“It’s 3 a.m. and I am yelling from the bathroom: ‘Danny! Wake up! I just listened to a message and she’s in labor! We missed ALL of the calls!’ We were panicked and had a 3 hour drive ahead. ‘How close are you? I don’t know if she can wait much longer!'”
‘I was ‘late,’ but strange things happened. I told Danny I was going to take a pregnancy test. ‘That CANNOT be 2 lines. What is going on?!’ Neither of us could believe our eyes.’
‘Girl, I bet you’ll get pregnant right after you adopt. Just watch!’ It’s nails on a chalkboard when I hear that.’
“We didn’t adopt in order to become pregnant. I never want my sweet girl to think she was SECOND best. You are the absolute BEST thing that ever happened to me.”
‘She’s going to be amazing.’ Her birth mom asked for nothing, even though I would have given her ANYTHING. As much as Finley was a perfect fit for our family, so was Lex.’
“It felt unnatural. Sitting across from her, passing her the pen, I was scared to make eye-contact for fear I’d feel too much guilt. The tears streamed down our faces. She was willingly giving us the precious life she created, and we were promising her to cherish it.”
‘It was just her and I. We laid in her bed, holding this sweet boy, talking about the future. As 48 hours passed, it came time for us to leave the hospital. We all walked out together, one family.’
“She asked pressing questions about parts of parenting we hadn’t even considered. ‘Do you plan to say at home? What will you do if your child doesn’t believe in what you believe? What type of school system do you want your children to attend?’”
‘Our attorney told us we shouldn’t get our hopes up. It doesn’t happen like this and it would not turn out in our favor. I didn’t know if we would hear from her again.’
“We were contacted by several women. Then I got a Facebook message from a woman who had seen our post.”
‘I was in high school, crammed in a car with my girlfriends, driving to the hospital to support our best friend, who was about to place her baby boy into the arms of a woman she didn’t know, and say goodbye to him forever.’
“By the time we got to the hospital she had already delivered him. I remember walking in the room to see my beautiful friend laying there, a sheen of sweat still visible on her forehead, tired, solemn and more quiet than usual – and thinking she was the bravest, strongest, person I’d ever known.”
‘Oh! You’re a 7. Let’s see what happens if you push.’ We were hurried back into the delivery room because this baby was coming RIGHT NOW.’
“We got the call. THE CALL. A baby had been born the day prior, and his birth mother had chosen us to raise him. We spent the next 12 hours frantically rushing around. And then, literally on our way out the door, we got another call: she had changed her mind. This wasn’t our baby.”
‘My phone rang. It was my husband’s uncle. My heart started pounding. ‘You were meant to be this baby’s mom.’ I remember thinking to myself, ‘Is this really happening?’
“I was warned it still wasn’t a sure go, but the odds were in my favor. As we closed the phone call, I smiled in disbelief. She was due in five weeks. FIVE WEEKS!”
‘It hit me in that moment, this baby is not yet mine. He is hers. I gravitated to her. ‘Do you want to meet your son Miller?’ I took him in my arms and stared down.’
“We nervously, softly knocked on the door. She got up, kissing him, and we all started to cry. I tried to stay strong as she sobbed in my arms. It was time for us to go. We had to push our son out of the room and down the hall, away from her. I lost it.”
‘If she says mama, I won’t be able to go through with it.’ I never would have imagined the child we adopted would be my own cousin.’
“She never told him she was pregnant with me. To this day, he has absolutely no idea I exist.”
