We have heard stories about families that have gone through one of the most difficult parts of the adoption journey, finding out that the birth parents want to keep the baby. When we decided to adopt, we knew this was a risk we would have to accept, therefore since this blog is about sharing our adoption journey, we will share not just the ups, but also the downs of our journey.
Last week we received a most unexpected call; there was a family looking for adoptive parents to adopt their baby twins and it just so happened that we were prime candidates for this adoption. Even though we did not specify that we wanted to adopt twins, we jumped at the opportunity, since we knew we eventually wanted to adopt two children. We were ecstatic at the thought of welcoming two identical little ones into our family. So we submitted our profile and home study and prayed for the best. The next day we found out the mother was interested in us and wanted to speak to us immediately. So the call was made and a couple of hours later, we received a call from the agency that we were officially matched! Our hearts were pounding with joy, we were going to be the parents of two little twins. WOW was all I could say. Our life would change so quickly.
So immediately we had to rethink, re-strategize, and prepare for twins. Oh and on top of everything else, the babies were due in less than three weeks! So we had to prepare quickly. Immediately we began prepping. We went to Babies-R-Us signed up for the registry and started to look for a bigger car…. and then it happened. While we were at the dealership test driving a car, we got a call from the agency, the mother wanted to speak to us again. Oh no, what could this be? Are the babies Ok, are they on the way? What was so urgent? So we rushed home and immediately set up the call. Turns out the mother wanted to ask us some more questions and find out more about us, because she was feeling really emotional about the babies. So once the call was over we talked to the social worker and we began to feel unsure about the whole thing. The social worker told us that she felt the phone call went really well. We answered her questions and maybe she just wanted to confirm that we would be loving parents for her children. Deep down inside though, we felt that she was having second thoughts, which made for a very sleepless night. The next morning, we got a call from the social worker to see how were doing and she told us that she was getting ready to call the mother and see how she felt after our long discussion the day before. Exactly one hour later, we received another call from the social worker. “Bad news I am afraid, after much thought the mother has decided to keep the babies and not give them up for adoption.” Oh boy, this was not the news we wanted to hear. I suddenly felt like my heart was just yanked out and pounded with a hammer. Even though we never had a chance to meet these little babies, I already felt like I started to grow a spot in my heart for them and now there was a huge empty hole left where the little spot was just pulled right out. In a way we have to feel happy that the children will stay with their mother, but knowing the circumstances which the mother described to us, I can’t help but feel sorry and and only hope that she has made the right decision in keeping them. Thinking about it now, it also feels as if she wasn’t adequately counseled by her social worker as to what to expect when making such an important decision. So what happens next, we asked ourselves? That is the big question, back to the wait list, back to the waiting room, back in line.
How we keep on moving forward, is yet to be seen? It will be difficult, but I guess we just have to accept it and move on, that is about all we can do and hope that the next match will end on a happier note for all involved.
Design For Adoption 
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September 13, 2011 at 3:00 pm
Beth Ericksen
My heart breaks for you as I read about your failed placement. I’m so sorry for your loss, and your wife’s. It’s an indescribable feeling of heartache and hopelessness that someone will never understand unless they’ve been there, too. I hope your family and friends have reached out to you in this time. It’s a loss and “death” not recognized or understood by our society.
I feel your pain because my husband and I have been there, too — twice.
I will relay the stories, and I apologize for the length, but it’s therapeutic for me, and I’ve found reading others’ stories helped me feel not so alone in this journey. I hope you can find some comfort, too.
During our first adoption attempt in 2009, we were matched with a birthmom due with a baby girl. We met her, were chosen to adopt her baby, and even met her a second time. She was a wonderful young college student, smart and healthy with a good head on her shoulders, just not ready to be a mom. The social workers kept in contact with her and us, but during that time our social worker actually left the agency and there was a period of time before they hired a new one who worked with adoptive parents in the domestic infant program.
However, we forged ahead. We had about 2 months warning before she was due, but we were going on a family vacation for 2 weeks of that, so we scrambled to register for gifts, we arranged time off with our jobs, found a daycare, prepared a nursery. My co-workers even threw me a baby shower.
We were so overjoyed. We loved this child, we dreamed of her future. We even named her.
We were having a hard time getting updates from the agency or setting up times to meet again, because of the transition at the agency. By the time we got back from vacation, it had been weeks since we’d spoken to the birthmom, which made us nervous. But we had all the faith in the world that she would follow through on her adoption plan, given our relationship and knowing her circumstances.
Ten days before she was due — a Monday morning after having finished the nursery that weekend — our new social worker, who we had never even met, called to tell me that the birthmom had changed her mind and would be parenting her baby. I felt as though someone had literally stabbed me in the heart. I was at work when I got the call, and I broke down crying in the conference room after calling my husband to tell him the news. My boss was wonderful and gave me the rest of the day off and the next to grieve. I got home before my husband, and took 5 minutes to pile all the baby paraphernalia that was scattered around the house and threw it into that precious nursery, then closed the door.
It is the most hopeless feeling. I felt like I had lost a child, but others don’t really understand. They say, “She wasn’t the child meant for you,” or “You’ll get another baby” or “At least she didn’t die” or “It’s best she’s raised by her mother anyway.” To me, I was her mother. And was not just the loss of this tangible baby, but the loss of years and years of hoping for a child. The only thing I could compare it to, to explain it to others, was a miscarriage or a stillbirth.
We grieved hard for two days, then decided we had to pick ourselves up and get back in the waiting pool. Although we were still hurting, we set up a time that Friday to finally meet our new social worker, and we asked her to put us back into the waiting family pool immediately.
That Friday morning, my social worker called while I was at work. I figured she was calling to confirm our meeting that afternoon. Instead, she told me that a baby boy had been born that morning at a local hospital and that his birthmom was releasing him under our state’s Safe Delivery Law, which basically means anyone can release a newborn to a hospital worker, EMT or police officer without having to identify themselves or be prosecuted for neglect or abandonment. It’s basically to avoid putting babies in dumpsters and the like. Under that law, the hospital must contact an adoption agency and the agency must place the baby with an adoptive family within 48 hours. This is one of the only times at our agency where “seniority” — how long you have been waiting — comes into play. Because we asked to be put back on the waiting list when we did, we ranked high and we were the first family the agency called.
Long story short, we met our son 17 hours after he was born at the hospital and took him home two days later. He’s been with us since. We named him Isaac, for two reasons: it means “laughter,” which we needed in our lives, and because in the Bible, Isaac was the long-awaited but promised son to Abraham and Sarah.
Looking back, I know that if we hadn’t been preparing for that baby girl, we never would have been ready to bring home Isaac. We were one of the families advised not to get a nursery together before getting a placement. If we hadn’t been preparing for the girl, we might have panicked and passed on Isaac, who is the biggest blessing and joy in our lives today.
OK, fast forward about two years. We began the adoption process for the second time and were an approved family around March of this year. We are specifying a girl and, hopefully, one of African American heritage because Isaac is African American and we want our kids to be able to have that in common. We figured we’re going to have a long wait this time around.
Toward the end of May, we got a call from our social worker that we had been matched with a baby girl, who was African American. Her birthmom had asked the agency to choose a family. She was a young single mom with two kids ages 2 and 3 and just didn’t think she could handle another. The agency selected us based on our desires, and we met our daughter, who we named Grace, a few days later at her interim foster care home. She was tiny, and beautiful and perfect.
Because of red tape it was about a week until the agency could release her to us, but we visited her every single day and held her and fed her and changed her and loved on her. We even brought Isaac to bond with her, and both of her grandmas and one of her aunts were able to come, too. Her foster family was wonderful.
We brought her home on June 2, at 3 weeks old. Despite the sleepless nights and adjustments of now having two children, we loved our new, complete family. I bonded easily and quickly as I’m now a stay-at-home mom. My husband took a week off work and got lots of daddy time in the evenings once he went back. Isaac adored her.
We inquired about the birthmom and her decision several times. The social workers were confident that she was solid in her decision. She reiterated her decision to place her for adoption time and time again. So we were just watching the clock and waiting for a court date to terminate parental rights, which in our state takes 6-12 weeks after placement.
The day Grace turned 6 weeks old, I got a call from the agency telling me her birthmom had changed her mind and wanted her back. I can’t even describe the feeling. My world was spinning, I felt numbness and nausea at the same time. I think I was in shock. You know the risk as part of the process, but you don’t think it will happen to you. Not when it already happened once before.
The birthmom wanted her that same day, but the agency persuaded her to let us have the weekend with her to say goodbye. For three agonizing days, we loved on her completely, and wept and took photos, knowing we had to return her on Monday. At the same time, we had to keep it together for Isaac, because he’s too young to understand what was happening. He just knew we were sad and he would come and hug us and wipe the tears from our eyes.
On Sunday night, I packed a bag for her with clothes and diapers and formula and bottles and blankets. None of it was required, but I couldn’t send my daughter off to a stranger and not know if she would have something to keep her warm or to put in her tummy. This birthmom already admitted she couldn’t provide for her, but we had no legal right or recourse.
On Monday, we dropped Isaac at a friend’s house and took Grace to the agency. We didn’t want them coming to our home and taking her. We didn’t want that memory in our home. And we didn’t want Isaac to bear witness to us giving his sister away. The social workers sat with us in a conference room as we cried and kissed her and said our goodbyes. We knew that the social worker needed to leave by a certain time to get her back to her birthmom at a promised time. My eyes were on the clock, but I just couldn’t hand her over.
Finally I handed her to my husband and looked away. We had decided that the social worker needed to take her, not us leave her behind. Somehow my husband found the strength to hand her to the social worker. Then he physically collapsed in my arms and wept like I’ve never heard him weep. He buried his face in my shoulder and just sobbed. With tears streaming, I nodded at the social worker and she left with my baby girl. We could hear Grace crying all the way through the agency as the social worker left with her. I think her cries will haunt me forever. We just held each other and sobbed for I don’t know how long. Until we were utterly spent.
When we got home, my husband came inside and removed all baby items and put them in her nursery and closed the door, and it remained closed for weeks.
It’s been very difficult since then. Each day generally is a little easier, but sometimes the grief hits me at odd times and places. I broke down crying in a fast food restaurant the other day. For weeks afterward, Isaac would run through the house looking for “Baby.” All we could do to explain it to him was that she went “bye-bye.” How do you explain this to a 2-year-old? He doesn’t ask after her every day now, but occasionally.
The grief the second time, not to downplay the first loss, but it’s so much more. To have held her and loved her and cared for her for all those weeks just to lose her. My husband and I feel like we’re mourning a death, yet we know she’s alive somewhere. We don’t know how she is or how she is cared for or loved, and that’s agonizing. It’s like having a missing child and not knowing their welfare, but knowing you’ll never see them again.
Today, Grace turned 4 months old. I miss her so much. She will always be our daughter, regardless of how our family grows.
The losses are part of our journey, as hard as it is to reconcile them. I never thought I could bear his kind of pain, but I’m surprisingly living my life again. Isaac still brings a lot of joy and laughter into our lives. And I do look forward to that sister that will be his to stay one day. My hope lies in how I believe God worked the loss the first time for a blessing in Isaac. I have to hope and pray that His plan is greater than my heart or head can understand.
September 13, 2011 at 11:33 pm
designforadoption
Thank you for taking the time to share your deeply touching story with us. The is the exact reason we decided to share our story. Unless you are going through the process no one really understands what you are going through. No matter if they are family or close friends, it is difficult to find someone that really understands what is going on. It is such a deeply personal journey that many people are just too busy to take the time to understand. You would be surprised though, how many people have shared their personal stories with us about their adoption process, or about growing up adopted, both complete strangers as well as friends. As you noted it is therapeutic to share your story and hear other’s stories to know that you are not alone on this journey and that there are countless people out there sharing similar experiences, both good and bad. Also many of our friends and family have never had any reason to learn about adoption, so we decided to share our experience also as a way of promoting awareness of the process. There is a book I read when we started learning to accept our journey, “When bad things happen to good people” by Harold Kushner. He is a Rabbi that had to cope with the loss of his own child, and being that he was usually the one giving advice to people he found himself in a position where he had to deeply understand his own loss to be able to move forward. He talks exactly about what you mentioned, the way in which people respond to your own personal loss, and how often times people’s comments end up sounding insensitive and rude, when they simply just don’t know what to say. In the end maybe just sharing an experience helps make someone feel that they are not alone and that no matter what cards we have been dealt, it is up to us to do something that makes the situation better. We wish you all the best in your adoption and hope that your son can have a little sister very soon.
September 14, 2011 at 1:05 am
Beth Ericksen
I’m happy I did share it. If it helps both of us in this sometimes painful journey, then it’s worth all the tears shed writing it. I actually copied this as a note to Facebook on my page and I’ve gotten a lot of response from friends who didn’t “get it” before but have more understanding now. But more than anything, I wanted a record of my story out there. Thanks for giving me a forum.
Best wishes and prayers for your journey to parenthood! When you get your little one, treasure him or her every moment. In the end, it’s worth every step of the journey.