Jim & Lisa's Open Adoption Story - Part 4

Another important part for us is that our birth Mom cared about us and was always honest with us. During our second visit with her she told us that she was having doubts and wished she could keep the baby, but that she knew she could not take good care of him. There was also a wonderful social worker at the agency, Lisa, who kept in touch with our birth mom to help her along with the process and she was also very honest with us and kept us informed of our birth mom’s doubts. Even with all the doubts, Jim and I stayed positive but also a little guarded because we knew there was a chance this might not happen.

Then on April 19, our birth mom gave birth to Matthew Jacob a 6lb. 4oz. beautiful baby. We were excited but nervous. Our birth mom originally had wanted us to be at the hospital the day the baby was born, but now she had changed her mind. That was a very hard day for us, because we really wanted to be there. She did ask us to come the next day and we came and spent six hours at the hospital with her and Matthew and some of her family and friends. Matthew was just precious, but we knew not to let ourselves get too emotionally attached to him.

Things went really well, we took lots of pictures of the baby with everyone. When it was time for us to go, we felt pretty good that things were going to work out for us. Our birth Mom had given us Matthews shot records and the family acted very positive about us adopting him. We left and went home. For the next two days we heard nothing from our birth Mom. She was released from the hospital but Matthew had to stay three more days because he was jaundice. Lisa kept us informed that our birth mom was having doubts and had not made up her mind.

On the 4th day, we got a call from Lisa saying our birth mom had decided to take Matthew home with her and she was going to keep him. Our hearts sank! We knew this could happen, we were well informed this might happen, but it was still so painful. We were not mad at our birth mom, because we really did love her, but we were hurting and knew it was going to take some time to get through this huge loss.

Then on the next day, Sunday April 24th a miracle occurred. We got a call from Lisa saying that our birth mom had called her and had asked if we would still take Matthew. Our birth mom wanted Lisa to come and pick up Matthew and bring him to us. We were so excited, the only problem was that our birth mom would not be signing her surrender until that following Wednesday. Again, we were in a position of taking a child at risk.