Quinn!

“Typical” open adoptions look like this: a birthmom decides that she is going to give her baby up for adoption usually between the 6^th and 8^th month of her pregnancy. She looks at profiles of potential adoptive birthparents online or at an adoption agency. She picks one and then gives the family a call or an email to talk more about whether the adoptive parents and the birthmother are a good match. Then you typically meet at what’s called a “match” meeting. If everyone is happy with the meeting, then the birthmom and adoptive parents agree that they will stay in contact over the course of the rest of the pregnancy and throughout the child’s life. The adoptive parents have a couple of months to prepare and are usually in the hospital for the birth and then take the baby home from the hospital.

Quinn’s story is a bit different…during the first week of January, we contacted our adoption agency to inquire as to whether we maybe looked too young in our profile picture. A friend of ours had made a joke that we looked like teenagers and we laughed about it, but then after a couple of months of waiting to be contacted, we started to wonder. Our adoption coordinator laughed and asked what we proposed to look older. Dk said he’d grow a beard and comb his hair and he said I could choose some different clothes. She again laughed and said to give it 6 months before we changed anything on our profile.

On January 13^th there was a message on our phone when I got home from work. There was also a message on my cell phone, and I’d soon find out that devin had a message, too. I casually hit the play button and it was someone from our adoption agency saying that there was an emergency situation. Emergency? Why would they possibly call us about an emergency? I immediately called them back and devin and I started what would be an amazingly fantastic and exhilarating whirlwind.

There was a baby that was already born and the birthmother had chosen us as her first choice to adopt the baby. What?!!? We were very confused because these types of “emergency” calls usually don’t happen unless you’ve been waiting to adopt for over a year. After a year of waiting, you can opt to go on the emergency list which means that they can call you about a baby that has already been born and it’s expected that you’ll make a decision and go pick up the baby within 24 hours. We had only been waiting 3 months. (We later found out that we got called because they only had a couple of families that matched the needs of the birthmother and they like to give as many choices as possible.) The adoption coordinator told me about the birthmother and the factors to consider in making a choice. She also told me that the baby was premature and born at 33 weeks. The baby was in the NICU in Sacramento (about an hour and a half drive from Oakland) and was thriving and was physically fine. This was about 4:30 in the afternoon and when I asked what happens next, our coordinator told me that we needed to decide if we’d like to pursue the adoption and call them back as soon as possible. So how soon is as soon as possible, I wondered. Oh, by 8 TOMORROW MORNING?!? Holy crap! Devin was working that day and wasn’t even going to be home until after 8:30 that night. He called me shortly after I spoke to the coordinator and he thought of some really good questions that I had forgotten to ask. We were open to any race/ethnicity, but what was the baby’s race? Why did we get this call when we we’ve only been waiting for 3 months? What do we do??? I got all those questions answered, ignored the 2 hours of work I had planned to do upon getting home, and sort of patiently waited for devin to get home. Man, that was the longest 3 hours ever. In the meantime, I went to the internets to find out more about babies born at 33 weeks.

Devin and I discussed the birthmom and the prematurity for about 5 minutes and knew that neither of those factors were of significance for us to say no. The only reasons to say no was that we were terrified, had absolutely nothing for a baby, and were basically in shock. We realized, though, that we would most likely feel this way everytime an opportunity arose and that fear should not be a considerations (seriously, though, we were so scared). Our one friend quickly gave us some perspective that didn’t relieve us of all of our fears but that eased our anxiety. She very astutely pointed out that we were going through the emotions that others go through over the course of an entire pregnancy…and that we were going through it in 12 hours. Yes! That’s it! And it’s freakin’ scary! We called the agency at 9 pm and left them a message…..we’re in. Strangely, we forgot to ask the sex of the baby until the next day. The adoption coordinator thought we didn’t ask because we didn’t want it to sway our decision. Ha! We also forgot to ask when the baby was born.

From there, our lives were in a complete whirlwind. We said yes on Wednesday evening and they told us we could go meet her on Thursday. And we had a million things to consider…what do we do about work? How does health insurance work? Where is the hospital? What do you do with a premature baby? What are we going to name her? Does she have a name? Where do we find an attorney? We picked up a preemie book and headed out the door.

We both thought we’d be really nervous to meet her. We later talked about how calm and comfortable we felt when we went to the hospital…exactly the opposite of what we expected. We went into the NICU and immediately felt like celebrities because the nurses all recognized us from our pictures and were incredibly kind and wonderful to us. We had no idea what to expect from the hospital staff, and we are so so grateful for the care and love they showed not only to Quinn but also to us. We found out her birthdate (again, forgot to ask) because it was taped to her little sleeping box (Jan 3^rd). She was SO tiny…about 4 and ½ pounds. We learned a ton that first day and felt so lucky that the nurses took the time to teach us and to answer all of our questions. We felt really honored when one nurse whom we particularly liked and who was a phenomenal nurse asked to be Quinn’s primary nurse. She and a couple other nurses even brought Quinn outfits…we had no clue she didn’t have to wear hospital issues. :-) We made our best effort to get to Sacramento every day. It was a lot of driving and klaus spent some good quality time with our friends. Of course it was worth every minute. She progressed through all of the challenges that every preemie has (apnea, heart rate drops, eating issues, anemia) splendidly.

We met with the birthmother and birth grandfather the following week. I couldn’t eat before the meeting. Devin couldn’t stop eating. Good compatibility. I’m not sure I’ve sweated that much outside of the gym in a long time. I had nervous belly and was SO anxious. The adoption coordinator facilitated the meeting which we really appreciated. And it was such an amazing experience. The birth grandfather reminded us of our parents. And the general family dynamic of the birthfamily felt very comfortable to us and reminded us of our own families. They were very open and honest with us. It’s hard to describe the feelings we all felt when I tearfully told them that we wanted to use the birthfamily’s last name as Quinn’s middle name so that we could honor their family for helping us to start our family. Everything felt so right when we left the meeting. Then we made the mistake of stopping at Babies R Us to pick up a couple of outfits. Whoa. That place quickly sent us into another whirlwind…what is the difference between newborn and 0-3 months anyway?? We grabbed some onesies and bolted out of there. Then we went shopping for a vacuum which was much less stressful.

We continued to see Quinn over the course of the next couple of weeks. Eventually, the nurses told us that she’d most likely be discharged during the first week of February. Then the doctor told us she’d be discharged on Jan 30^th. Then the nurses said Feb 1. Everyday it seemed to change and we became really good at taking it one day at a time. We were doing the best we could to prepare while working and driving 3 hours a day to visit her. The support of our friends and family has been extraordinary and somehow we managed to pull together what we needed for Quinn within 2 weeks. Gives a lot of creed to “it takes a village...” We continue to be amazed at the generosity and thoughtfulness of our community of friends and family. We learned about Quinn on January 13^th, met her on January 15^th, and brought her home on February 2^nd. We never ever anticipated that this is how our family would grow. Strangely, now we cannot imagine it happening any other way. Our hearts are filled with love and gratitude…actually, I think that might be an understatement. We’ve had a blast throughout the crazy adventure, and we’re so excited that it’s just the beginning!