The weekend we became parents
The first time we held our daughter.
I’m not sure why, but part of me has known for a very long time that I would grow my family by adoption. The first time I remember talking to my now husband about it, was years before we got married. We had met working on the 2004 presidential campaign, and moved across the country together (from Portland to Boston) after dating for about a year. Shortly after, we moved in together, and although we weren’t yet married, “forever” had begun in a lot of ways. It was a beautiful sunny day, and a rare day that we both had off both work and school. We had taken the ferry to one of the harbor islands and were walking around the beach. I don’t remember how it came up, but I do remember the ease that we both talked about the idea of growing our family through adoption. We knew nothing about what that meant, really, but somehow it felt much more comfortable than I would have expected, given that we hadn’t really admitted to one another than “forever” involved one another, never mind children yet.
Time passed. Between the two of us, we finished more years of school than I care to admit. We got married and moved to the pacific northwest with more-or-less dream jobs-at-the-time. We bought a house and became urban chicken farmers. We had wonderful friends, jobs that we felt passionate about, and things were basically going according to plan. We decided it was time for children, and tried to conceive for a while. We weren’t successful. I appreciate that many have a very different experience, and infertility can be experienced as a deep trauma. For us, it mostly felt like just another step in our process; I had almost predicted it. We began to research adoption.
Working with a non-religious agency was important to us, as we are both strongly pro-choice; we did not want to inadvertently support any organization that would not support a woman’s right to choose. We read about all local adoption agencies, and attended informational sessions for any non-religious agency that resonated with our belief system. We read interviews with birth parents who bravely shared their stories. We listened to a lot of interviews with adult adoptees. We read a few book about open adoption.
The agency we ultimately chose resonated with us; they were non-religious, facilitated adoptions by singles, homosexual and heterosexual couples, and was led by birth parents. We had learned enough in our reading to know how naïve we were - we weren’t even parents yet, and had never been birth parents. We knew having other perspectives guiding the way was important.
There was one more thing we felt we had to “take care of” before formally starting the adoption process. Over the years of trying to conceive, my scientific career had developed, and it was time for me to take the next step to launch an independent research laboratory. For many scientists, this means moving across the country or the world. When it became clear that adoption was our path to grow a family, there was a very real possibility we would be moving to one of several places around the US. We were anxious to get started, but decided stopping-and-starting would be harder than delaying long enough that we were settled.
Once we knew we would be staying in the pacific northwest for a while, we progressed through the adoption process. First, the two day seminar: several other prospective adoptive parents were also in our training. During introductions, each couple told the story that brought them to adoption. Person after person was brought to tears. Josh and I looked at each, asking each other with our eyes if we would be disqualified if we didn’t cry. It was the first time, but certainly not not the last, that I felt like I didn’t “belong” in the adoption world because I was not sad enough about my own situation. It’s that feeling that was one driver in my wanting to start the Adoption Café and talk openly about our story - while there are certainly many points of trauma in the process of adoption, I believe you do not need to have experienced “enough” trauma to be an adoptive parent - people who come from all sorts of perspectives can be wonderful adoptive parents.
Next, we progressed to the home study process where we answered tons of questions, both on paper and in four separate interviews - two as a couple and one with each of us individually. Two of these occurred at our home, and two at the adoption agency office. To be honest, I enjoyed the process, thinking through what life might be like as parents. We then put together our “marketing materials” - the letter, picture book and video that would be showed to expectant parents considering placing their children in an open adoption. The idea of marketing myself as a parent - something I had no qualifications for - felt uncomfortable. So, I took a deep breath and….. made my husband Josh do that part.
Visiting Sand Dunes National Park with my husband Josh two months before the arrival of our daughter. We love travel and it is something we had been advised to do to lessen the burden of the wait. Once our daughter was born, we didn’t stop - she visited 10 states in her first year of life.
Finally, we were in “the pool” and waiting to receive word that we were chosen to parent. During the home study process, I had learned that the average wait time was 18 months. OK, I’ll worry about it in a year, I thought to myself. I had also heard that “keeping busy with travel” can help with the wait. Perfect - this was something I was good at! In the next two months, we visited Sand Dunes National Park, Spain, took two trips to Oregon to visit family, and finally, in early December went to Los Angeles for 24 hours for my grandmother’s unveiling. She had passed away almost a year before. It was an emotional visit for me, and, honestly, I was tired of being away from home. Under normal circumstances we would have stayed for the weekend, but we opted to go home Friday night to spend some low-key time at home.
Drinking sangria in Spain while “keeping busy” during the adoption wait.
The next day, Saturday night, I was at home, having a casual dinner with a friend. Josh was at the gym, less than a mile away. He had been a little longer than I had expected, and I was starting to think maybe something went wrong, when my phone rang. At this point, Josh and I had been together for 12 years. I had become accustomed to him being a little later than expected…. we have different relationships with time. But, when I didn’t recognize the number, I thought the worst. “Sorry" I told my friend. “I don’t know who this is, but Josh has been gone a while, just give me a sec.”
The person on the phone said she was a counselor from our adoption agency. She asked if Josh was with me. “No” I said… “I’m sure he’ll be back any minute. Can I call you back?”
“No. I’ll call him in” she said.
“Ok”. I don’t know what my face looked like, but I’ll never forget the look on my friend’s face in response.
I also don’t remember what our adoption counselor said, but I don’t think we responded. At some point she said, “this is it. this is the call". That’s when Josh, now out-of-breath, walked through the door. She told us a little more about the expectant mom who was about to give birth. She told us what was known about the baby about to enter the world. She asked if we would like to move forward, and come to the hospital to meet the expectant mom.
“Yes” we said. She asked how soon we could get to the hospital. Josh looked at me. As I said before, we have a different relationship with time. Or rather, I have a relationship with time. I knew the hospital well - it was less than 15 minutes away from our home.
I gave us a buffer “within a half hour” I said. We wouldn’t have made it at all if we had stayed in LA for the weekend.
I had forgotten my friend was still sitting on the couch across from me. He had gotten the gist of the conversation. “I’ll excuse you guys. Good luck” he said as he walked out the door. He would later tell me that, although he had seen me be “the calm one” in the room at all sorts of stressful moments at work, he knew within an instant from the look on my face that this moment was like no other I had ever experienced.
We left the dishes undone; we were at the hospital in less than a half hour . Our adoption counselor met us at the entrance. She repeated everything she said on the phone. She asked if we were ready to meet. We were, or at least as ready as we would ever be. We met the incredible woman who would, in only a few hours time, become our daughter’s birth mom and our family. We bonded over being Jewish, liberal activism, and travel; she had road tripped across country just a few months prior.
We left the hospital at 11:30 that night. We sped to target, perfectly situated between the hospital and our home. We walked to the baby section, where we recognized almost nothing, but saw an employee restocking the shelves. Fortunately, he shared with us he had a two year old. Thank goodness - we bought everything he told us to.
At 4:30 am the next morning, we got a text telling us to come back to the hospital. Our daughter was born that morning. I fell in love with her instantly. We spent the next two days in the hospital, taking turns leaving for an hour at a time to shop for necessities, or pick up non-hospital food for ourselves and our daughter’s birth mom. Before we knew it, it was time to head home.
We bonded with our daughter’s birth mom over a shared sense of progressive values and political activism. it seemed only fitting that our daughter attended her first protest, the women’s march, at 6 weeks of age.
The rest, I suppose, is history. There are so many things I think of that could have led to a different story: what if we had done our paperwork a little more slowly and we weren’t yet in the pool at her birth, what if we had decided to spend the weekend in Los Angeles and weren’t home to make the dash to the hospital, what if our daughter’s birth mom hadn’t road tripped across the country. What if, what if, what if…… but none of those things were. What did happen was the creation of a beautiful family: one that includes us, our daughter and her birth family.
Today, our daughter is a gregarious, bold and delightful four year old. She’s smart and funny and passionate, just like her birth mom. She has an incredible love of life and learning all things; she is an amazing story teller and is a quintessential “people person.” A day doesn’t pass that I’m not incredibly grateful to be her mom.
