Very Eventful Day Yesterday

Wow... yesterday was interesting. I was at work and was getting ready to walk across campus for a meeting when one of my co-workers told me she wanted to tell me something. She walked outside with me and told me her niece's friend delivered a baby on Sunday and had decided to give it up for adoption. She had told her about me and Nick and the girl was interested! Apparently, another agency was trying to force the mom to sign the paperwork, but the birthmom wasn't comfortable with the agency and hadn't met the adoptive parents even though she wanted to. She said she felt uncomfortable giving her baby to strangers and would feel better if someone knew the adoptive parents. I told my co-worker that it was awesome but that our homestudy wasn't ready and I didn't know that it would work out logistically (sp?). I told her I would call Adoption Connection when I got back from my meeting. I told her that even if we weren't meant to be the adoptive parents, it was unfair that she was being treated so poorly by the other agency and that I knew that Adoption Connection would take care of her. I'll make a very long story as short as possible.... Adoption Connection said that there wasn't anything we could do unless the mom specifically said she was interested in us by name. They had already received a phone call from the birth mom and the social workers were on the way to the hospital. The birthmom told the social workers that she wanted to know more about Nick and I and they said "no problem". I got an email from Adoption Connection later wanting to know where we were in our homestudy process. I also called Rima and told her the situation and she basically said her hands were tied because even if she completed all of her part of the homestudy, our FBI, BCI and Central Abuse Registry stuff wasn't back yet.

After a thousand phone calls, emails and near panic attacks, yesterday ended with even more questions than answers. My co-worker's niece was going to go visit the birthmom last night and tell her that if she wanted us to adopt her baby, that she needed to tell Adoption Connection that and see if they would work with us to make it happen. If they weren't willing to work with us, we might be able to pull it off through private adoption. However, I also wanted to make it perfectly clear to the birthmom that if she chose to look at other families, that we were 100% okay with that... it was whatever she wanted/felt comfortable with. The baby (a boy) was born 2 months early and is in the NICU. As much as I hate to say it, that may be our only saving grace. If he stays in the hospital, that would give us time to get all of our stuff done. If he doesn't stay in the hospital and our paperwork isnt' done, then he would have to go into foster care until our homestudy was complete. My co-worker was suppose to call me last night to tell me what happened when her niece went to see the birthmom and she didn't. I'm not sure what that means.

I'll post more as I know it. Please keep the birthmom and the baby in your prayers. Even if it doesn't work out, I pray that the mom gets the help she needs and the baby is placed in a family who would love him like I know our family would!