We’ve been matched!

The pacing of the world of adoption is so very interesting to me. Things are either happening at the speed of light, or soooo slow. Keep in mind, this is my perspective having only been officially in the world of adoption for 4 months. Soo.. well.. I’m not the leading expert on this quite yet.

All that to say: on December 18 we received the news that we had officially been “picked” by an expectant mother due in June.

And guys… that was something that happened at the speed of light. Now, if you will, grab yourself your favorite cozy drink (I’d go with an Iced Chai personally) and settle down for all the juicy details we’re willing to share about how we got to this point in the journey. Like always, I can’t promise the story telling will go quick.

Here’s something I didn’t share in the last blog post, but that I would like to share now. On November 18 we received a case from our social worker that looked like a really promising fit and was asked if we’d like to present to that expectant mother. Reading the description of this mother and what she was looking for out of an adoptive family seemed soo promising. She had very very specific desires from an adoptive family and we checked off every single box. Not only did we check off every single box, every single box was very clearly on display in our profile book. There was just something in me that screamed “this is the one” while I actively tried to keep myself grounded to protect myself.

Our profile was presented to the mother on November 22 and then we never heard anything. After an agonizing weekend of constantly refreshing my e-mail inbox looking for news I finally reached out to the lawyer and asked for an update. The lawyer let me know that there were some things in this mother’s personal life that she wanted to get through before making a decision and likely would not make a decision until December 15.

No worries, we had such a good feeling about this. We were prepared to give her all the time she needed to make a decision she felt good about. After all, this is a HUGE decision for her. We settled in for a month of waiting to hear news. I prayed fervently for this mother and the things she was going through in her life. She was constantly on my mind.

We never heard any other updates from the lawyer. When the stork drop case was presented to us on December 2 our social worker told us to absolutely present our profile, knowing that this other mother also had our profile. We followed her advice.

On December 16 our social worker presented us with another expectant mother that would be a good fit for our family. Following her advice again, we sent our profile to the agency this expectant mother is working with that night. I sent a PDF of our profile and asked when they planned to present profiles so I could send a physical copy of our profile. This was a common e-mail I had sent at this point.

I brought a copy of our profile to work with me the next day so I could slip it in the mailbox before mail went out that day if I needed to. While in a meeting at work that next morning I was casually checking my personal e-mail when I saw this response (this is the readers digest version):

Good morning, I sent your profile last night to my expectant mother and she wants to talk with you. She doesn’t want to see any more profiles before speaking with you.

Well that was unexpected.

Talk about a distraction in the middle of an e-mail. I thought I was going to get a response along the lines of “Tomorrow, if you over-night it we’d love to give it to her”.

The rest unfolded in a whirlwind. The very next day I drove to Zach’s work in my first-prize winning ugly Christmas sweater and we sat in his work’s parking lot on a conference call with the expectant mother and the adoption agency. We ended up talking for about 1.5 hours on the phone.

The conversation ended with the adoption agency asking each of us to give it some thought on whether we feel good about proceeding to an official match.

Two hours after hanging up on the call we received the news that she had officially picked us and asked if we would like to move forward. And we decided to move forward.

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Going into the week before Christmas I felt like something big was going to happen in our adoption journey. I just wrongly assumed it was with the expectant mother we were waiting on an answer from for nearly a month.

God works in funny ways.

This journey is far from over. The expectant mother we are matched with is due on June 1. In the private domestic infant adoption world, this is about as long of a match you could possibly have. To say this doesn’t terrify me or make me nervous would be a complete lie.

I’m still processing this, and a lot has happened in these past two weeks that I’m also processing. There is a lot of potential for this match to go wrong. But that’s because there’s a lot of potential for ANY match to go wrong.

Last week, on December 26, we had the opportunity to meet this mother in person and we feel the meeting went really well. Now that we’ve taken this next step in the journey, I’m beginning to have more of an appreciation for when people talk about adoption and trauma.

Walking the road of adoption is really scary. Like, reading an e-mail and legitimately having the urge to puke kind of scary.

Zach has been a rock for me in these last two weeks. He has been so good at just listening to me say the same thing over and over again with different words. He’s also been good to validate my feelings.

I also take comfort in knowing that nothing that has happened or will happen is a surprise to God. God does have a plan in all of this, and it’s a plan for good. This helps me navigate the gut-wrenching scary moments.

We hope to learn the gender of “Baby T” some time in the next week. Which I’m very excited about. I’ve been telling all of my mamma friends that they deserve serious props. I’ve only had to wait 2 weeks so far to learn the gender and I’m already a nervous wreck of impatience.

The fact that you normally have to wait 4-5 moths…

Serious props man…

One day I might like to unpack some of the gut-wrenching moments of the last two weeks in a blog post. Because reading other people’s stories, and their authenticity in sharing it, has been invaluable for me. But honestly, I think it’s going to take some time for me to process it all still.

HOPEFULLY, the next blog post you see will be a fun one revealing the gender of “Baby T”. I’ve had some fun gender reveal ideas for a while now, and I’m excited to finally have an opportunity to do it!

^ That is not one of our gender reveal ideas. But it was too funny not to share.