Shower of Babies!

What a beautiful celebration it was! My friend Amy threw me the cutest baby shower with my closest friends and family there.  

I couldn't arrive at my own baby shower without a big prego belly so I stuffed a pillow up my shirt and waddled in. It was so much fun making an entrance! 


We played games, ate too much cake and punch, and opened sweet gifts. We had such a blast goofing off and laughing! There was a diaper cake and transracial cupcakes! Too cute!






At the beginning of the party each guest had to guess if we would be getting a boy or a girl by wearing a necklace for a girl or a tie for a boy. It was too funny to see everyone wearing a tie that knew we had been matched with Zain! I wore both a tie and a necklace, so I would at least be 50% right. 



















Even though the party was wonderful my mind was about 4 hours up north with K. I kept wondering how she was doing and what she must be feeling. I had even told the girls at the shower that we weren't planning on going to the hospital anymore because she hadn't contacted us. They cried with us and prayed for God's glory. And then it happened.

I was checking my phone as we were packing everything up and heading out the door and she left a message asking us to come on up to the hospital. I broke down in tears and everyone came running. I got to share the good news with all of my closest girl friends that we were headed up to meet with K that afternoon and she still wanted us to be there! If God had waited 5 more minutes to orchestrate that I wouldn't have gotten to share that with them. It was a wonderful ending to a wonderful party!

Adoption Isn't Easy

Something was wrong. I could feel it in my gut.  It was Friday, two days before our drive to meet her again.  I had texted her but not gotten a response.  I got sicker as each hour passed thinking the worst. I just knew that she had changed her mind and didn't want to tell us. I kept wanting to call and tell her that was okay, that we were with her until the end no matter what.  My heart broke for her. Her c-section was days away and I couldn’t imagine what she must have been going through.  Our hearts poured out prayers for her and her family in those last days.

Saturday came with still no response and Derek and I had resolved that we were just going to try and enjoy the ride. We knew that we were right where God wanted us to be- next to K.  We just couldn’t see what came next. We spent the day distracting ourselves with shopping at goodwill’s and flea markets and just enjoying our time together.

We had planned to meet K and her family on Sunday evening and stay in a hotel. We’d then meet her at the hospital Monday morning to meet the little guy, but that was before the texts stopped happening. We felt like something about the situation was changing and it scared us.

In an adoption, the adoptive couple has little control of anything.  It's probably the scariest thing of it all. When you have biological children there are some things you can count on - you probably know gender and race ahead of time, you're pretty certain which hospital you'll be at, your family and friends can visit, and you know without a doubt that you'll be leaving with your child. Adoption just isn't like that. It's more of a grab bag- this race, this gender, this location, this name, this birth mom, and the chance that you'll be leaving empty handed.  All you can do is fill out the paperwork and hold on. 

In order to protect our hearts we decided that if we didn’t hear from her by the end of my baby shower on Sunday then we would call our agent and tell them we weren’t going to the hospital. We would give her all the privacy she needed and in turn guard our hearts.

Hurry Up and Wait

The two weeks before his birth were an exciting and trying time for me.  Each day brought us closer to seeing her again and meeting Zain, but each day my heart felt heavy with worry. A match does not mean a placement and she has every right to change her mind at any time.  The phone would ring and my heart would jump thinking it was her changing her mind. We prayed for protected hearts and tried to focus on our relationship with her, knowing that God had brought us together with her for a reason. Even if that meant us leaving the hospital with an empty car seat.

Our friendship grew through several texts a day and it literally felt like part of my heart had been left behind with her. There were several times she went to the hospital with high blood pressure, contractions, and even once when she fell and each time I had to talk myself out of driving the 4 hours to check on her.  It definitely puts you in a weird position. It’s almost unexplainable. You’ve been matched with a complete stranger who says they want you to raise their child and you’ve got two weeks to get to know them as quickly as possible all the while hoping she doesn’t have a change of heart. It’s like walking a balance beam; all we could do was pray and hoped we didn’t lean too far.

Our parents and close friends became our prayer warriors for us.  Their prayers kept us from jumping off the edge when it became too much and they helped us celebrate the thought of having a son.

Match Meeting in Heaven

Just two weeks after we were approved to adopt, we found ourselves driving 4 hours up north to meet with our potential birth mom. We felt such peace about meeting her that we knew something incredible would happen, but as we got closer and closer to seeing her our nerves became overwhelming. 

On the drive up we talked about the what if’s and saw little God signs along the way - billboards urging you to adopt or foster and a bumper sticker that we followed quite a way that plainly said “adopt!”.  Both Derek and I felt like we were right where God wanted us to be and we couldn’t wait to see the woman he wanted us to meet!

You feel such overwhelming emotions. Will she like us? Will she think we’re silly or too young to raise a family? What if I say something incredibly stupid? It’s really a moment when those bad thoughts can run away with your heart. We just had to keep reminding ourselves that there was some reason that God wanted us to meet her.

We arrived in the church parking lot where we were to meet, prayed in the car (which caused us to be a little late), and held hands as we walked in to meet with our agent Barb, and our potential birth mom, K.

We sat outside in some chairs talking about nothing at all just to keep our nerves down as we waited for someone to tell us where to go and what to do.  A sweet lady introduced herself as Barb and explained that she had already been meeting with K that day. She asked if we had any questions and told us that she would lead the conversations to help out.  Match meetings usually last about an hour and the agent mediates the conversation because everyone is usually so nervous. At the end Barb told us we would either be told to wait outside or to go on home and she would give us a call on the way to let us know what happened.

She said that K said to not leave her alone in the room for too long because she was so nervous and it gave me such peace to be reminded that we weren’t the only ones in this potential match.

I can’t even explain to you the emotion that I felt when I saw her for the first time. Her strawberry blonde hair, her freckles, her sweet smile. I fell in love. There was an instant connection in my heart before she even opened her mouth. And then she cracked a joke about not being shy and we all laughed and laughed. It was beautiful. She was beautiful.

The next hour and a half was incredibly peaceful. We each shared our stories and marveled at how the dates matched up in our journeys.  She became pregnant in late December; we lost a child in January. She came to Bethany in March; we decided to adopt through Bethany in March and started our paperwork. She met with a birth counselor August 24th four days after our adoption approval.  She was due  September 24^th; my baby shower was scheduled for the 23^rd.

When Barb asked her why she was interested in an adoption plan, K answered that she wanted him to have a father. Someone to love him and teach him to pee standing up!

She said “he”. It’s a BOY!!!!!!!

Barb said that K wanted to tell us the sex of her little one in person during our meeting, but she let it slip! We all started cracking up. K was so upset that she spilled the beans, but it was an adorable moment.

We knew that she had seen our profile and picked us, but we wanted to know why we stood out to her. She said when she first found out she was pregnant months earlier, she had looked at quite a few profiles (we had not been approved yet and weren’t in that stack), but none of them felt right. When she later came back to the agency she was given a new stack of profiles to look through which included ours (only 4 days after we joined the pool of profiles) and we were chosen. Barb told us on the phone that K laughed through our profile and seemed to really connect with us.  K said that she loved the picture of Armand smiling, the words Derek and I wrote about each other, our Christian faith and serving lifestyle, and our gray nursery.  All those hours of work creating that profile seemed so worth it now.

Barb hardly had to mediate our conversations. It was easy to talk with K. We seemed to have so much in common, but what was especially important to us was a similar humor. Derek and I are just plain weird and sometimes people don’t get that. We had prayed and prayed for a mom who would understand that about us, so when she said her favorite movie was Robin Hood: Men In Tights, I just laughed!

There was only one time that I thought we were in trouble. She had one question for us that wasn’t on the cheat sheet- if our son told us that he was going to a friend’s house where there was no drinking and then later called us drunk needing a ride, what would we do.  Derek and I knew immediately what we would do, but how do you tell this potential birth mom that you would beat him if that were your son, knowing it’s her son. I remember taking a big breath and saying, “if that were my son I would go pick him up and then let him have it.” I knew she would kick us out of the room. I held my breath waiting for the boot kick towards the door and she just smiled and said that was exactly what she would have done . We passed!

Naming her little guy was extremely important to her and she asked that if we were matched would we keep his name.  She asked that his name be Zain and we loved it! It was actually one of the names we had on our “boy list”.  K named him Zain for two reasons- one, because it means “God’s gracious gift” and she said no matter who was going to parent him, he was going to be a gift to someone and two, it’s spelled with an “ain” to match his half sister’s name. We loved it!

Another God moment was when she told us how important breast-feeding him was to her and she planned on doing it in the hospital and was hoping to provide milk for him afterwards. We were floored! This was such an important thing for us that I had already lined up milk donors at home.  She is definitely one of a kind to be able to sacrifice her time and heart to do that for him.

An hour and a half passed like a blink of the eye and Barb was bringing us to a close. I can remember being so bummed that it was over because I probably could have talked to her all day if they’d let me. We were asked to leave the room, gave K hugs, and as we were walking out Barb asked us to wait in the lobby. Derek and I looked at each other with hopeful hearts.

As we waited out in the lobby for about 10 minutes trying to dissect everything that had just happened, Barb came back out and asked that we would rejoin K in the room. We sat at the table and K said that she wanted us to be his parents. I just cried and she laughed at me asking if they were happy tears.  We were now officially matched with K and Baby Zain!

Barb explained that at this point our relationship was up to us, so we shared cell phone numbers and planned to text whenever we could in the 2 weeks before her delivery date. We hugged again and as we walked out Derek and I talked about getting some ice cream. K yelled “did someone say ice cream”?   We invited her and E, her 3 year old daughter to grab some ice cream and continue the conversation.

We had such a blast goofing off with K and E! We laughed as strawberry blonde, bright blue eyed, fair skinned E would jump from each of our laps roaring like a lion having a major sugar rush. She played with my hair and gave hugs and kisses to Derek. She was an adorable ball of energy.  While she played around us as we sat outside the ice cream shop I remember having a moment when I looked at K’s belly and saw the lump that was Zain. It was like everything stood still.  Derek and I could possibly be that little lump’s parents.

Our ice cream conversations lasted another 4 hours so it was midnight by the time we made it back home.  The ride home was mostly Derek and I staring at each other and giggling.