Jim & Lisa's Open Adoption Story - Part 2

As we spent time in the hospital with Jacqueline we told this little girl all the plans we had ahead for her. We enjoyed feeding her and watching her sleep and the hospital staff was just wonderful to us. They referred to us as her mom and dad.

On the night before our birth mom was to sign the surrender, we were feeding Jacqueline in our hospital room around 9:00pm when the phone rang. It was our attorney and she told us that our birth mom had called her and said that she had changed her mind and that she was coming back to the hospital to get her baby and she wanted us to leave. We were in shock and devastated. We never saw this coming and had allowed ourselves to become emotionally attached to this beautiful child that we thought was ours. Jim and I started crying and so was the nurse from the front desk who had already heard the news. The nurse told us that this was a terrible thing that had happened, and that we will need to take some time to grieve our loss. She suggested we write the birth mom a letter and tell her how we felt. We did just that, we told our birth mom in the letter that we understand what she must be feeling and that to please think about having an open adoption with us where she can visit Jacqueline when she wants to. At the end of our letter we said to her that if you decide to keep Jacqueline, please take very good care of her because we love her so much too. We never heard from our birth mom again. Jim and I went through a very difficult time. It was even harder than our miscarriages, because we actually had held this little baby in our arms.

However, with every bad situation that comes along, some good comes from it. We realized that a closed adoption is way too hard for a birth mother to deal with. We believe our birth mom never really thought things out or had the counseling she needed to help her deal with her decision to place her child for adoption. She was not prepared for the feelings she would have after she gave birth. From that day on, we realized that a open adoption was a much healthier way to adopt for the birth moms sake.

We waited again for our book to be picked, but a year and half went by and nothing else came our way. We started looking at adoption agencies but most of the agencies did very few domestic adoptions and some agencies put you in a lottery or on a waiting list before they could even take you on. Then a friend of ours told us about A Child’s Waiting, and we learned about how many successful adoptions they do each year. We called and spoke with Jennifer, and she said she would take us into the program.