Knock, knock

"Good morning everyone! My name is Eden. All 4 of my parents are still working on my middle name, but they're very close. I was born Wednesday night at 8:14 and weighed a whopping 5lbs even and was 18" long. I'm probably going to play center one day in the WNBA."

I can't tell you all how excited we are to have this little peanut. We were released from the hospital Friday at about 5:30 so we are all 3 safe at home. I will admit the post on Monday was a bit of shot gun posting on my part. We were pretty certain Wednesday was going to be the day.

It's quite the story, but that's one for another day. For now we will just sit back and enjoy sweet little Eden. 

Thanks so much to everyone for all the support and prayers along the way, it's all totally worth it in the end. 

I forgot I'm supposed to blog...

Well, its been a little bit since I lasted updated everyone. I could blame it on schedules or hectic life, but more than likely its my laziness. However, we do have some things that have been happening and this update will tell you all about it.

So last we spoke, we had just been matched and had gone to meet them at the hospital for an orientation / birthing class. Since then we have had many talks with them and even met them out a couple times to get to know each other a little more and talk about the future and our lives that have suddenly become extremely intertwined.

Its been a completely different ride this time around, we are being included in things we never even would have imagined. We've been invited to birthing classes, midwife appointments and also asked if we would like to have another ultrasound so that we could actually get to see her. Which we did get to do last Monday.

My plan was to post about that soon after, but Erin and I found ourselves with mixed emotions afterward. On one hand it was absolutely amazing to see her in there, to see her feet and to see her sucking on her little thumb are something we will never forget. But it also made the whole situation very real to all parties involved, including the birth parents. We've really bonded to them through this and they are two really great people who we would be proud to call friends. Knowing that what can result in the greatest day in our life will probably be one of the worst in theirs. It just really makes you think about a lot of different things that you've never really considered.

It was amazing of them that they even offered us the chance to experience such a thing, but afterwards the doctor voiced some concern about her size being smaller than she'd like to see. However, if you were to see her mom you would not be shocked at all at that kind of possibility. All of her blood flow and fluid levels seem perfectly fine, shes just a tiny little thing. But all of that put some extra stress onto someone who's already at the end of their rope. Bittersweet is probably the best way to describe everything that we've experienced in the past few weeks.

Something else that we knew we would have to deal with if we did go see an ultrasound was the realization that shes a person and not an idea. Clearly obvious, however up until this point, in this adoption as well as the last. The baby was just an idea, she was just the baby that hopefully one day would come live with us. We knew that once we saw her moving around and heard her little heart beating and got some grainy, hard to make out pictures to take home we would be in deeper than we've even been before. And if something went wrong like before, it would be that much harder to deal with. We decided to just have a little faith and trust our own thoughts and instincts. If she does end up coming home with us, the opportunity to have been able to see her ultrasound would be completely worth it in the end.

Another thing we've decided to do with them is come up with her name. In our conversations we all thought that it would be really special for her to know that a group of people that all love her worked together to give her a name. We have two front runners for a first name, but we think we're gonna wait to see her to decide which one fits the best, so feel free to guess away, but know you'll probably be wrong.

Some people find it hard to understand why we would have so much involvement and be willing to work with the birth parents on things like the name but Erin and I have always went into this process with the understanding that we will be our child's parents, but we are not the ones who gave her life. And nothing we can do will ever change that, so we embrace it. We've seriously lucked out in the situation we've been dealt, and it probably wouldn't happen this way with someone else, so we will continue on working together to make sure that this little girl is loved and cared for more than any other little girl on the block. Its really all about love in the end anyway, right?

Right now we sit with about 3 weeks until her due date. This morning we went to her midwife appointment and heard her heart beating again. Its all just so surreal.

I don't think anyone is actually anticipating her making it to her date.

So here we sit, again.

Waiting for the phone to ring, again.

But hoping this time its the call that we have been hoping we would receive.

My guess is the next posting won't have this much time elapsed. We appreciate all the nice things people have said to us and all the prayers that have been offered. Right now is probably a good time to ramp those bad boys back up.

Love Wins,
Erin & Adam

Who remembers the roller coaster?

Ok class, who remembers that talk we had a few months ago about a roller coaster and how it represents life? You know how sometimes when you're on one and everything is going so fast and you think your coming to the end but it actually is a secondary hill that you slowly begin to click back up one notch at a time?

Well that's just where we are right now. Oooo the suspense.

There is some over lap to this post and when we last posted the whole story about the failed adoption. I will do my best to keep all the timelines straight.

The day after we found out we were not going to be taking a baby home I emailed our agency just to kind of see what happens next. This was uncharted and unplanned territory. She wrote back and gave her condolences and told me that they would figure out any financial ramifications that we needed to know of, but in the mean time they had two other situations that they were taking profiles for and that we could toss ours onto the stack. That was a very strange thing to hear. We had been planning for the past couple month and suddenly we were back at the beginning and being told we could just apply to new situations.

I thought it would be helpful to apply just to feel like we were actively trying to move forward. Erin was unsure. Even though we went into the process not having a preference about a boy or girl, we had spent 3 months planning on a girl so Erin decided that for right now we might only apply for situations that the baby was female. Neither of us really had any thoughts that this would go any further than us applying then getting back to our grieving. We decided that one of the situations raised some concern for us but the second seemed steady, we wrote back and said they could put us in for that situation. They we're scheduled to meet with the family on the coming Sunday. 4 days after our supposed to baby was born.

The next week, which was the week before Christmas (for those trying to timeline), we got an email while at dinner. It was pretty short and simple but said that the family had decided to as 5 adoptive families the same questions and we were on that list. Honestly, we were a little shocked to have even heard back from them. That night we sat down and answered them as honestly as we could and sent the email off. They weren't overly long answers but we were as straight forward as we could be. One thing we've learned is that this process is an all cards on the table kind of thing.

We planned a little mini trip to Toronto over Christmas just to get away for a bit and that was coming up the following Monday. I have a group of friends that I run with Saturday mornings, the 28th was my week to plan it. So everyone showed up, we knocked out 5 miles (I need to get back into shape BTW) and then they all took off. Erin was at work until about 1 so I was just hanging around the house until then, we had plans to go to diner with my family that night for a little pre-Christmas meal since we wouldn't be around on the actual day.

About 12:45 I got a phone call, from the agency.

They were calling to let me know that this family really liked us a lot and wanted to set a meeting to talk with us, but they wanted the agency to ask us before Christmas so that they could have a bit of piece of mind going into the holidays. I was in shock. We had not considered that this would even be a possibility, but we had a meeting set for Dec 30 at our agency in Medina. Erin got home right as I hung up with the agency.

To say that there were mixed feelings about another potential match would be an understatement. Two weeks before we were planning on a baby being at our house for Christmas, now three days before we're being contacted about potentially being matched with other baby. Remember the roller coaster? Ya, were in it.

On the 30th we all met at the agency and talked for about 45 minutes. We found out that they were not scheduled to meet with anyone else either. Both parents are involved in this situation so that was a big change from the last time. Everything seemed to go pretty well. I can't really explain how these meetings actually feel, those that have been in them know exactly what I mean, but they're a little awkward. Strangers meeting for the first time essentially interviewing to be the parents to someone else's unborn child. Its just simply weird. On New Years day we got a text from the agency that they would like to meet with us one more time to get to know us a little more. So that meeting was set for the 7th, or this past Tuesday for those reading in the present.

This time the meeting was at a coffee shop with no social worker present, just a neutral location for 4 people to sit down together and talk about life, babies, hobbies and just regular stuff. We ended up sitting together for two hours and basically closed out the shop. We left that meeting feeling much better and having a much better connection to them.

It turns out that they felt exactly the same way, because 10 minutes after we left we got a message from the agency telling us that they were absolutely choosing us as their adoptive family.

We are matched...again.
We are having a girl...again.
And that baby is due March 14th.

This situation is 100% different already, the attitudes towards the plan are far more positive then negative, where everyone is in life is different and the involvement is totally different. The whole situation is just different.

Last night we drove up to Westlake to take a hospital orientation / birth class with them. Their belief is that we should be as involved and included in the early stages so that we can experience everything leading up to her birth, and that way when shes asks questions later in life we can give her real, solid answers. This has always been Erin and I's hope but I don't think its all that common. We really want a relationship with them so that we can tell the baby about them one day, so that she can know that there were 4 people who came together to love her and do the best thing possible for her. And right now it seems like that might actually happen for us.

So were back on the ride, maybe we never really got off. Now hopefully in the next 9 weeks the train pulls calmly back into the station and we can hop onto the next ride of becoming parents. I'm sure there will be more bumps, but hopefully we've hit all the major ones at this point.

Until next time.

Away we go,
Adam & Erin

The story that wasn't supposed to be told

This is not a feel good story. It does in fact have a happy ending, however it just isn't written yet. It will though, soon rather than later.

When we decided to do this bog in conjunction with the adoption we agreed that we would share everything about our process. Partially because its a confusing thing that most people simply just don't understand but also to help others out who might be considering taking a journey down this road. With this decision comes a lot of happy and exciting tales but unfortunately also comes with a lot of potential heartache, for all kinds of different reasons.

We both felt that this was an important story to tell even if its a hard one to tell. The day the baby was born was going to be bitter sweet no matter what the outcome. Either we were going to be taking a child away from their mother and she would have to live with that the rest of her life, or she would decide to keep her baby with her and we would be left on the outside looking in. Unfortunately the latter would hold true this time around.

On December 10th, my phone rang in the afternoon. It was Erin, the agency had just called her and told her our birth mother was headed to the hospital, she was having some contractions. At this point she didn't think the baby was actually on the way so we were told to just hang out and wait to see if the hospital admitted her and then it would be determined if we should grab our stuff and head to Dayton. Once I got home we decided that we would get everything packed up and ready to go in case we received word that she would be staying in the hospital and that this was all about to go down.

All evening and into the night we were in contact with the agency and with our birth mother, we had really formed a good relationship with her and usually talked to her a couple times a week via text messages, so at no point did we really feel out of the loop. She told us that she didn't think it was actually happening that night and to just stay home. We will never really know if that was actually the case or just step one in her reconsideration. Frankly it doesn't really even matter. So we went to bed wondering what was going to happen and if we would get a phone call in the middle of the night that would send us on a 3.5 hour drive down to Dayton.

The next morning we still had received no further word so we just went on as normal. We actually didn't even know if they had admitted her or not, they still had not as of about 11:30 the night before.

While on the way into work my phone rang again. It was Erin and she said that she just heard from Denise and that she had had the baby in the night, but had not contacted the agency yet, she told us that is usually not a good sign. I sat around in a daze for the next half hour or so at work until Erin called back.

The agency had talked to her and she was going to keep the baby. I'm not really sure what emotions I felt at that moment; mostly shock, disappointment and sadness I think, but not anger.

The agency gave Erin our birth mother's direct line at the hospital and encouraged her to call her, they do a pretty good job at holding the mothers accountable for their choices. This is how I know that Erin is a stronger person than I am, because there is no way I could have made that call.

It was a pretty short phone call. There were tears on both sides. She reassured Erin that this was never her plan but that it had all happened so fast and that once it did she just couldn't go through with it. Before anyone can judge her actions, just ask yourself if you could have a baby then immediately give it away to someone else and potentially never see them again. Neither of us ever could no matter what, so we understood. It hurt, bad, but we got it. She had been a large part of our life for three months and we had formed a pretty good bond so Erin also just wanted to say goodbye to her as well.

We'll never know what actually went on in her mind at the hospital that night or through her mind in the days before or after, but there also isn't anything we can do about it. When we decided to do this the secondary motivation was to be able to help out someone who was going through a rough patch in life.

Our friend Rob sent Erin a text a few days after and said that our actions have lasting results, it might be years down the road and we may never even know about it, but everything we do has a lingering effect, it was maybe the most comforting thing that we heard. And he's right we may never know the results, but we may have been the only people in her life telling her we were proud of her,that she was a good mother and that she can be successful. Maybe those simple encouragements will give her the confidence she needs to get on a successful path through life. Maybe we were put in her life to help her through her darkest times. We will never know, but if it is the case hopefully we will be rewarded for the struggles that we had to go through as a result.

Its been a rough couple of weeks, for me it sunk in right away, for Erin it took a week to really hit her. We decided that we just needed to get away and not be home for Christmas, mostly just because it was not going to be the Christmas it was supposed to be. Our families supported us, even though we know they didn't like it. We just got home from a nice 4 days in Canada. It was good to be with each other and having some fun without our phones even being on. No matter what happens we still have each other and we still live a great life. One day, hopefully soon, we will be able to share that life with our child.

That's it for now, hopefully more updates soon.

Hopefully only happy ones. I'm tired or writing sad stories. Thanks to everyone who has supported us all along the way and especially in the past couple weeks. 2013 can take a hike, on to better things in 2014!

Love wins,
Adam & Erin

The wrong call

This will be short.

The baby was born last night, we knew our birth mother went to the hospital. But the updates ran dry. This morning we found out she was born in the night, but then we also found out she was going to parent the baby.

I don't really have anything else to say right now, there really isn't anything else to say honestly. That is that and we will get past it and move on. We're still committed to this plan, but we honestly didn't see this coming.

That's all for now.

Adam & Erin

A few more clicks on the roller coaster.

Well its been a little bit since the last update, maybe too long, but we’re busy so what are you gonna do? We are currently in our last “safe” week at the Buttacavoli casa. As I type we are sitting at 37 weeks 0 Days. Which means that no one should be surprised if she shows up next week or very soon after. That is terrifying.

So, last we talked we had just matched and were signing our paperwork. Also going on in the background at this time was a surprise baby shower for Erin, I suppose us, but mainly her since I was in the loop on this. It was just a very happy coincidence that we happened to match about a week before the shower, even though it had been months in planning.

In fact, the matching almost threw a wrench into the plan. You see with matching comes payment. A very large payment. The plan was to meet up with our friends Emily, Joel, Rick and Debbie in Wooster to have dinner and have a couple glasses of wine at the wine bar before hand. With mailing this monster of a check, left us all but broke as a joke, Erin wanted to cancel the date since we didn’t have money. I managed to talk her out of it.

Somehow, mostly with Erin being some kind of money hoarding genius, we managed to come up with every last penny we should need for the rest of the process. As we started to combine the accounts and add money from here and there I said there was no way we had it all. We did, literally by $25. Frankly its really nothing short of a miracle, its going to make things tight around here for a while until we replenish the supplies but we did not have to take any loans out. We also applied for a grant, that we should find out about next week. We don’t have any real hopes for it, but it would be amazing if we received it for sure.

The day of the shower comes and we’re supposed to arrive at 7, but I’ve been told to push it and arrive 15-20 minutes late to ensure everyone makes it and it hidden away before our arrival. I can be slow if I need to, very slow. Its about time to leave and I decide I need to iron my shirt, I worried that this would throw up a red flag since this is an uncommon event. We finally get on the road and gas happened to be extra cheap that day, somewhere around $2.89ish, so what happened next? We stop to fill up.

Mission accomplished, I have made us 25 minutes late and have annoyed Erin with my antics at the same time. Good thing it won’t last long.

Once we arrive our friends are waiting for us with an open bottle and a couple glasses. We talk for a second and Debbie tells Erin she needs to see how they remodeled the party room. They open the door and Erin is blown away by 25-30 of our closest friends and family.

She lost it. 100%. I was close, but I’m a man and I shoved those emotions down into the abyss where they belong.

To say that she had no idea would be an understatement. She just kept looking around in amazement and couldn’t even figure out how some of these people even knew about it since there were a couple different social circles present. This is when she learns that I’ve known about this for months and that I’ve created our entire registry and helped with the guest list all without her having a single clue. She doubts my powers of observation; I pay more attention to her (and her Pinterest) than she thinks. Also the best part of an adoptive baby shower, we can both drink wine since no one is actually pregnant. Score.

The amount of gifts was just crazy, there’s no other way to describe it. The only reason we are going to ready for her to arrive is because of all the support from our friends and family that we’ve received. For that there’s no way we can thank everyone enough.

Adding all the clothes and stuff we’ve received from Emily, Holly, Nikki and Brandy-Mart, this little girls room is fully stocked up and about 90% complete. Certainly enough to get her home.

Casa de Baby

Erin is very proud of the doors.

Maybe her middle name will be Ikea...

Erin has been getting her nest on of late, and her car is already packed up with all of the babies stuff we’ll need to bring with us for our as yet undetermined length of stay in Dayton once she’s born.  Which is good, because left to my own I’m sure we would have 0.0% of this stuff ready.

We have been in communication with our birth mother pretty regularly since she chose us, we text a couple times a week and have really grown to respect and care for her a lot since our first meeting. We’ve found that we have a lot in common actually and seem to have formed a pretty strong bond, which long term we believe is the most healthy thing for us and our unconventional family. We’re actually going down to have dinner with her on Sunday so we can meet and chat one more time before the chaos of the birth all goes down.

Looking back to May when we told our parents that we had signed a contract to become adoptive parents we did not think that by the end of the year we would have our baby, but that is exactly what looks to be happening. It’s been a crazy ride so far and I think we are actually just a few clicks from the top of the first hill on the rollercoaster. And in just a matter of weeks we’re going to crest that hill and then it will get really crazy. Who knows what the next update may hold. But please keep us in your thoughts in the meantime.

Away we go.

Adam & Erin

Advice from my friend Benjamin

A few weeks back my little friend Benjamin Beltz said to me “Dendamin up down, up down”. I didn’t think that the time that those few words from a two year old would hold such a prominent place in the past couple weeks of our lives.

At last we spoke, I had left you with the knowledge that we were approved as adoptive parents with a completed home study and had applied to two different birth situations right out of the gate. Well, things have been pretty crazy since then so I guess I will catch you all up.

Along with this adoption we’ve also been looking to replace our car, apparently the greater powers though it would be fun for it all to need addressed at once. Brace yourselves because this one could get long, but you won’t want to miss the surprise twist at the end.

Did that give it away? Probably not.

Ok, so when we left off it was Sept 30 and we had been approved and applied to two birth mother situations. I received an email three days later from our agency letting us know that the one situation that we had been really hoping to hear from would like to meet us! They set a meeting for the following Thursday the 10^th at 7pm down in Dayton. Cue a week of anxious nerves and some sleepless nights.

The night before we were supposed to drive down to Dayton, I get a call from Erin at about 8:30. She was at in home appointment in Akron and our car was dead to the world. Awesome. So off to the shop the car was towed and a phone call to my mom was made to borrow her car for the next day. Up down, up down.

Thursday afternoon rolls around and we hit the road. Having not a single clue as what to expect but we were off, in our borrowed car. We make it through Columbus, then all the way to Huber Heights. As I’m on the phone with the shop about our car’s busted starter, Erin get a text from the agency that the meeting may be cancelled. We got off at the next exit and after some back and forth with the agency the decision was made for us to go grab some dinner and give it some time. So the wait began. Finally about 7:30ish we finally got a call that the meeting was in fact going to be cancelled. Around we turned with a whole huge load of questions and crushed emotions.

I won’t get in to the reasons for the cancellation but to us it sounded like a legit excuse, but you really just never know. However, by time we were back through Columbus on the way home we had a rescheduled meeting for Sunday afternoon, back down in Dayton.

Ok, back to the car. Friday it’s got a new windshield and a fresh new starter and we are ready to be rid of it. Good thing because we had an appointment at 9am in Cleveland to check out the new car and put a deposit down on it. No problem right? Wrong, someone clicked Buy It Now on eBay the night before we were to look at it.

Long story short, we go up anyway to look at two other cars, one of which was being sold just as we pulled into the dealership. So we chose the other one. Car selection process done. Up down, up down.

And now we’re back to Sunday and our meeting. We headed out mid morning hoping that we would in fact actually be able to have our meeting. That was a stressful ride, every time the phone made a noise our stomachs fell to our feet. But we never got word of a cancellation. We arrived a bit early so we walked around a couple stores to pass some time and then headed over to the restaurant for the meeting. As we were pulling in we got a call telling us that the meeting was on. Here we go.

Her social worker arrived first and we talked for 10-15 minutes before our birth mother arrived. We really had no idea what or who to expect. All we see is some very basic background info on her, she receives the same for us. The point of the meeting is just to get to know each other.

I’ll be honest, I think we both expected someone a little less put together, if not for the simple reason that they are clearly not in the best life circumstance if they are forced to choose someone else to parent their child. This is not what we saw, she is a beautiful and smart young woman who clearly has her act together but has simply come to a very difficult crossroads in her life. We ended up chatting for almost an hour and a half and when we left felt a huge bond to her. We talked a lot on the way home and felt that her situation was simply perfect for us. It’s a weird and kind of terrible feeling to hope that someone chooses to give up their child and that you hope they pick you to give it too. Then again this whole process is full new feelings all around. And generally a huge weight was lifted of our shoulders. We loved her and the story about Thursday seemed to check out.

So with the meeting out of the way we can now finalize this car situation. We had found our car, put a deposit down and secured our financing. One thing left to do, sell the old car. Given that we had a guaranteed price on it from Auto Trader that would be a simple transaction right? Wrong. I’ll spare all the gory details but after a few days going back and forth with a generally dishonest local dealership that shall remain nameless (but it rhymes with Snake-Um) we were finally rid of the car and have picked up Erin’s new ride. All is well on the car front. Up down, up down.

Friday night, a little less than a week has passed since our meeting and we haven’t received word on a decision yet. We had got a couple messages along the way that she really liked us and was still going to need the time to think about this choice a little more. Erin stared to get very emotional about the whole process Friday evening. The strange feeling of guilt that someone will have to give up their baby to make us a family and that the happiest day of our lives will also be the absolute worst day of theirs just became a little too much to process.  Simple fact is that this is an entirely different monster and no one that has not experienced it can never really know what kind of feeling start to well up. But on we go.

Saturday morning was a rare one, Erin was actually off work. We slept in and caught up on some of those sleepless nights from the week before.  I eventually got up and decided I needed to go out for a run, I’ve been lacking in that and have been paying for it each time I do drag myself out onto the road. Who woulda knew that 2 weeks away post marathon would send you so far back in your conditioning. Not me I guess.

As I’m coming back up our street, finishing up my 6 miles, I see Erin out in the yard and I am confused. She runs out into the street, at this point I have no idea what’s happening other than I am sweaty, tired and my legs hurt. She pulled my headphones off and said simply, “she picked us, we’re having a baby!”

Let me repeat that.

SHE PICKED US, WE’RE HAVING A BABY!

Honestly, I had no idea what to say or feel, so naturally I said the smoothest thing possible at that exact special moment. “I can’t process this right now, I think I need to finish my .12 miles.” And then I ran to the end of the street and back. I know, I’m ridiculous. But I dare you to be able to understand what just happened when you get news like that sprung on you the second you get back to your house.  I could have done better, but that’s just not me anyway…

We should have paper work today to sign and become officially matched, but as of right now our daughter (yes, it’s a girl!) is due to be born in just 63 days. Ya, just 2 months. But look at the calendar and then those dates a little bit closer. She is due on Christmas Eve!

The weight of all that has happened really hasn’t fully hit either of us yet, but we will probably have the greatest Christmas ever this year and we can not wait. And by some other miracle, it seems like we actually have all of the money to pay our agency without taking out a loan or borrowing from our retirement. We had honestly planned on the match process taking 6ish months or more so we would really be able to get our finances in order, but that just wasn’t in the cards. And yet we are still able to have all we need, literally by $25. We are going to be draining almost every cent of savings and emergency money we have, plus next month’s grocery budget (so anyone who wants to take us to dinner, you know how to get ahold of us, lol… but seriously, not really joking) but it’s there.

So go a head and say a prayer for us that nothing big comes up before we can start to pay ourselves back, while we say one to say thanks for us have just enough to cover what we need. While you’re doing that, make sure to say one for our birth mother as well, our great news is her crushing blow and she should not be forgotten in this at all.

I’m sure the updates should be flowing from here on out, but right now baby Buttacavoli should make her appearance on Christmas Eve, in just 2 short months.

Up down, up down, up.

Away we go,

Erin and Adam

www.youcaring.com/buttacavoli