Meeting Her Mom

The day we found out we were matched with our daughter we were contacted by the social worker who had been working with her mother through the adoption process. The social worker was lovely and shared with us the news that the expectant mom wanted to meet us in two days. She told us the place and time and two days later we found ourselves driving out of town to meet her and our social worker for dinner.

It’s hard to truly describe what it feels like to meet your potential future child’s mother. Our friend Jacob summed up my feelings well by saying “it’s so rare that you know ahead of time when you are going to meet a person who will absolutely change your life as an adult.” It is true, when I first met James I had no idea he would be my future husband, or when I got each positive pregnancy test I was not able to have dinner with each of my boys and get to know who they were before they were born.

We arrived at the restaurant a bit early and so we waited. Anxiously. During the waiting time my mind just cycled through all of these questions and thoughts; what would she think about us, will this go well or will it go terribly. I can honestly say I’m not sure if I’ve ever cared more about somebody liking me than I did that night, and that’s saying a lot, because I am a person who has a bad habit of liking to be liked. We walked into the restaurant and found the table first. As we sat there, chatting with the waiter, ordering drinks, they brought out rolls. James and I picked at them while we made furtive glances towards the doors every few seconds. Before I even realized it, I had eaten half the plate of rolls and they hadn’t even arrived yet. I literally remember thinking, “What is she going to think about me that I already ate half of the rolls? Is she not going to want to give me her baby because I’m a glutton?” Those are just a taste of the insane thoughts that were pinging inside my head that night.

After sitting there for what felt like hours, but was actually minutes with my sweaty palms, racing heart and fidgeting hands, they arrived. She walked up to us and the first thing she did was shake our hands. I remember thinking she was the most adorable pregnant person and that she was easily just as nervous as we were. We sat down and within minutes of meeting her it was as clear as day. This woman loved this baby with all of her being. That revelation just about knocked me over right then and there in the little booth we were squished into. She rubbed her belly and told us everything she had discovered about her baby in the 9 months of carrying her. She had nicknames for the baby, told us each of her cravings, how much she moved, when she was up during the night. It was all said with the greatest reverence and love. Like she was talking about her favorite person in the whole wide world. It made my heart soar and break all at the same time. Soar for my baby, who had been loved from the moment she existed and would continue to be loved for the rest of time. Break for this woman, because she was so in love with this baby that she was about to make the most heroic sacrifice to give her to another family to raise. She told us that she believed our family could give her the life that she had dreamed about for her daughter.

There were tears, so many tears during this meeting. There was also a lot of laughter. We talked about everything from seemingly minute details about our lives like our mutual appreciation of chick-fil-a for dinner once a week, to talking about what we did for work, to her asking me all the things about labor and post-partum recovery. Since I had had birthed two sons and worked as a child life specialist in the hospital setting I answered honestly with a helpful dose of encouragement knowing she was about to go through the hardest physical feat of her life to meet her baby for the first time. At the end of the night we took a picture together and hugged her. She told us “this may be the coolest meeting I’ve ever been a part of.” I told her I felt exactly the same way.

My dearest June, your Dad and I left that night after meeting your mom with this knowledge tattooed onto our hearts. We loved your mom with everything in us, she had easily over the course of a 2 hour dinner become one of our absolute favorite people on earth. We left overwhelmed that we out of all of the people on earth were chosen to get to intersect our lives with the two of you. To create this family from another family while at the same time still remaining connected to each other felt like the greatest, most sacred honor of my life. It still does, every day since, and I suspect it will for the rest of our lives together.

Here Comes Our June

Dear June,

The month we found out about you was November. We had been waiting almost a year for you at that point. It’s called the “active” waiting stage when you are in the domestic adoption process. This time when you are able to be matched with an expectant mother. It’s definitely active, at times it felt like it was actively destroying our sanity. Other times it felt like it was actively challenging every part of my person; body, mind and spirit. Often, it felt like getting on a rollercoaster I wasn’t sure I could handle and every time I got off feeling like I’ve just had the worst emotional hangover of my life. We had been sent 6 expectant mothers over the past 11 months. We had just come off a few month streak of getting no one sent to us and that had been downright depressing for your dad and anxiety inducing in me. The week of Thanksgiving we had a mom sent to us with a baby in the NICU in a town in Texas quite a ways away, ending our long streak of “no” one being sent to us. We said “yes” and a few hours later we got a “no” back. Strangely though I was still feeling hopeful for some crazy, insane, must-be-the-Holy-Spirit reason. I had a feeling back in August one morning when praying about you that something significant was going to happen in our adoption journey in November. It was also your Dad’s birthday month, so I had hoped that was going to be true, I just wasn’t sure what “something” was going to happen.

That something happened on a Tuesday, the week after Thanksgiving, when I got a text from our social worker that they were sending us another mother. Our 7th expectant mom. Earlier that day while I was praying for you I had written this in my journal “wherever our baby and her mom are, let them experience your goodness.” I had felt just a nudge that morning like you were closer to me than you used to be. Like God had given me a glimpse directly to you and my prayer was actively being answered right then. I wasn’t sure how he was showing ya’ll his goodness in that moment but I knew he was. Then after getting that text while doing another load of laundry on a very ordinary Tuesday, I opened the email that was sent where I met your birth mom for the first time, albeit on paper. I read it right there in the laundry room and knew immediately it was a “yes” for us. I decided to call your Dad just to confirm but it was our easiest and fastest “yes” we had ever made to a mom. It just felt right. There’s one picture that is provided with the profile of the expectant mother and/or parents. The rest of the day while I was running your brothers around and errands I would think about the picture I had of your mom and imagine meeting her in person and I would burst into tears each time. That also was new for me, that hadn’t happened before with the other mom’s profiles we had been sent. It was like my heart was already starting to process the gravity of meeting your birth mom for the first time.

The next day was a work day and the day we were possibly going to find out if your mom had said yes to us. I woke up and was strangely peaceful. On the car ride to work that day I had played a song over and over in the car called “Taste and See” by John Mark Pantana. There’s a line that says “you’re healing my heart when I’m drinking in You, like jumping in the water in the summer of June.” We already had known your name was going to be June if we adopted a girl and so that line played over and over in my car and gave me this peace that I just may be about to meet my June girl. I walked into work and told my coworkers who had walked this adoption journey out with me (had been there when I had found out about each of the previous moms and when we were subsequently not chosen). And I waited. It was one of the craziest days at our hospital because it was undergoing its bi-annual mandatory inspection. I ended up getting another text from our social worker later that day saying she was about to give me a call. My heart literally felt like it was about to jump out of my body with anticipation. At that same time I found out that we were about to get interviewed for the mandatory inspection as a team so I just high tailed it out of the building to my car and then proceeded to have what may have looked like a mild panic attack for 15 minutes while I waited for our social worker to call back.

She called and told me that we had been chosen and that we were going to have a baby girl. I burst out into tears, so many tears. I just sobbed talked during the rest of the conversation. I then proceeded to try to call your Dad over and over again until he answered (he was in a session at the time with a patient). I told him and he proceeded to burst out into tears over the phone. I haven’t heard your Dad cry over the phone more than a handful of times in our 14 years together but he cried the happiest tears when he heard about you for the first time June. We then got to call our friends and family and share the news. I told my coworkers at lunchtime and then proceeded to duck out of work. Your Dad and I sat down for a late lunch and just tried to wrap our minds around the fact that this was actually happening. Adopting you. Your mom was due to be induced 4 days later so we knew we didn’t have long to wait which was a blessing and also a crazy turn around time when you’re adding another human being to your family. We picked your brothers up with balloons and cupcakes and tried to hint to them that you were coming. I’m not going to lie it took about 10 minutes of prodding and then finally Nolan guessed that all this celebratory happiness was about you. Their response was less enthusiastic than we were hoping for and we videoed for posterity’s sake, but to be expected for a 3 and 5 year old who have been hearing about this baby for forever, and are probably ready just to meet you already.

We would go to bed the night we found out you existed feeling overjoyed, amazed, in wonder, so excited to meet your mom and with the hindsight that comes ever so quickly that it all made sense. The waiting, the worrying, the 6 other expectant moms weren’t for us because it always had been you, my darling girl. You were the one we had been waiting for this whole time. Even though our journey to you took longer than expected. Even though that waiting and wondering irrevocably changed your Dad and me, it was worth it. It was all worth it because you were meant for us and us for you.

James makes a guest appearance

Well, hello everyone!

I have fully enjoyed Molly’s blogging and history keeping as this adoption process continues, but I felt it was time for me to throw my hat in the ring. At long last. You know, because I have been a part of all this too. My name is James, nice to meet you, and while I am not nearly the same type of writer my incredible wife is, I will do my best to speak to some things that have been percolating in me for a while.

Why has it taken so long for me to write, you ask? Isn’t this the James and Molly Bass Blog, our shared method of creative expression and deeply personal updates etched in the stone of the internet? To be frank, many times have I pulled up this page and tried to put my thoughts down, but I haven’t had a lot to say. Whereas the emotional up and down of this process seems to yield a fount of wisdom, clarity, and ideas for Molly; for me the emotional intensity caused me to draw more inward, not necessarily isolating myself, but diminishing in a way to better find stability. For one, I’m now off of social media and journaling a heck of a lot more.

At my best I have sought to make meaning of this season, striving to depend on God more, to savor moments with friends and my family, and to pour myself into the ministry of my therapy practice. At my worst I have sunk into something like a depression, a mid-life crisis asking non-threatening questions like “What is the point?”, reaching for any passing obsession (like say, photography) to distract me from how I am feeling and give me a small sense of progress or accomplishment. While this adoption process is something I want and I very much believe we are called to as a family, I have felt powerless, angry, melancholic, and confused just as much if not more than joy, hope, and anticipation.

Molly has never pressured me to write, she knows me too well for that. It is not that I don’t love writing, I really do, but (and this sounds horrible) only on my own terms when I feel inspired. Pretty juvenile, I know, but here we are. When we talk about the blog she just says, “It is there when you’re ready, I love when you write,” and left it at that. She’s playing the long game, folks.

So here it is. Lately, I have been journaling and sketching out what it is like to wait. Now that is a jarring four-letter word that feels like a fastball to the chest. While is it hard to imagine an action that embodies waiting, it helps me to think of it like a location or season in life. It feels like waking up in the middle of a desert, barren landscape all around me in every direction I look. The stifling heat filling my lungs, the desperation to leave, the powerlessness to create water or shade, and the knowledge if I keep on in any direction I will either reach its end or die trying (a bit melodramatic, but stay with me). Waiting often feels like awaking to a personal wasteland carrying a weight that no one sees.

And in this wasteland I have discovered three avenues that I would do best to avoid:

1. The first we’ll call Control, borne of panic and rage, which entices that if I only had a tighter grip on my work, family, and resources; then I could push my way out of the desert in no time. So what if I end up a burned out shell of a man?

2. The second is Vice, which supposes since I may be stuck here for a while, why not enjoy the stay? It offers all kinds of entertainment, past-times, and addictions to best anesthetize me from my discomfort, but will also leave me underdeveloped once the waiting is over.

3. The third is Despair, a heavy weight that drags down, which suggests if I can’t recant whatever decision brought to wait in the first place, then I should recognize that there actually is no way out, no escape, and nothing will ever change.

Yet I am discovering and beginning to experiment with the other meaning for wait.

This other meaning is the act of waiting on or looking for an opportunity to serve and host others, which may represent the only coherent way through this desert.

To accept waiting as a role, not just a season, to embrace it as a service to others for as long as it lasts. To notice my pain and then share it with others, even lean into helping other people, and to see their relief as a promise of the relief I will eventually recieve. All the constant time under tension is held with patience knowing it will develop and grow me into a more grateful and kind person. Learning to practice losing myself in the satisfaction of doing even the smallest of tasks well.

I am gradually discovering that I am content. Maybe not in every way or every moment, but I find it there some days, sprouting in the desert all the same. I am beginning to realize that I do not need what I am waiting for to have a good life. The good life is all around me if I have eyes to notice. I can take a breath, look up, and whisper that life is good enough right now as it is. If I slow down, contentedness is there for the taking. If I defer joy until I have what I am waiting for, I will always end up disappointed with my life. For now, I can do without what I am waiting for and still be happy.

Then comes the thrill of hope, which at this point feels less like triumphant trumpets announcing its arrival, and more like a gentle swell of violins from a long ways off. It is there, just barely, but it is there. If I am still, I can feel the ancipation that what I long for will eventually happen. We will eventually match with a birth mom, we will one day travel to finally meet her, and I will hold my baby, who we have prayed for hundreds of times, and our baby will come to live with us. In order to hold onto this future hope I have to remind myself to trust that God will take care of me. To then step past my fears and dare to dream again. Far beyond what I feel and can see, it will eventually happen.

Those are my thoughts for now about waiting, not as definitive as I would like yet more solid than I had dared hope. Maybe you can relate to some of these feelings about waiting, and if so, you are not alone in this. This season is incredibly exposing, humbling, and it does mature us faster than most, if we let it. We can hope together, knowing this period of waiting will always come to an end, however quickly or slowly.

The major choice is who we choose to be while we are in the waiting.

Until next time,

James

A Letter to my Boys

Dear Callum and Nolan,

I set out to write this blog for your sibling who we are currently adopting. That one day they could look back and see this part of their journey and how we thought of them. It’s still that, but today I wanted to take time to write to you so that one day when you are older and not 5 and almost 3 years old, you too can see what this journey meant for ya’ll.

So here’s what I want you to know in case you don’t remember this part a year from now or 20 years from now. Ya’ll love this baby more than I could have ever fathomed, already. Before you ever set eyes on them, before you ever held them in your eager arms, you loved them. You talk about them, call them by the nickname we have picked out, all the time. Recently, Nolan you told your teacher at Sunday School all about the baby and how they were hiding. Makes sense that this feels like a little bit of the longest game of hide and seek ever to be played because you know this baby is out there we just haven’t discovered who they are yet.

Callum, my uber empathetic, big hearted boy. You get sad often these days, ask us why they haven’t come yet, ask us why the wait is so long. I know you notice how those questions make us sad too because our hearts are repeatedly asking the same thing and it feels like a bruise that’s getting poked again and again. We have tried so hard to validate those feelings with our own, to be open and honest. To tell you we have no idea why this baby isn’t here in our family yet but we really do still believe in a God who knows exactly why. Callum Silas, I want you to know that although it makes my heart so undeniably sad to see you so disappointed during this process it also has allowed us to have so many big conversations about God. You have talked to God and asked God about this baby so many times and sometimes even heard God talk back. I can’t explain how much joy that brings to my heart, it’s the best feeling ever to see you discover faith.

You have both waited so long. Nolan, you have waited for this baby for half of your life. Callum, since the earliest memories you can muster up you’ve been waiting for them. The truth is there are some days your Dad and I have felt like the worst parents for putting you through this. To adopt was our decision, not yours, and it feels particularly cruel on days we find you crying for this baby and we are cuddling you with tears in our own eyes. What I desperately hope you know at the end of this journey though is despite life’s many surprises (some fun, some so very not) that our family is one who chooses love. Who chooses hope. Who chooses faith even when it feels so crappy in the moment. Because we know those are the things that win out, not always in the moment, but always forever.

I sometimes have to manage my dreams when it comes to this process but I have this recurring one where I picture the both of you meeting this baby for the first time. That introduction, your excited, handsome, smiling faces. Your little arms, cradling this tiny bundle up next to your now lanky little boy bodies. Every time I have that dream it gives me butterflies in my tummy and it feels like falling in love, like the best day of my entire life. I can’t wait to see that dream come true, boys, and I can’t wait to watch the rest of your lives unfold as the best of siblings. This baby doesn’t know this yet but pretty soon they will come to find out that they landed the best brothers in this whole wide world.

I love you Callum, Nolan, and our Baby-to-be Bass. It is the greatest honor of my life to be your mom. To walk this journey with all three of you has irrevocably changed me and I am forever grateful.

Love,

Your Momma

Crying in Torchy's

Recently, James and I got a 24 hour date courtesy of my amazing in-laws. It has been a disheartening and emotionally rough period of waiting for us this past month and we were feeling the need for some space to be together and to breathe a bit. We had been sent another expectant mother right before we got our date and had said a wholehearted and excited yes to her. Our 24 hours away fell during the particularly excruciating time of waiting to hear back about whether the expectant mother would choose us as her adoptive family.

This situation was something we have now done 5 times and we are well acquainted with the process. I woke up Saturday, knowing that this was the day the mom would look over the potential adoptive families’ books to begin the process of making her choice. I spent the morning sitting in our baby’s nursery that is completely decorated and perfectly put together but very much an empty museum without a baby to fill it and prayed for that mom. James and I then proceeded to our date day. We had a blast and forgot about the whole process, for a few hours anyway (which is extremely hard to do at this stage of the waiting game.)

We nipped into a few stores together when we were out on our date, which is how I found myself just taking a quick stroll by the baby clothes section of H&M. I don’t usually allow myself to shop for clothes for our future baby because of the reality of not knowing what season they will be born in and what type of clothes I’ll be needing. Today though I decided to brave it, possibly due to the hope I had about how just maybe we’d get picked, and I browsed all the tiniest onesies, sweaters and jackets. After a few minutes I noticed two elementary aged kiddos laughing and chasing each other. They ran up to their parents who were a different race than them, and my heart welled up, as I watched from a distance this biracial adoptive family interact. They were laughing and the parents were reminding them to slow down as they ran through the aisles. They were living their beautifully normal family life in front of me. It just so happened that these adoptive kids were the same race as the baby we were waiting to hear about. All of a sudden, I found myself fighting back tears as I quickly escaped the baby section.

I managed to hold it together but was quiet as James and I went to lunch. I held it in all the way through ordering food, filling up my drink and sitting down at a table at Torchy’s. Then the tears erupted as my poor husband reached his hand into the chip bowl. By God’s grace it was not a loud sobbing but just the type of tears that won’t stop falling no matter how hard you try to stop, you know the ones. I cried and I tried to eat and James earnestly tried to figure out what could have possibly happened at the Torchy’s to cause the eruption of tears. Eventually, I was able to tell him about the family that I saw in the store earlier that had triggered a wave of sadness. Sadness that our baby was not here yet. That we weren’t on the other side of the adoption line like they were. We were still in the waiting.

The day before, as I was telling friends about waiting to hear back from this mom I had gotten a message from a good friend of mine. She had told me that she had been up last night taking care of her baby and I had popped into her head as someone to pray for. She said this usually didn’t happen to her at 2 in the morning but she did pray for me and told me how patient we had been, how she had seen that up close the past year as we waited for our baby. Then she said something that had to have been straight from God because it helped my hurting heart so much, she reminded me how the Bible describes love as patient. How in the waiting, in the faithfulness, in the patient hope for this baby, I was loving them, even before I ever laid eyes on them. That was something my heart desperately needed to hear, that in the waiting we were loving our baby.

Turns out, that mom didn’t pick us. So the waiting continues for us, the patient loving. For those who are in their own waiting rooms, I just want you to know, I feel it too. The excruciating, sometimes agonizing, oftentimes frustrating feelings that accompany this time. I’ve asked God, pleaded with him recently to just please let me out of this waiting. He hasn’t and I still choose to believe that is ultimately for my best and his glory, even when it feels like utter misery.

I hope this encourages you in your waiting, that love is patient. That choosing to be patient right now for that friend, or that family member or in that particular situation, is true love. There’s nothing grander than that. One last thing, from personal experience if you ever find yourself in a Torchy’s and just losing it, salty tears really do pair well with their chips and guac and the napkins on their tables are soft enough for wiping away tears without being scratchy.

With love,

Molly

To The Expectant Mothers I've Met

Hey friends,

In the month and a half since I last updated ya’ll, we’ve had lots happening around our home and with the adoption process that I want to share with you. We are really excited and grateful to say that half of our matching grant has been funded, so of the $7,500 that can be matched we’ve been generously given half of that. We are still hoping and praying for the rest of that amount to be granted as it will help us get that much closer to the $15,000 we have left to raise before baby arrives.

Our family hit a big milestone: we sent our firstborn off to Kindergarten a few weeks ago. It was a big adjustment for all involved but he is thriving in this setting and we are so excited to see that. Now, our second born is getting lots of one-on-one attention with momma and I’m soaking up every minute of it before he gets upgraded to the middle child of our family.

Lastly, since I last blogged we have been sent two more mothers. Both of whom we really loved and respected and said yes to but did not match with, meaning the mother chose another adoptive family. That is a quick summation of something that has taken days and days of emotional heartache for James and I to process the past few weeks. I was reflecting back recently with God and then later in therapy and with James about one of the things that has surprised me most about this process. For me, it’s been how much I love and respect these expectant mothers we are sent. We decided on this domestic adoption path initially because we were excited to meet these expectant mothers and hopefully nurture an open adoption relationship between our families for our baby. It’s not for everyone that feels called to adoption but we truly believed it was for us. Now, a year into this process and almost 9 months from the time we’ve been actively awaiting a match, that’s never been more true for me.

I thought I had an inkling when we got started what type of mother we would get to know via their profile or the situations they would come from. We were prepared well by our agency for all of the eventualities we’ve seen and I’m very thankful for that. But the reality of meeting each of these women (as much as you can within pages and pages of paper about someone) has been more than I ever imagined it would be. The women I’ve met have been some of the toughest, persevering, hard working, hopeful, and wisest women I think I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading about. They have been handed some of the most challenging circumstances I’ve ever known. Here they are, making one of the greatest sacrifices a human can make on this earth: pregnancy. You give up so much of your body, autonomy, ability, options when you are pregnant, and that’s true for every woman. But to be pregnant knowing at the end of it all you will be giving your precious baby, who you’ve spent 9 months making all those sacrifices for, to somebody else is such a deeper level of sacrifice that every time I really allow myself to think about it I find myself tearing up.

I am a mom and in the 6 years since I have been pregnant with my first I thought I’ve known what it is to love my children and I have with all of my heart. But these moms are doing something I have never had to imagine doing with my boys, out of love, out of courage, out of a hope that is bigger than their circumstances. For that reason, every time I read about one of them, my whole heart swells with admiration and gratitude that even if they don’t pick us we’ve had the honor of knowing them in their journey. And so with each mother we are sent we find ourselves, knowing them, loving them and then having to let them go when they choose someone else. We are so happy for them that they have chosen a family they feel best about for their baby and simultaneously heartbroken that it wasn’t us.

Two weeks ago, it was the 1 year anniversary of us officially starting the adoption process. I was up doing my morning prayer walk. It was still dark, I was groggy and it was already 88 degrees outside (because Texas never cooled down this summer) and I felt God gently ask me to look back and see how I’ve changed this past year as we’ve waited for our baby. I hadn’t given it much thought until then, in a lot of ways I’ve had my nose to the grindstone for the past year doing everything possible for this adoption. As I took a few quiet moments to compare myself to the woman I was a year ago I found myself smiling, I liked this version of me that has been born out of this extreme season of waiting and hoping. I’m more disciplined out of necessity, more patient than I imagined I could ever be, more hopeful because of all this time of practicing, more grateful, more aware of the hurt that is in this world and more than ever grounded in the realization that the only answer for that hurt is redemption.

So to my baby, we’re still waiting on you my love. Patiently, hopefully, gratefully. I want you to know that you have two mommas who love you more than anything and would sacrifice all they could for you. I want you know that I think the world of the momma who is holding you in her belly right now. She’s my hero and I pray for her every day when I’m praying for you. I want you to know that you’ve already made me into a better person and that’s quite remarkable because I haven’t even met you yet.

I can’t wait until I do.

Love,

Your Mom

The Waiting Game

Hello Friends and Family,

It’s been a hot minute since I’ve been on here. For those who follow me on social media you may have seen a few updates where I mentioned how hard this adoption process has been lately. It’s been a crazy rollercoaster ride of emotions dashed with many tears and I had needed a bit of time to process some of that before sharing it in writing with all of you.

In the last blog, I mentioned having our first expectant mother profile shown to us and then her choosing another family. The thing is, we had been waiting almost 5 months to be presented with our first mother. That was unusual per our specific adoption agency but it was due to our adoption agency having an influx of mothers and babies that didn’t match our home study profile (the list of decisions you make on what baby you feel comfortable with adopting into your home).

That 5 months was what I had on paper dreaded the most when thinking about the domestic adoption process, just the waiting and not knowing at all when your baby would be arriving. I thought I wasn’t going to be able to handle it in the slightest. My therapist even, God bless him, when he was interviewed for our home study paperwork (yes, this is something that happens, if you’ve ever had any sort of therapy, your therapist gets contacted and basically has to fill out information on your mental health and readiness to adopt) had said that that his only concern for me was being able to deal with the waiting of the adoption process. He said he felt I could do it as I relied on God but that it could be difficult for me. That part was so true when I first read it in our home study I felt like I had gotten punched in the gut. He was right. I’m not a waiter by nature. I’m not a patient person when it comes to my life and the goals and dreams I have set for myself.

He happened to also be correct about who would be able to help me through it. Those 5 months of waiting, with no updates, no expectant mothers, no baby to take home, turned out to be the most peaceful season of waiting I’ve ever had. Nerves would creep up, doubt would sometimes rear their head but it’s as if every time that happened God just lovingly placed his hand on my shoulder and reassured me it was going to alright. So 5 months in, I found myself surprised and proud that I was actually doing the thing I hadn’t been sure I could do it all.

Then, we were out of the blue sent our first expectant mother profile and we instantly fell in love with this expectant mother and her baby. James and I weren’t together the first time we read about her but we both separately admitted to just crying while reading over her profile. She is an amazing woman and an incredible mother to the baby she was giving up via adoption. Within 24 hours of us falling in love and envisioning our baby that dream was shut down abruptly when she chose another family. We trusted that God knew what he was doing, that that particular baby was not meant to be ours. It didn’t stop the hurt, the feeling of rejection and even the wondering about what might have been. And from that point on what had been the easiest thing, to wait, all of a sudden became the hardest thing.

The past month or so has been a difficult one, filled with lots of tears, lots of wondering where our baby is, lots of rearranging the expectations I had for the timelines of their arrival in our family. It’s involved lots of prayer and laying all of my feelings out before God. It’s involved lots of tearful talks with James (who has been stellar and steady, as he always is.) It’s involved making plans for our near future that I wanted to put off because we were supposed to have our baby already.

Then to top it all off, we were presented with another expectant mother profile this week. It was an expectant mother completely different in many ways from the first and instead of falling in love instantly we honestly found ourselves filled with lots of questions and concerns. We still wanted the very best family for this expectant mother and baby. They are utterly deserving of that but we wrestled with if it could be us. Ultimately, we decided we could not give this mother and baby what they needed and our heart that had just stopped hurting from the first rejection, broke in a completely different way at having to say no to being presented as an option to this mother.

I told James the other day “this may be the hardest thing I’ve done in my adult life.” Our hearts feel raw and a bit weary. Waiting feels long these days. We’re coming up on a year anniversary from when we started this process officially with our agency. And yet, today, I can honestly say I still have hope. I do believe our baby is out there and that we can be the right family for a mother making the toughest decision of her life. I know that waiting is not in vain, it never is, because God is in the waiting.

To our friends, family, co-workers, church, neighbors and community. Thank you for being with us. Your love, presence, prayers, food drop offs, wisdom and encouragement has provided us with more hope than you could imagine.

Cheers to the waiting,

Molly

The Paperwork Part

Hello lovely people,

A quick update before I take us all the way back to September to fill you in on the valley of the shadow of death of adoption paperwork. Last week I mentioned in my social media stories that it had been a wild week with our adoption process and it had been. We have been active, meaning we could be shown an expectant mother profile to say yes to so we could be considered as adoptive parents to her baby, since late January. Since going active in January we had not received any profiles and our adoption agency is lovely and had filled us on why this is but needless to say the silence has been heavy at times and expectant the entirety of the time.

Well, last week out of the blue, our social worker sent us our first expectant mother profile to view and within less than 24 hours we said yes to be shown to this mother as an adoptive parent option and the mother chose another family. It was an emotional rollercoaster to say the least and I have never had butterflies that intense in my entire life. After it was over we were able to decompress and talk but it was quite the day. Our agency prepared us that typically this happens a handful of times before you actually match with a mom (meaning we say yes to her and then she chooses us for her baby) but living it was quite the reality check for my heart. About 24 hours later to top it off we found we had not received a grant we had applied to a few months ago that I personally was really banking on getting. It was a disappointing week in a lot of ways. Yet, we’re still here, our baby is still out there, and we are incredibly crazily hopeful still that we will get to meet them soon.

And now, let’s go back to September.

Us the night we officially started the process (it felt similar to when you find out your pregnant by peeing on a stick and seeing those two pink lines. It all becomes very real and exciting but you have no idea what you are getting yourself into.).

I wanted to transport ya’ll back just a little further into our September through January part of this process. It was the dreaded paperwork, yes, but there are other things that go into that time as well. We had to have physicals for every person in our family. We had to have background checks done on us and any person who would be regularly watching our baby without us home. We went and got fingerprinted. James and I each wrote a 10 page autobiography (no joke, due to James and I being the perfectionists we are we took about 3 weeks on this alone.) After this part was done we had the home study process. During that time there are a few weeks of waiting without paperwork but instead of being home free I put all my time into making our adoption book (the book that expectant mothers see when choosing a family for their baby) and making sure that within those 20 or so pages that mom could see as clear a picture of our family as possible. Then after all of that, we went active and we had the opportunity to make our webpage on the adoption site for possible adoptive mothers to view which topped us off with another few weeks of writing and crafting our lives into paragraphs. All in all this took us about 5 months (which is about middle of the road for adoptive families but apparently pretty good when you already have kids, which of course made me weirdly proud.)

So how do you do this with 2 kids, 2 jobs and the hopes of not strangling your spouse every day you sit down to write? You don’t! Not without some sacrifices. We had just moved to a new city and started looking at new churches and truly felt like if we were going to get through this adoption process we wouldn’t be plugging into a small group at our church for the first time in our 10 years of marriage. We said no to nights out, we asked our parents for date nights where we spent all our time doing adoption paperwork instead. For my birthday, our parents took our kids for the day so we could celebrate and I begged James to go to a coffee shop and work on adoption paperwork all day. My husband, complied and I don’t think I’ve ever loved any birthday gift more than the gift he gave me that day as our butts fell asleep and our coffees grew diluted at Redefined Coffee as we typed away for hours.

We had some break-downs a few times during this process. Our therapist, who has done both individual and couples counseling with us over the past few years, called it pretty perfectly when we started this process.

He told me, “Molly, you charge ahead and like to walk in front when it comes to life. James is an ambler, content to walk at his own pace. You can either spend the next few months taking off, leaving him in the dust and trying to drag him along behind you or you can try to meet him in the middle of this.”

His advice was to slow down a bit, breathe, not rush to the finish line like you are literally on fire. Did I heed his wisdom? Yeah, I did, it just took me til about mid November after we were both so burned out we weren’t really functioning well anymore. Around that time my dearest husband asked if instead of doing adoption work every night we had off if we could like maybe actually watch a show for once: “Can we do anything other than adoption stuff tonight?”, may have been his exact words. Thankfully, by God’s grace, I said yes and we started taking some breathers in between adoption homework nights which were desperately needed.

All that to say, we got there baby. After 5 months or so of consistent paperwork, writing, signing forms, making appointments we got there! Then came what I thought would be the hardest part: the waiting. And to my surprise it hasn’t been…but that’s a story for next week.

I wanted to dedicate each of my blogs to a few people who have helped us on the way. So this one is dedicated to our therapist (who will probably never see this), you have saved our butts time and time again during this process and just helped us grow into more of the people we were created to be. I’m forever grateful for the impact you’ve made in our lives. Our parents, who took our kids for hours and overnights so we could actually get this paperwork done and gave our kids the time of their lives while mom and dad were working on this. To my co-workers, who when I came into work last Wednesday and I told them I may be acting a bit weird because we were waiting to find out if we were having a baby were the most supportive, loving and kind human beings and have been that throughout the entirety of this process. I’m so thankful for ya’ll.

Thanks for following along friends,

Molly

How We Chose Domestic Adoption

Hello to my favorite people,

To kick us off here on our adoption journey, we’d have to go back to over two decades ago when as a kid I saw families who adopted and knew in my heart thats what I was supposed to do when I grew up. We’d have to go all the way back to teenage James who had close childhood friends who had been adopted. Then we’d end up at Abilene Christian University, Moody Auditorium, sitting in none other than good ole’ ACU chapel. This would be 18 and 19 year old James and Molly who were the most serious of daters (because we already knew each other was the one before we started dating, but that’s a story for another time). Chapel had ended and adoption had been the topic, I turned to James and told him that I couldn’t marry a guy who wasn’t whole heartedly on board with adopting in the future and he said he was. He has stuck by that statement. So to go back to the very beginning, this journey started decades ago. It has always been our plan to have children both through adoption and biologically, Lord willing.

To come back to more present day times, each time we have felt we wanted to add a kid to our family, we have prayed through trying to get pregnant versus adopting. The first two times we prayed we ended up with none other than the two best kids on the planet, Callum Silas and Nolan Riley. They are also the most excited older brothers for this baby. They pray for baby every day, talk about what they will do with this baby, just sit in the nursery to be in baby’s space. I am convinced God knew exactly what he was doing when he put them in our family first. When it came time to think about adding baby #3 we prayed long and hard. We weren’t sure which direction to go. On one hand getting pregnant didn’t feel like the right path when we prayed, but adoption felt daunting. We didn’t have a clue as to how we wanted to adopt and we didn’t have many friends, family or even fellow church community who had pursued adoption at the time. As we prayed about it and talked to friends and even acquaintances who had pursued different forms of adoption we found ourselves narrowing down our options. After talking with close friends who had fostered for awhile (shout out to Katie and Taylor Franklin, who are the most incredible parents on this planet) we felt like at this time in our family’s life fostering was not for us due to constraints with our jobs, schedule and even personalities (a.k.a we aren’t the most flexible/go with the flow type people). When it came to the international adoption scene, it has changed drastically not only in the past few decades but since COVID. For us it didn’t feel like a viable option due to how much more difficult it is to pursue that possibility these days and the reality that you are usually adopting an older child not an infant.

Which brings us to one of the things that we kept coming back to when considering adoption. Based on every adoptive family I’ve ever talked to or read about plus our combined 10 years of studying human development and attachment (not saying we are experts but it is what we went to school for and built our careers on) we felt it was important for us to stay in birth order. What does that mean? Great question, it means that we would keep the birth order of our children the same and just add a youngest (like how birth order would go if you were just adding kids biologically.) So Callum would not be displaced as the oldest and our adopted child would get to have the bonding and attachment that comes with being the baby of the family. This was one of the things we decided was our BIG thing and that led us for the first time to look at domestic infant adoption. Due to having a one year old at the time of starting this process having a newborn was one of the only ways to make this happen and adopting a newborn nowadays happens mostly through domestic adoptions.

Marcus Bowen, God bless him, who is more than a best friend and is truly the most understanding family member you could ever have, heard us discussing domestic adoption and offered for us to meet with his friend Aimee who was currently working at a private domestic adoption agency in DFW. Aimee so graciously offered to talk to us over Zoom one January night in 2022. We came with a whole laundry list of questions and fired away. Aimee answered them, provided years of her own experience in the domestic adoption world and at the end of it we had one of those moments. It’s like God clicks on the lights and suddenly everything is clear and the way forward is obvious. This conversation did that for us. We told Aimee we were hoping to buy a house and have our youngest get a bit older before we officially started the process but we would follow back up when we were ready. That’s just what we did 9 months later. She urged us to consider different adoption agencies, and we did, but we always kept coming back to Legacy Adoption Agency. Thanks to Marcus who led us to Aimee and God who led us through that whole decision making process.

One of the things that became our second BIG reason for choosing domestic adoption came from this conversation with Aimee: understanding that this path of adoption allows for an open adoption. In the U.S., domestic infant adoptions are most of the time open, meaning there is a level of relationship and exchange of information between the birth parents and the adoptive parents and child. The reason for this change from a few decades ago when closed adoptions were the norm and most children had no information on their bio family (or may have not even known they were adopted until they were older) is due to the research that has come out showing the better outcomes for everyone involved when adoptions are open. We heard about what open adoptions looked like and absolutely knew it was for us. We loved the idea of our child getting to grow up with as much of the complete picture of their story; who they were, where they came from, who they resemble and open adoption allows for that. We loved the idea of meeting a woman in one of their darkest, most complicated moments and saying we would love to raise your baby and for you to get to know and be a part of that babies life with us. Due to meeting other families that have pursued domestic infant adoption we know these hopes and dreams we have for relationship aren’t always picture perfect and sometimes don’t materialize in the way families or even adopted children hope for. Our agency does such an incredible, thorough job of not only preparing us for openness before we ever are matched with a mom but facilitating that relationship for the first few years of our child’s life and then for as long as we need after that. They strive to make these open adoptions benefit everyone and the stories they have of it happening are some of the most breathtakingingly beautiful stories I have ever heard. If we have a chance to pursue an open adoption it probably won’t look like what we think, most things in life don’t. We are though, fully committed to doing all we can to cultivate openness, for our sake, for the birth parents sake and most of all for our baby’s sake.

A brief defining of terms

I feel like this would be a good time to explain what exactly it means to pursue private domestic infant adoption, as in what those grouping of words mean. Again, we are not adoption lawyers but this is our understanding through our agency’s explanation of all of these terms for our specific situation.

• Private: meaning a private agency not through the state (like if you adopted through the foster care system).

• Domestic: meaning within the United States. Our specific adoption agency is even more local and stays within the state of Texas only.

• Infant: actually includes 2 years and younger officially but for most infant adoption agencies the vast majority of their placements are newborns not babies or toddlers.

• Adoption in this situation with a newborn looks like the birth parents terminating their rights irrevocably 48 hours after the baby is born (per Texas law) and we become the adoptive parents for the next 6-8 months, the adoption agency is the legal guardians and we have regular home visits to make sure that the baby is being well taken care of. After that amount of time we go to a courtroom and are declared the parents of this baby for the rest of their life. Legally we are each others’ from then on.

• One misconception that people have are in regards to what an open adoption means is that it includes shared legal custody (such as you would see between parents who have divorced.) Legally we are the parents, we have full custody that is non-negotiable and irrevocable. In an open adoption we go in with an agreement to have a certain level of openness, typically emails and sending pictures at first and then work up to an in person visit during the first year. That agreement doesn’t mean that we and the bio parents share custody but that we have an agreement through the agency for sharing information and building relationship with the adoption agency acting as accountability and the go between.

That’s a lot of information I know but that’s how we ended up here. Waiting to be matched to an expectant mom. I’m thankful for all the people who have helped us get here. I’m overwhelmingly thankful for God’s providence in this.

If you read to the end you get a gold star,

Molly

Our Adoption Story

Hello friends and family and maybe even a few acquaintances,

Many of you know that we are in the process of adopting a baby. We started this process officially back in the Fall and made the decision to pursue private domestic infant adoption in the winter of 2022. It’s been a process to say the least. Part of my original plan was to share our journey with those we love and maybe even those of you who would say you are interested in adopting in the future. I waited quite a while to get started because A) this adoption process is no joke and took up a ton of our free time. B) I didn’t feel ready to share parts of our journey quite yet and wanted to be wise in how I shared our adoption story.

A week or two ago though I started thinking through different things I wanted to share with people. We have the best friends, coworkers, family, even people we just have met, who have been so curious and excited about this process for us. I’ve realized as I’ve answered questions and explained this process time and time again that there are a lot of questions and misconceptions around domestic infant adoption. My hope with this blog is that not only through our individual conversations with people but through my writing that some of those questions and misconceptions could be clarified. The second reason I did it is because my mom told me to earlier this week because she wanted to see me writing again and she felt like I needed to share this story (and I’ve learned over 31 years my mom’s advice is right about 99% of the time).

So here I am, here you are.

I do want to advise we are not the consummate experts regarding private domestic adoption in Texas or the U.S. What I’d like to do though is to share what we have learned over the past year and a half as we have done our homework, learned from our incredible agency and been a part of the most amazing foster/adoptive support group through our church.

To my future baby who is currently (most likely) growing in their bio momma’s belly right now, I wanted to create this for you too. That one day, if you need to put together a bit more of the pieces of your story, if you want to hear more of the behind the scenes details of your adoptive family waiting on you and preparing for you, I can send you here. Here you can read my thoughts and hopefully know what we’ve known all along. You, my love, are wanted more than you can imagine! We’d do all the paperwork in the world, spend every last bit of our savings and then some, go through months and months of waiting and hoping just to make you a part of our family. We love you and we are on the edge of our seats here in the Bass family waiting to meet you.

So I’ll be here writing for the next little while, backtracking through the past almost year or two of this process for us. If you are reading this, thanks for coming along on our journey. If you’d like to support us in other ways, there’s a page called “Adoption Support” that explains more how you can do this.

Thanks for coming along,

Molly