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. . .