Sneak Peak

Paige is asleep, and there are so many things that need to get done that in no way should I have opened up the computer to write! However, I am so full of emotion this morning and touched by the beautiful day that was yesterday. Yesterday was Paige's newborn shoot. It was something we have all been looking forward to since October. I had picked Katie to do our shoot and felt strongly about it. I wanted this to be special and while I have so many wonderful friends who happen to be great photographers, I was really drawn to Katie. Come to find out, Katie has a SERIOUS soft spot for adoption and ended up being just the right medicine for all of us. If you would like a sneak peak of our shoot....visit her blog at http://kwellsphotography.blogspot.com/ Brings tears to my eyes! I love my "sweet smile" Not so great at doing various kinds of smiling and closed mouth is pretty much not my forte, but look at the baby not me:) Really though, it just strikes the right cord and in a minute and thirty seconds kinda shouts to the world how this has felt and been for us.

I suppose I am going to have to share this adoption story in blocks, since it starts back at the first of the year. I won't have time to edit, I just need to spit it out, so ignore miss spelled words and bad grammar. Mark and I completed most of our paperwork in January/ first of February. We actually finished it all on a day that Mark stayed home sick from work with pneumonia.....ahem. Ya, pneumonia. Two days later we found out that dreams were dying. We immediately put adoption on the back burner and I took our adoption ticker off. Even though the dr said to keep going, it seemed insane to me. Once we got further along in treatment, Mark and I realized things would be ok, and we needed hope in our lives; something to look forward to. We quickly scheduled our last remaing step, our homestudy. Our worker visited us in April and from there, it took a long time for them to complete it. They must have been really busy. We started attending adoption classes in June, and finally we got notice we were officially ready to adopt and our profile was up on itsaboutlove.org. Mark started radiation and I was soon left to go to class alone, or with my mom.

About four weeks after being up and running, I was sitting in an adoption class with mom and the instructor was going through a bunch of legal stuff. It was really the unfun side of adoption, but they said two things that struck me. One had to do with questions we answered on our profile and how if we checked one particular box "no," it would limit our views by at least half. With thousands of family on the website, we needed all the views we could get and it was important to answer "yes" to this question. I couldn't even remember filling that part out, so I was nervous I had been an idiot and checked no. The other thing that stuck out was a lady saying that when she was matched with a birthmom, her profile was removed from the site, and was placed back up when requested after the adoption fell through. So seemingly unrelated....until that night. I was alone, Mark was in Utah getting treatment. It was late and I wanted to make sure I put "yes" on that question. I jumped on our website building site, and found out I had indeed put yes. Whew. I noticed a spelling error, and my ocd side wanted to change it. I went to change it, but I decided not to save my changes. It was a holiday week, and if you change your profile, you have to call the angency to reload it. I decided I would rather have the error than having my profile down for a whole week. I noticed for the first time a place where I could look at our profile statistics, like how many times it had been viewed. I was curious and it said a bunch of random facts like how many times our main page had been viewed, how many times our intro had been read, etc etc, and then there was a number of times our contact page had been viewed. All that page shows is an email, that is it, maybe one little couple picture. I noticed 17 people had looked at it. I thought it was strange that 17 people had gone out of their way to look at a boring page and no one had even contacted us to ask a question.

I took a bath, and freaked out mid tub, thinking that I had inadvertently taken off our profile with my "almost" spelling page, so I decided to check itsaboutlove.org to make sure it was there. I looked and sure enough, it was gone. I freaked! I knew I hadn't saved it so what the heck?!?! Where was it and how long had it been gone? I could find it on bluestep.net, but our profile was not up on the official website. I was so angry and made mental note to call the agency asap to ask what was wrong. I went to brush my teeth and thought, "wait, that lady said hers was not up when matched....no way!" I checked my email and there was nothing. I went to bed and stirred thinking....."wait, what email did I put on my contact page!?!?" I ran to the computer and looked at our profile info, sure enough I put my sweet cat high school, Robert Redford crush email. I hadn't checked it in MONTHS. Why did I put that one? Well, we couldn't have any identifying info and all our grown up accounts had portions of our names. I panicked thinking that email might not even work since I never check it. I signed in, putting every password in I ever had, the third one worked, and nothing was in my inbox. Shocker. Left, came back when I realized that my settings were on high security and an unknown sender would go to JUNK mail. Amid the swirling crap and solicitation, was a random "Couple Contact" email. I clicked on it, and couldn't see when it was sent or what it said until I moved it to my inbox. I was freaking, hoping that she hadn't sent it weeks earlier. The miracle? She had sent it the EXACT same time I was  in class learning about the legal jargon and how we needed to put "yes" on a certain question. What a coincidence....

The email was really short, just saying we were the only couple she had found that striked a cord. She was young, and delivering a baby in December. She had a good feeling about us and wanted to know more about us. That was it. I called Mark, it was the middle of the night and I woke him up. He thought something was wrong and I was so excited all I could spit out was "someone emailed us" which made little sense to his woken up brain. I read him the email and he was wide awake. He said I needed to email back. I said it was the middle of the night and that I didn't know what to say and wanted to ponder what to say back. A part of us thought it was a joke and prepared ourselves for a scam, or the fact she might not email back. We had been told in class that that happens more often than not. Mark said just to say thank you for looking at us and contacting us, what do you want specifically do you want to know? I sent it off and checked my email no less than 100 times the following day, which was a Thursday....before Pioneer Day. That afternoon, a very excited girl wrote back and said essentially, "I had been having the worst week and it culminated in the worst day, a day that I questioned why I was doing what I was doing. I was scared to contact you guys, but you were the only couple I felt anything about when I went through the profiles. I woke up today questioning things wondering how to get thru another day, and what a coincidence, I checked my email and had and email from you waiting for me.(gotta love those coincideces)  Let's get to know each other better. Before we get too deep, I to be honest with you, this will be a high risk adoption with no birthfather consent I hope that doesn't scare you off." I was floored and so happy and so not scared off! Until.....

I realized I needed to be completely honest with her and I had really big news that might scare her off. Our profile said nothing of Mark's cancer, we had done it before the diagnosis, and I didn't change it. I didn't want that to be the first thing people saw about us. I am sure it is a huge selling point, I figured if someone got to know us, then I would tell them. Or better yet, since they told us average wait time was 2 years, Mark would be healed by then. Blah, I had to tell her and be upfront and honest, after all, she was being honest and upfront with us. I quickly responded and assured her we were not scared and wanted to keep learning more about her. I then told her that Mark was currently undergoing treatment and we understood if that scared her off.

Waiting for her response was more painful than ever. We were damaged goods and who would want to place their baby with us knowing that risk? This amazing angel wrote back and said that made her love us all the more.She appreciated our honesty. She said she had a hard life and realized that trials make us stronger and shape us. She said she felt that this trial was making Mark and I better people. Seriously, a young teenage girl said that. Incredible! There was an instant connection through our emails, and while we were sort of scared in the beginning that it was too good to be true and might be a scam, we realized this girl was amazing and way too detailed and open to be weaving a web. We trusted her and we felt so good about her. At that point I was just excited to be on the ride.  We continued to correspond and soon set up a time to meet at the agency.....and that my friends is where this story must end for now. My special blessing is calling for me and yes, I didn't get a thing done:) Oh the joys!