Adoption Part 3: Phone Calls

Read Part 1  and Part 2.

The second time we spoke with the birth mother was a stormy night in June.  We were to call her from our home at a specific time.  Our power was out so we sat on our sofa in the dark and called her using a cell phone.  We had the best conversation with her.  We asked her a lot of questions about the adoption and how she felt about it.  She seemed to feel really great about it.  She admitted that she just felt she couldn’t take care of another child.  We spoke to her mother (at the time they were living together and the mom actually had custody of one of the older children) who also seemed very positive about us and the adoption.  We allowed both of them to ask anything they wanted of us.  Her only real request of us was that we send her photos.  We assured her that we would send her photos and that we would tell her child about her and the love that motivated her decision. 

My husband and I agreed early on in the process that we would be as open as possible with the baby about the adoption and about the birth mother.  We knew that if our child ever wanted to meet her that we would encourage that and would help in any way in finding her at that time.

By this point, she was at the very end of her pregnancy.  Physically there were signs that the baby was coming soon.  When we spoke to her on the phone she was to go to the doctor later that week.  She was to call the counselors and let them know how the appointment went.  We had spoken to her about what would happen when she went to the hospital and who she would call and how all of that would work.  We had a contact at the hospital and would be informed of the birth.  After that second phone call we knew that we would likely never speak to her again.  We would have a room in the hospital. The baby would be born and would be brought straight to us.  Unless she specifically requested to speak with us, our contact with her at that point would be only through the attorney.

Those last few days we went through each day anticipating that phone call.  We never went anywhere without our phones.  We had our home phone and our cell phones by our bedside.  Each time the phone rang we just knew it was time.

It seemed like we would wait forever.  Finally we got the call.

It wasn’t the middle of the night phone call that we had anticipated where we would hurry and pull on some clothes and grab the newly packed diaper bag and the small gift we had for the mother and rush to the hospital.  No this call was the one that we dreaded.  This was the call where we found out that she just couldn’t do it.  She could not give her baby up for adoption. 

The second time we spoke to her was on either a Monday or Tuesday evening.  She was to go to the doctor later that week.  Well, we found out that the baby was born on that Friday.  She did not contact anyone until the following Tuesday. 

To be continued ...