Waiting for signatures

This was the longest day!

The hospital was so great! They let us stay in one of their labor and delivery rooms while we waited for Abigail to be released. The nurse who showed us to the room made clear that the bed was for me and the fold out chair was for James. I appreciated that because then I didn't even have to feel guilty when he gave me the bed. I could just enjoy it! That was my first night in a hospital bed. Not bad - but I was feeling great!

The second day we were there, it was time to sign papers. We were nervous that whole day and anxious to have the papers signed so that we could relax and enjoy the experience a bit more. That was naive thinking.

The birth parents were the first to sign their papers. We kept Abigail in our room while they signed. Claire, our caseworker, had told them that it would be fast - like five minutes. Now, I'm sure she said it would be that fast to help calm their anxiety, but when it had been an hour and a half, we were getting pretty nervous that it wasn't going well.

To keep ourselves occupied, we read through the digital version of our papers we would have to sign. That was interesting to see what we were agreeing to. Basically, custody of Abigail belongs not to us, but to LDSFS until the papers are finalized in six months, and we are more or less her caretakers. So, the paperwork revolved around the legalities of that relationship.

Mom and Summer were there, too, and that helped distract us. They helped get the gifts ready to give the birth parents and take pictures of them with Abi. She even smiled for the camera! We gave one bear to the birth parents and one to Abi so that they can always see how big she is compared to her teddy bear. The bears are winning right now...

When Claire finally came to our room, we were prepared for the worst because it had taken so long. Instead, she smiled and said, "They signed!" to which I asked, "They did?" Because that's hard to believe after such a long wait. It feels sort of like a dream now, remembering it.

James had already prepared the hospital bed table by clearing it, washing it, and pulling a chair up to it for Claire. He made it such a momentous occasion with his care and attention to detail. And Summer took some AWESOME pictures for us of our signing! I love these! They tell me that Abi is ours! This is the moment she became ours to take home.

Every document had three copies we had to sign and date. And there were four or five documents with between 3 and 12 hundred lines to sign on, I'm pretty sure. Haha! I have never signed my name so many times in so short a time except for maybe when I was daydreaming what my name would look like with "Harper" behind it.

Once the papers were signed, I kept waiting for a gong or gavel or something but there was nothing - yet. The gavel will sound in six months when the papers were finalized, and so I guess, she's not completely ours until then. But it still felt like there had to be more of an announcement to the end of one chapter of our lives and the beginning of another. I think a gong would have been perfect!

Abi still had one day in the hospital, and we felt it right to continue to share her with her birth parents while we were all there together. That was difficult. Now that she was officially our daughter, we suddenly felt all sorts of parental feelings for her safety and well-being that we had to curb a little. We still had very little control over who held her, whether they had washed their hands, how long they stayed, when she was in our room or the birth parents', what she wore, and we still had/have virtually no access to medical records. That was emotionally taxing, and I finally had to ask James to take me away from the hospital for an hour to eat and cry.

It was a good cry. It was the release of years of emotion and days of stress and no sleep. I got it out and then was able to go back to the birth parents refreshed and ready to party. They had brought a cake to celebrate that we hadn't eaten yet. And it was delicious!

We are so grateful to experienced one adoption now. It will make any future adoption(s) so much easier, especially because this was such a perfect adoption with all the expected ups and downs of a successful adoption.

In all of this story, I want to make one thing very clear: birth parents are amazing and ours are the best! They choose to place their child for adoption BECAUSE they love them so much. I have never seen so much conflict of what is right versus what I want as I saw that weekend in the birth mother. She cried several times with us and Claire about how she knew adoption was the right thing but how she wished that was different so she could raise her daughter. She wanted so badly to provide for Abi and to hear her call her mom and all the wonderful things that come with motherhood. And yet, she knew she couldn't give Abi the life she deserved. At one point she said that this was the hardest and best decision she has ever made in her life and she's had a tough life already.

I have SO much respect for the birth parents. They are heroes to our family and to Abi. They did something so hard because of the love they felt for her. They didn't have to place for adoption. In fact, they had loads of opposition from family and friends, but they stayed strong with their decision and did what they felt was best for Abi. I love them for it! And I will praise them forever for their strength and courage! They are AWESOME parents!