I DON’T see you tomorrow!” Every time the phone rang, we jumped to see if it was our case worker. We tried to keep living our lives as normally as possible, but we also (perhaps subconsciously) never ventured more than an hour from home. We knew we had to be available to rush to the hospital whenever Mama J went into labor. The anticipation was nerve-wracking. Had something happened and she changed her mind? Was she just going longer with her pregnancy than anyone had thought?

And just to give you all a small taste of that anticipation, I’ll wrap up this post for now. Up next (and soon!): Getting the call that Mama J was in labor and our time in the hospital with her and Aiden.