I knew adoption wouldn’t be easy but I didn’t expect this.
These past two weeks have pushed us in ways I feared most and at this point
whether this beautiful baby will be ours is a big question. From the get-go I
had my concerns. Naturally when you offer financial support to someone for a
number of months with the goal of them giving you the baby they are carrying,
there is risk.
Our birthmother is 22, doesn’t have a job and already has
two children. Her dad and brother are in jail, she is estranged for her mother
and her best friend is support. The birthfather has been deported, her two year
old daughter has some medical issues and she has been arrested a couple times
for shoplifting. In comes an adoption agency offering her 5 months of rent and
expenses for giving up that precious baby in her belly. And should she change
her mind, no big deal. The expenses were a gift as were the cost of her lawyer,
caseworker and social worker.
I don’t know how I envisioned this relationship. Our one meeting
that she put off for a few weeks, went very well. We had lunch at Olive Garden.
She brought her best friend and we talked girl talk for two hours. Pregnancy,
boyfriends, childbirth, and all that good stuff. She shared that she hoped to go to school to be a nurse and
have more kids when she is older. Later she said, her friend deemed me a good
person. I felt a connection and thought about how I could help her get to
school. I wanted our son – her biological child – to meet her when he was old
enough to understand. I truly got how hard this was going to be for her and
knew I couldn’t blame her if she changed her mind.
Then there were the red flags. She reported that her
insurance was canceled because she missed an appointment. She was being evicted
from her apartment that thanks to our generosity, she had just moved into. She
never called me back but frequently called at 3 am. Her due date moved to
October 6 from September 28th and then back to October 3rd
even though medical records clearly stated a planned csection for September 21st.
Oh and it turned out she had been going to the doctor all along.
Mark at Adopt Help assures us that we are right to be
anxious. Not all adoptions go like this. This is a tough, challenging case and
her intentions are a complete unknown. The social worker she met with thought
her intentions to place were there but her actions are very concerning. He
gives it a D+ and tells us to wait it out. If we bail now, we are out all of
the money and then go back in the pool, waiting for another birthmother to
choose us and then another agonizing 3 months. If she decides not to place, we
get on hospital wait list reserved for those that have endured a failed match.
We might be called anytime that a baby is born and have to go immediately. So
just for that option, we suck it up. My stomach stays in knots, I drink every
night, and kick myself for falling in love with this child that is not mine and
allowing myself to buy his clothes and furnish his nursery.
