Isaac (Part Three)

(This one is long, but there are lots pictures at the end!)

On the morning of February 27th I was teaching lessons at my house when I got a text message from one of my Facebook friends. Last year when we were starting this process I became part of a secret Facebook group for people who have adopted Marshallese babies through our same lawyer. One of the moms from the group adopted a baby whose birth mom is roommates with our birth mom, and she heard that our birth mom went to the hospital the night before (Confused? We were too). That immediately got me worried because we should have heard something, so we called our legal assistant who tried to contact our birth mom and the translator and suggested that we call the hospital to see if she had in fact checked in. The hospital told me that she was a patient, but wouldn't give us any more details. After a few worrisome hours we found out that she had the baby the night before, and decided that she didn't want us at the hospital at all. We were advised to get there as soon as possible. So, instead of it being and exciting and happy day it was extremely stressful day full of tears. Our birth mom hadn't changed her mind about placing with us, but the fact that she hadn't told anyone about having the baby and that she didn't want us at the hospital was not a good sign. We headed down to Salt Lake that night and flew out of the Salt Lake airport early the next morning. While we were traveling that day we got a call from our legal assistant telling us that since our birth parents had already signed the relinquishment papers the hospital wouldn't release the baby to them, so we needed to get there ASAP. We pulled into Mena Arkansas at 5PM, two hours after our birth mom had officially been discharged. I cannot even begin to tell you the feelings that were going through our minds as we pulled into the hospital parking lot. We took the gift for our birth parents and the backpack full of baby stuff and walked into the hospital to meet our son!

I think I had a romanticized idea of what was going to happen in my mind. It was wonderful, but also a bit awkward. I heard someone once call adoption "the happiest sad." I think that's a great way to describe it. So happy for us, but sad for the birth family. We wanted to be very respectful of the birth parents, but we also couldn't wait to get Isaac in our arms. As we walked down the hall to the room we met the translator as she was leaving! We thought she was going to be there the whole time, so we were a little more nervous to not have her as a buffer. We walked into the room and met our birth parents sitting on the bed with Isaac. It was a very quiet, hesitant meeting (largely due to the language barrier), but they were very sweet. After a few minutes she let me feed the baby while they started packing up their room, and after taking a few pictures they left! It was so brief and surreal. We sat in the room with our son, not really sure what to do.

 First time meeting our son. 7 lbs 10 ounces of pure sweetness.

I think we were all in wondering what was going on, but we were happy to be together!

First family picture  :)

Cute little Anmouj, Isaac's birth mama

Isaac's parents (all four of us). Lots of love in this picture!

After a few minutes we realized that Isaac hadn't been discharged. We later learned that it was hospital policy for adoptive parents to spend one night in the hospital with the baby before being discharged. We weren't expecting that, but it ended up being really nice having the nurse's station just around the corner. Isaac did great from day one, but we sure didn't know what we were doing! We were discharged the next day and spend the next 12 days getting to know our amazing son.

A bit tired after our first night together, but happy to be leaving the hospital as a family of three!

Sometimes we got bored while waiting in Arkansas, so we had some fun taking pictures. :)

We both breathed a huge sigh of relief when we made it past the 5 day waiting period for the birth parents to change their minds, but there was only one judge in that county and he decided to make us wait an extra seven days for our court date just because he had decided to only see adoption hearings on Wednesdays (the earliest day we were eligible for a hearing was the Thursday after Isaac was born). We were frustrated at having to wait, but it was so nice to have time with just the three of us without Tyler having to go back to work.

He's officially ours! Just outside the courthouse.

On March 11th we met with the judge for less than ten minutes and officially became a family! It was a bit anticlimactic, but we were so happy it was finally done. I can't say traveling across the country was fun, but we were so relieved to go home. Since Arkansas adoptions are completely finalized as soon as five days, we went to the Rexburg temple on March 13th and were sealed as a family. Our finalization was a great day, but our sealing was probably the best day of our lives. There were many, many happy tears. Two days later Isaac Michael McNiven was given a name and a blessing by his father in front of our friends and family.

Best day of our lives

Isaac's blessing day (we look so tired from the traveling and newborn!)

We love Isaac so much. He has the sweetest temperament, he eats like a champ, and he started sleeping through the night at 7 weeks old (Hallelujah!). He smiles ALL the time, and has recently started babbling to us. He has so much to say! We are so happy, and our lives are so full because of him. It was a difficult journey, but it was so so worth it. We have been hurting for so long, it is almost strange to finally be in this wonderful place. It took me a few weeks to figure out how to keep functioning as a human being while still being a mom, but I think we're slowly figuring it out. :)

One of our sweet neighbors did an amazing job taking newborn photos when we got back home.

St. Patrick's Day

Isaac smiled in his sleep all the time as a newborn.

Such a smiley baby!

This is one of my very favorite pictures of him.

 

 

 

My sister has a daughter seven months older than Isaac, and she LOVES him! 

Grandma loves him too. :)

 

I pulled his binky out while he was sleeping.Those pouty little lips! That hair! 

His hair naturally goes that way every day. It cracks me up.

 

I told you, SO smiley! All the time!

 

 This kid kills me. We love him so much. I'm getting emotional just looking at these pictures. :)

Isaac (Part Two)

Once we got back on the waiting list, the knots in my stomach returned. Going through infertility was painstaking, agonizing, heartbreaking, and exasperating. For me, though, the adoption process has been even harder. It felt like all of the stress of our years of infertility was compacted into one year of our adoption journey. I literally had a knot in my stomach all the time until after our adoption with Isaac was finalized.

Two days after my birthday in September we got a call that we had been matched again. Our lawyer was very optimistic and excited for us. The due date was March 1st, making our birth mother about 16 weeks pregnant. She wasn't quite as far along as our first birth mother was when she lost the baby, but far enough that we were hopeful that the pregnancy would go well. We signed the paperwork again and sent in the big check, crossing our fingers and saying many, many prayers. The next five and a half months were filled with anxiety, hope, fear, and everything else that goes along with adoption. We had a few scattered contacts with the birth parents, but they were a bit difficult due to the language barrier. It was also frustrating because she lives in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere, and she had to drive over an hour just to get an ultrasound. Because of this and a few hold-ups with Medicaid, she didn't have her 20 week ultrasound until she was 26 weeks along, and even then Isaac was being shy so we couldn't determine gender! She finally had a conclusive ultrasound at almost 35 weeks that told us our little miracle baby was a sweet little boy.

Tyler was very excited. :) We both were! We really didn't care if it was a boy or girl, but we have a lot of little boys in our families so we knew he would fit right in. We told our families and a few other people who needed to know, but other than that we decided to keep the baby a secret. As March 1st drew closer, we continued cautiously preparing and hoping that all would go well. The lack of communication was definitely frustrating. The language barrier made it very difficult, and sometimes she just wouldn't go to her appointments. It was so hard to have such little control over the situation! We were very grateful that our birth parents decided to sign all of the paperwork at the beginning of January. This was a very good sign for us, but they would still have 5 days after the baby was born to change their minds so nothing was set in stone. I was a nervous wreck that whole month. I hardly slept at all, and constantly checked my phone, afraid I would miss the all-important text or phone call. The plan was for our birth mother to call our translator and our Arizona lawyer when she went into labor, and those two would notify our Arizona lawyer's legal assistant and our Arkansas lawyer, and the legal assistant would notify us (yes, there were many people involved in this adoption!).

That's not exactly how it all went down. . .

Isaac (Part One)

Okay, I guess I should finally sit down and document the story. I have it all in my journal, but it's so spread out it's hard to make sense of it all. So here's the story:

When we first learned that adoption would be our path to growing our family (Fall 2013), we spread the word to anyone and everyone. We put it on Facebook, word of mouth, you name it. During that process, one of Tyler's cousins referred us to one of her friends who had adopted a beautiful little boy. This amazing woman talked to me, a perfect stranger, for over an hour about her experience working with a lawyer from Arizona who specializes in Marshallese adoption here in the United States. There are several communities of people from the Marshall Islands who are living in Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Washington. The Marshallese people do not believe in birth control or abortion and they are a rather impoverished group of people, so Marshallese adoptions are becoming increasingly popular (for a very interesting documentary about the Marshallese communities in the US, click here). We spoke to the lawyer several times, but it took us a few months to be ready emotionally and financially (private adoptions are $$$$$$).

After being on the waiting list for a few months, we got a call in April that we had been matched with a birth family! The due date was the beginning of December, and they were anxious to get to know us. We bit the bullet and sent in our deposit, excited and nervous for this new adventure. We had an amazing phone call with our birth parents, mostly speaking with the father since the birth mother doesn't really speak English. Over the next few months we continued to develop a closer relationship with these wonderful people. At the end of June our birth mother had her ultrasound scheduled to determine the gender. Her appointment was on a Friday morning, and I anxiously waited to hear from them all day. The next day I couldn't stand it and sent them a text asking how it went, but they didn't respond. I didn't hear anything from them all weekend, and started to get a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. I checked my phone many times an hour, hoping to hear something from them. On Monday afternoon while I was at work in my office, I finally got a text from them. They had been avoiding contact because they didn't know how to tell me that they had lost the baby. They were completely heart-broken for us, and felt so badly. I didn't know how to tell anyone, so I waited until Tyler got home at the end of the day to tell him. It was such an emotionally draining night breaking the news to Tyler and my mom. Our families were very supportive to us, and we really couldn't have gotten through the next few weeks without them.

For the next month we went through the grieving process and didn't really make any decisions. We knew we still wanted to adopt, but we weren't sure what path we wanted to take. Finally we decided to get back on our lawyer's waiting list. . .