NaBloPoMo - Day 25 - to say hello to him before saying good-bye

November 2003
The night BOY was born, there was quite an entourage waiting for him. Besides E and myself, there was my mom, E's brother and his wife and their two children. Our birthmother, T, had her mother and mother's husband, her father, her stepmother, her two half-sisters as well as the birthfather there. T's stepmother worked as a nurse at the hospital where BOY was born. She was an immense help. Especially because she was supportive of the adoption plan. When T had told her family that adoption was the choice she had made, it was very difficult for all of them. I think especially for her parents, who although were divorced, felt the upcoming loss of a member of their family. But, she was set on her path and they ended up supporting her and were there for her.

It was terribly hard to leave the hospital and go check into a motel. Our BOY was born! Spending a few hours with him in the wee hours of the morning, feeding him, holding him, touching him... created an instant bond. We were his parents. We wanted to spend every second with him.

The second day we spent the morning with BOY in the nursery as T was still recovering from the C-section, and then that afternoon she spent time with him and included her family. One of the most challenging parts in the adoption of BOY was being part of the education process for the nurses. Only two birthmothers with adoption plans had been through the hospital recently, and in both instances the birthmothers had changed their minds. Both were closed adoptions. So...here we were with an open adoption plan. They didn't know what to make of us. It was confusing. To complicate matters, one of the nurses told me more than once that T "had been spending too much time with BOY." It unnerved me and underlined my own uncertainty. But, an important part of our own learning curve on Open Adoption was that Birthmothers need to spend time with their child before sending them into the arms of their adoptive parents-their forever family. Intellectually, I knew that this was right. That T needed to spend this time with BOY. To say hello to him, before saying good-bye. We had to trust that everything would be fine. And believe it, ourselves. However the nurse thought we were aliens. And I know she believed we were going to leave the hospital without our BOY. She had never seen a success story.

That evening, the birthfather came by and the four of us spent time together in T's room. We took lots of pictures and then E and I decided to give them some time with BOY and we went out to dinner. When we returned, we passed BOY's birthfather in the parking lot and he said something in passing ... I was going to change my mind, but I thought about it and I'm O.K. with it now. He was so casual about it that we didn't really take it in. We thought he was talking about weeks before and was just letting us know that he was on board. It wasn't until we walked into T's room and she said that the birthfather HAD CHANGED HIS MIND that it fully registered. But, I've convinced him that this is the best decision and that BOY belongs with you, she said.

To be continued...

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