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. . .