How my girls came to our family

It's been a whirlwind of emotions the past couple of weeks. Let's start back at the day before Brandon's baptism. I texted our birth mom just to check in on how she was doing and to see if her truck got fixed. Earlier in the week, she had missed an OB appointment because both her and her boyfriend's trucks were broke down. I never got a response. I was kinda bummed, but didn't worry too much about it. Especially, not with Brandon's baptism the next day.

By Sunday afternoon (the 27th), I still hadn't heard from her, so I sent her another text asking her if she needed a ride to her OB appointment the next day. Once again, nothing. That evening I texted her again letting her know that if I didn't hear from her that night, I'd call in the morning to make sure she would be able to get to her appointment. I also started to panic a bit. Lack of communication from a potential birth mom can mean that they are having second thoughts about placing. I sobbed and sobbed just thinking about such a possibility after waiting so long for this. I sent out messages to my friends asking for prayers. I didn't update all of facebook about the situation, though. I also sent an email to our caseworker letting her know of the lack of communication.

The next morning I was still really down about it all. I posted on facebook that it'd be a really long week for more than one reason. I called our birth mom around 10:00am and got her voicemail. I left a message, but was devastated at that point because it seemed that she was ignoring me.

Finally, around noon, I received a text from her. Apparently, text messaging isn't all it's cracked up to be. She just barely got all the texts I had sent from Friday and Sunday. So, there I had been sobbing and in the depths of despair when she just hadn't received the messages in the first place. That simple text changed my whole outlook on the day. Amazing.

I asked her once again if she needed a ride and she told me that they got her boyfriend's truck working. She also told me that she was going to skip the OB appointment and just go straight to the hospital. She was having a lot of pain and since she was past 37 weeks, she was going to see if they would induce her. At that point we still thought both girls were head down.

I waited and waited and finally texted her that I was on pins and needles waiting to see if they'd induce her. At that point she had actually just gotten to the hospital. A bit later she texted me and told me that twin B had flipped and was now head up. Because of that, they would not induce her. They were waiting to hear back from her OB to see if they could do a c-section right then or to schedule one.

Finally, word came back that they were sending her home with a prescription for lortab for the pain and the c-section was scheduled for Sunday, April 3rd.

It was at that point that I realized what a crazy emotional roller coaster of a day it had been. I had gone from sobbing, to relieved, to hopeful, to disappointed all in the matter of my waking hours. I was most definitely emotionally exhausted.

Tuesday, March 29th rolls around and I'm just going about my business of organizing things, doing laundry and such when I get a text from our birth mom that she was having labor contractions, but the hospital wanted her to stay home for now. Apparently, they weren't close enough together for them to worry about it. I didn't think much of it since she had been having contractions off and on for a long time.

Then, it happened. My home phone rang and after a couple rings, my cell phone rang. That could only mean one thing, our birth mom was calling us. I picked up the phone and sure enough, it was our birth mom. She was at the pharmacy trying to fill her prescription for lortab when she realized that the contractions were getting worse and she was going to go to the hospital. [For those who don't understand the phone thing: we had given our birth mom a google voice number. That way, she would always be able to reach us. With google voice numbers you can set it up to ring multiple phones when someone calls you using that number. We had tested it out before and found that it rings the home phone first and then the cell. Since we really hadn't given that number out to others, I knew this was it.]

I messaged Kevin on yahoo instant messenger which he always has up at work. I told him that our birth mom was in labor and that he needed to come home now. He asked me if I was sure. I told him that I was and so he came. While he was coming home, I was busy gathering everything up and taking it out to the car. Thank goodness I had installed the car seats the day before. I then called the person who had said I could call at anytime to take the boys only to discover there was no answer. I then had to figure out who else to call that could pick the boys up from school.

We finally got it all situated and were on our way to the hospital. Unfortunately, by the time we made it there, they had already taken her back for her c-section. Her boyfriend who did not want to be in the room, was forced to be there and I missed being there during the c-section. I was disappointed, but still happy that our girls would be arriving that day.

The hospital social worker came and visited with us. She told us that if we needed something to eat, now was the time to do so and that we had time before she would be out of surgery. Apparently, we didn't have enough time. We brought the food back up to the L&D floor only to find our birth mom's boyfriend there looking for us. We set down our food in a room the nurses told us we could and we went back to visit with our birth mom.

After a little bit, they brought our girls to us. We finally got to meet our little girls after so long of waiting for them. They are simple beautiful and we love them so much. I can hardly believe they are with us. Emma Noelle was born first and weighed 5lbs even. Ellie Jayne came next and weighed 5lbs 6oz.

Our birth mom's mom was there and she was sad, but happy. We asked her if she wanted to hold the girls and she told us she couldn't. She was afraid of getting too attached to the girls. She knew that as hard as it was, it was best for them to be placed with us. What a brave grandma for knowing she wouldn't be able to handle holding the sweet babies.

The hospital provided a room for us next door to our birth mom's room. We had the girls in our room most of the time during the hospital stay. We would take the girls over our birth mom's room to visit with her and her family. I do have to say that the hospital pull out couch/bed is only slightly better to sleep on than the floor would have been.

Finally, the day arrived when the doctors said that we could be discharged the next day (Friday, April 1st). Our birth mom planned to sign relinquishment at 10:00am and a caseworker would be there at 10:30 for us to sign. It wasn't our caseworker as our caseworker actually had another placement to be at that morning, but we had already met this caseworker before. After all the papers were signed by both parties, we went in to see our birth mom and give her the gifts we had gotten for her.

I first gave her the Build a Bears that the boys had made for her. She loved them. Then I gave her the blanket I made for her. I most definitely chose the right fabric as she loved the Super Girl fabric and was excited that it was soft on the back. I hope she's enjoying it now while she recovers. Lastly, I gave her the scrapbook album to assure her we would be sending her photos.

I'm so very grateful for our birth mom and have so much love and respect for her. Her OB came and spoke to us at one point during the hospital stay and we asked him how she was doing emotionally as far as he could tell. He said that she was doing amazing. He told us that when she first started coming to him for this pregnancy, he was really worried about her. Then once she made the decision to place for adoption, things started to look much better.

The caseworkers for both sides kept mentioning how smoothly this adoption had gone and that they've never seen it where neither the adoptive couple nor birth mother weren't panicking/stressed. I know that Heavenly Father played a hand in this adoption. The girls are meant to be in our family. Without him, I'm not sure things would have worked out quite so perfectly.

More to come on how things have been since we've had the girls home...