Waiting to become the mother I knew I was meant to be
When I was in high school, I used to tell myself that if I wasn’t married by 25, then I just wasn’t going to have kids. How young and naive I was, and susceptible to the image of motherhood society forces upon women.
What I didn’t and couldn’t know was that I wouldn’t get married until I was 28. And then divorced at 32 and remarried at 34. During my first marriage, I suffered a terrible miscarriage that resulted in several surgeries, putting me in the hospital for over a month. I almost died. Once I was healed, my doctors assured me that I would be able to conceive and give birth, but it would need to be carefully planned and monitored.
As I was getting older, the probability of bearing children was getting slim. Did you know that when a person becomes pregnant at the age of 35 it’s considered a “geriatric pregnancy”? I was already considered “high risk” and getting older was only going to exacerbate that.
I started to reconcile myself to the likelihood that I would never be a mother. But I kept hope. If God thought that I was fit to be a mother, He would make it happen. I possessed a mothering instinct, but had no one to mother. I wanted a child.
While my current husband and I were dating, one night on a rooftop we had a real heart-to-heart about what we wanted out of our time on Earth. Unprovoked, my husband mentioned that it was important to him that he adopt someday. Even if he had biological children of his own, he also wanted to adopt. Was that something that I could get behind?
Prior to that conversation, I had never seriously considered the thought. To my knowledge, I never knew anyone who had or was adopted. How did it even work? And would I ever be able to bond with a child I didn’t give birth to?
What an odd thing to consider, I later realized. Of course, you can bond with someone you aren’t related to by blood. Otherwise, neither romantic nor platonic relationships would exist.
Once we got married, getting pregnant was all I could think about. It was becoming more apparent that it wasn’t going to happen without a push from modern medicine. While I was happy for my friends who were becoming mothers, with every pregnancy announcement, baby bump, baby
shower and first birthday, it would take days for me to fight my way out of my private sadness. Not wanting the health risk or invasive medical procedures, my husband and I decided that adoption was the way to go.
In 2017, we officially began our adoption journey. After months of discussion, research and saving money we settled on a local adoption agency. After a year of classes, medical checkups, background checks, ‘Dear Birth Parent’ letters, large payments, questionnaires, and gathering photos of our life together, recommendations from family and friends, proof of vaccinations for our dogs, and so on, and so on — we were approved.
But this just meant that our profile would be visible to some young woman who was looking to make one of the biggest decisions of her life: choosing parents for her unborn child. It was exhilarating, but also humbling and so vulnerable to submit ourselves to these mothers’ judgment.
Once you’ve gone “live” in the adoption system, there is an uncertain time of wait. When families are giving birth, they know they have about nine months to get ready for the new arrival: registries, baby showers, painting the nursery, and so on. But when you choose to adopt, you just don’t know. You want to be ready at the drop of a hat. You might get a call telling you that a birth mother chose you, and that she and the infant will be released from the hospital in a matter of hours.
But it could also take years and years, as it gets more and more painful to walk past your fully stocked and furnished, but empty, nursery every single day.
In June 2018, we were notified that a young local couple had chosen us. After meeting with them a few times, we all decided that we wanted to move forward. In July we got the call that the birth mom had gone into labor and was at the hospital. When we arrived, we met our daughter. There was still paperwork to complete and signatures to collect, but, finally, we were now parents.
In Pennsylvania, however, a birth mother isn’t allowed to sign a consent to adoption until 72 hours after she has given birth. On the day we were witness that signature, we got a call. It was our social worker telling us that the birth parents had changed their minds. They would parent the child. That was the deepest grief I have ever felt in my life. The drive to the social worker’s office happened in both slow motion and warp speed.
This loss was different than my miscarriage. I had held this baby. I had named, clothed, fed and played with this baby. I had looked into this baby’s eyes and thanked God for her.
As an adoptive couple, you realize how very little say you have in most of the process. From the moment you choose an agency, you are waiting for other people to decide whether or not you would make good parents. We wait to be approved by an agency. We wait to be chosen by a birth mother. We wait for a social worker to approve of our parenting. We always wait, wait, wait for validation.
After taking a couple of months to mourn, we took our search national. We started the process all over again with a new agency: more photos, a video, our family history, financial records, references, home study. In March 2019, we were live in the new system — and only week or two later, we got the call. There was a young woman, in another state, who was due in April and wanted to meet with us! After the phone call, she officially chose us to parent her unborn child.
Underneath the immense joy, I was still very cautious and scared. What if this turned into another “failed adoption”? Would I recover from that? We quickly got a nursery together and were careful not to make any plans that would keep us from hopping on the next flight out of Pittsburgh at a moment’s notice. We finally got the call that she was in labor and we quickly made arrangements.
After several hours of nervous travel, we made it to the hospital a few hours after our baby was born. I held my daughter in my arms for the first time with love, gratitude and fear. Everyone was saying all of the right things, but I was scared to fully let go and enjoy the moment. I couldn’t let myself get too close just yet: The birth mom still has to sign the consent to adopt, and I couldn’t let myself be hurt again.
When you adopt across state lines, there is an additional waiting period to be able to leave the state with the child. So for four days, I lived with profound hope and cruel anxiety competing for my attention. Once the birth mom signed the consent and we were free to go back to Pittsburgh as a family, I could finally breathe.
But only a little bit. There were still more steps to take, boxes to check, validations to receive. Once back in Pittsburgh, there were post-placement requirements, along with the normal care of a newborn. Once a month for five months, a social worker visited to make sure everything was going well. When we had our final successful home visit, I was able to breathe a bit deeper.
But the full legal finalization was still months away. We knew we were a family, but in the eyes of the law, our custody was still revocable.
Andso we waited some more.
Eight months after our daughter was born, we were able to finalize the adoption. This meant that no one could take her away from us. That was the first day, in a very long time, that I was able to fully breathe. As a family, we celebrate that day like another birthday: the day we legally became a family. But of course we became a family the moment we held her for the first time.
I no longer worry about bonding. Giving her the first taste of solid food, witnessing her first steps, potty training, kissing her boo-boos away, finding out she loves Duran Duran and funky sneakers as much as I do: We are bonded as much as any mother and daughter can be. I am her mama and nothing will change that.
There are times when I momentarily grieve my first two losses. But then my daughter asks me to build train tracks with her or tells me to have good dreams, and the grief fades. Our journey to parenthood wasn’t as straightforward as most parents’, but it was more than worth it. It was, for whatever reason, the path we were supposed to take to the life we were meant to lead — and to the little girl who gives me the honor of calling me her mother.