Meeting Our Baby
This part of the story, the part where we met our baby at the hospital, is one I had excitedly anticipated the entirety of the adoption process. The culmination of all this waiting, finally coming to an end amidst the squeaky floors and cream walls of the L&D unit. What I didn’t anticipate correctly, what ended up flooring me, was that in the short span of the 3 days we spent at the hospital waiting to take her home I would become a different person. It’s not so unlike the process you go on when you are in physical labor with a baby, you enter labor one person and by the time you are holding your wriggly, screaming, red-faced babe in your arms you are no longer the same. Something has irrevocably changed in you as you become a mom. Now, I have come to realize that process isn’t just something that happens when you birth a baby, I think it’s what every woman’s heart goes through on the road to becoming a mom, however that may happen for them. So here’s the story of us, meeting our June, and being changed forever because love does that best.
Day 1
June’s birth mom was scheduled with an induction so we had a date that we were going to the hospital. Truth be told, having a date after all the months of unknown was pretty much the sweetest gift anybody could have given me at this time. We had talked through plans for the birth when we had met her mom in person and it included being in the area or at the hospital during her labor so we could meet the baby once she was born. She was admitted in the evening and started the induction the next morning. That morning, we woke up, packed our car and headed off on our road trip to the hospital. Due to having our two oldest sons biologically, we knew a thing or two about labor. A very important thing being that it can take awhile and definitely doesn’t happen on your time table. So we slowly made our way to the hospital, stopping to grab coffee. Stopping to grab brunch. Reading for awhile in the parking lot before heading in to the waiting room to meet the social worker.
We sat in the waiting room, talking to each other with Hallmark channel Christmas movies playing in the background. Our social worker would go to see June’s birth mom and get updates on her progress and come report back to us. I sat there feeling quite odd, because I was having a baby that day but I was not in excruciating pain, sweating out every droplet of water in my body, breathing in and out like my life depended on it. The labor part was happening elsewhere, where I couldn’t see, and so I just prayed and prayed. At times I found myself even wishing I could take some of the pain I knew her birth mom was surely experiencing at the moment cause it almost felt unfair to be handed a baby I hadn’t physically worked for like I had with my other two. By the late afternoon we got the big news that birth mom was about to push. We were beside ourselves with excitement. Our social worker had to leave around this time so she introduced us to the birth mom’s nurse and told her to let us know when baby was born. We waited for another hour or so. After about an hour and a half and still not hearing anything, James decided to go ask how everything was going. It was then he found out from the nurse that the baby had been born. He came and told me and we just were stunned. After finding out that baby and birth mom were both healthy and doing great. We were told to go ahead and leave to grab dinner and when we got back we would be able to see the baby. It was a bit odd leaving as soon as we find out about our baby girl, but we did as we were told and promised to be back soon.
Once we came back to the hospital after eating a hurried dinner, we waited and waited some more. Our social worker arrived and asked for an update and what we would soon come to find out is the little we had planned for when it came to the hospital experience had just been tossed out the window with a hand grenade soon to follow. For a few different reasons, none of which the nurses felt inclined to divulge to us as the adoptive parents, we were put on a different unit than the birth mom (not the protocol), we were not going to be able to see the baby but for 30 or so minutes (not the plan) and we would have to play it by ear moving forward because we were told birth mom was out of it after labor so was not able to verbalize her desires at this time.
We were confused and concerned for the birth mom. After much conversation between the charge nurse, us and the social worker we found ourselves on another unit and settled in for the night. It had been a few hours since June had been born and we still hadn’t held her or seen her. But we knew she was with birth mom and took comfort in that. Around 8 p.m., the doors opened and in she came in her little clear bassinet with wheels (that would become her big mode of transportation the next 3 days from room to room). She had her hospital hat on and was swaddled up. I remember that she had this deep little fresh crease between her eyebrows and nose and she was sleeping so peacefully. The nurse handed her to me first and I just burst into tears immediately as I told her how loved she was. The first thing I told her is how much all her parents loved her, birth and adoptive, because that was absolutely true and I wanted that to be a truth she knew from the very first moments of her life. This of course caused the nurse to start crying as she ran out of the room to give us our 30 minutes together. I held my baby and rocked her in amazement. James did the same and then in what felt like moments she was gone again. This started the final stage of the waiting game and maybe the most excruciating at times. Waiting to see if we would be bringing this baby home.
In Texas there is the 48 hour law, where birth moms have to wait 48 hours before relinquishing rights. So that means in a domestic adoption, adoptive parents are not going home with baby until those 48 hours have passed and papers have been signed. It provides a weird tension, one we were prepped for by our social workers beforehand. They talked about making sure to love your baby in the hospital from day 1 whether you end up going home with them or not. I understood that in theory. The tension was that in the hospital I felt strongly that this baby was birth mom’s, that we would potentially have the rest of our lives with this child hopefully and she had a solitary 48 hours to just be her mom. Not birth mom, not a mom giving up her baby for adoption, just mom. That tension of loving our June girl and loving her being loved by her mother was one of the most excruciating lines I have ever been forced to walk. It would cause my heart to grow and break at exactly the same rate during those next two days.
Day 2
The second day dawned, we woke up bright and early, waiting for shift change and to hear how our girl did through the night. Typically, this process of finding out information about our baby looked like me not wanting to look like too anxious of an adoptive mom so allowing for an hour or two after shift change before ringing the charge nurse and explaining we are the adoptive parents and located in another unit and would love to meet our baby’s nurse and hear how she is doing. That was the process each shift change and I’m not going to lie, it got a bit old quickly, waiting to hear something, anything. We found out that second day that baby girl had slept well and stayed with her birth mom through most of the night until she needed some uninterrupted sleep which we were so glad she had gotten. We found out that her birth mom wanted us to come to her room later that day to see her and hang out together. We loved that and couldn’t wait to see baby girl and mom again after the craziness of the past 24 hours. That second day, we spent hours in birth mom’s room. Holding baby, watching her hold baby, all of us fawning over how perfect our baby girl was. We talked a lot and asked each other questions, getting to know one another even better. It was honestly in a lot of ways some of our sweetest, most precious moments during this hospital experience. At one point, I left to go talk to the social worker at the hospital and kindly vent some of my frustrations and concerns at how this process had been handled by the hospital both for birth mom and for us. God bless that social worker and truly all social workers around the world, ya’ll do hard work and it is so needed. I came back into the room after that to find June being held by James while he chatted with her birth mom. It was a scene that will be forever cemented in my mind. I later would ask him what they had talked about and he would say with a coy smile “everything.” That didn’t surprise me in the least because he is one of the greatest people to sit down and chat with one-on-one (anyone want to guess what his profession is?).
We left our baby and her birth mom that day feeling so full of love for the both of them and feeling so honored that we had gotten to be a part of their story. After, going to dinner, we came back and had the opportunity to meet June at the nursery for a few of her 24 hour tests and checks. After that was finished, we went back with the nurse and we headed back to our room to watch the newest Mission Impossible. It was a nice moment of levity before Wednesday came, the 48 hours would be up tomorrow and we would know for sure who June was going home with.
Day 3
I woke up at 2 am that morning to our door creaking open and a squeaky bassinet being rolled into the room. I sat bolt upright and an older nurse introduced herself and said that birth mom was getting some rest and we could keep June for the rest of the night. This nurse before parting ways with us went on to let us know that “these things don’t always go the way we think” and cautioned us to prepare ourselves for that. With what little brain power I had in that moment at 2 am after spending less than a few hours with our daughter in the past 2 days I replied “ma’m no matter what happens, even if we don’t leave the hospital with this baby, we will be okay. What matters is that the birth mom is good and this baby is loved.” She seemed to take that with consideration and left the room. I took the 2-4 a.m. shift with June that night, waking up to feed her and soothe her, putting her back in the bassinet in between because there was no way that I was going to be found accidentally co-sleeping with the baby by a nurse. James had the 4-6 a.m. shift and lo and behold I found him that morning sitting upright in the rocking chair just staring at her. I asked him how long he had been up with her and his reply was “pretty much the whole time.” We just wanted to soak up that time with her, whenever we could.
By this point in the process, James and I were both done with what felt like being held hostage in the hospital. Due to a myriad of reasons, including poor communication at times from the nurses, not knowing when June would be coming to our room or need to go back to her birth mom, we rarely left the hospital. If we did it was just so one of us could grab food for us to eat that wasn’t from the cafeteria. This hostage situation meant that we went on approximately 10 walks around the length of the hospital and I introduced James to the eclectic collection that is a hospital gift shop, with everything from fresh flowers to novelty children’s toys. Day 3 had me telling James I never want to set foot in this hospital again, if we by chance ever crash our car near here and this is where they want to bring me just leave me on the side of the road. At that moment I 100% meant that with all the drama that my little heart could muster.
Our last nurse, our discharge nurse, was a ray of hope in what became one of the hardest waiting days of our entire life. She asked us questions and spent time hearing our adoption story. She didn’t give her opinion of what she thought should or could happen with this, just listened and talked about the other experiences the hospital had with adoptions. She admitted that the nurses had been abuzz trying to figure us out the past few days, yet she was the first person who had really asked about why we were adopting. I am and always will be thankful for her and her kindness that day. June’s birth mom ended up spending all day with baby. We understood that completely and wanted that for her. We didn’t see June again until it was finally time to say goodbye. Papers were signed and we came to see birth mom with social worker and take pictures. At this point, birth mom was doing surprisingly well and although the moment was heavy, the goodbyes went well. We left and went back to our room with our baby, which almost did not feel real at that point, to pack up and dress her in her going home outfit. We got a call right before we were about to walk out the door that birth mom didn’t get to say a final goodbye before the nurse had wheeled the baby back to our room. We made a plan with our nurse and met up in a private waiting room for a final goodbye with baby. This time there were lots of tears from birth mom and all I wanted to do was to comfort, James had to physically move me away because I just couldn’t tear myself away from our baby or birth mom at that time. After a few minutes, birth mom gave baby back to us, the nurses who were present were all weeping. We walked out, past the Emergency Department, put our baby in the car and drove away. That drive felt like freedom and felt so surreal. We had a baby and she was coming home with us. Our June had finally joined our family.
I think back on June’s hospital experience with a whole slew of mixed feelings. Sometimes, disappointment at the medical staff’s handling of such a complex issue. Sometimes, sadness at remembering the goodbye with birth mom. Sometimes, happiness at remembering holding our baby for the first time. It’s all mixed in there and all those emotions feel like one big knot I can’t untangle out of that experience. What I am thankful for though and always will be is that experience gave us our June and it gave us some unforgettable moments loving on our baby together, as birth and adoptive parents. I will be forever changed and forever grateful for those 3 days and all of the hellos and goodbyes it held.