A Beautiful Gift & A Failed Adoption

It has been many months since I last posted on this blog, and I was hoping that my return would herald good news. Alas, there was short lived good news that turned not-so-good, fast. The past three weeks have been a whirlwind in our household. So I will try and tell the short version of a rather short but dramatic story. For a woman who is drama-averse, it sure has a way of finding me.

About a month ago, we decided it was time to start our adoption journey, and I went to speak to Lutheran Social Services to learn what we needed to do. Our social worker there explained to me that, whereas it normally can take upto two years to get placement for domestic (i.e. US) infant adoption, it would likely not take as long for us because we are black/African. Apparently, there are not enough folk of color in the system.

Armed with a lot of information and encouragement, I came back home and discussed everything I'd learned with my wonderful spouse, and we agreed to start the journey. I then left for Spring break back home to Philly, but I got a few emails from LSS encouraging us to get our registration paperwork back to them quickly.

We got our registration paperwork back to LSS three weeks ago, the first week of March. By the end of that week, we were asked to send in a short profile that they could use to introduce us to birth parents. Thursday March 6th, we sent in our short profile, a couple of pages talking about us, with a few pictures. Friday March 7th, our social worker emailed me indicating that there was a birth mother who was very interested in us. She asked whether we could meet with her the following week. After a bunch of emails back and forth, we agreed to meet on Wednesday March 12th, which would require us to drive three and a half hours to the Twin Cities. LSS also sent us a whole lot of paperwork to fill out, online courses we needed to do to prepare for adoption, etc. We filled a lot of that paperwork on Saturday March 10th and even started on the online courses.

Sunday March 9th at 7:30AM, I get a text message that the birth mother was in labor...I didn't see the message until about 9 when our social worker called to tell us that actually, the birth mother had given birth (two weeks early) and could we drive down to meet her? At this point, we were not sure what to expect, except that we'd meet with the birth mother and see how it goes. We meet with our social worker and talked through "the match meeting", which is adoption speak for the meeting between potential adoptive parents and birth parents.

By late Sunday afternoon, we made our way to the Twin Cities and to the hospital. Once we learned that the baby was a girl, we'd chosen a name, in case we got matched. We were put in a room at the hospital to meet with the birth mother and her social worker. When she walked in the room, Q (as she chose to be called, she didn't want us knowing her name) walked into the room wheeling in those hospital bassinets with the baby. We proceeded to have a warm conversation getting to know her, she getting to know us, and after about an hour, we agreed that we would, indeed, be interested in adopting her baby. She asked us what we would call her, as she had chosen not to name her. She also told us that when she was informed that we'd agreed to come to the hospital, she felt at peace because she thought we'd be the best option for her daughter. She then handed Zawadi over to us, and insisted we call her our daughter...Zawadi means gift in Swahili.

So our journey with Zawadi began right there in the hospital room. We took care of her for the next 48 hours, in between signing all kinds of documents, calling lawyers do do the legal stuff, and Tuesday March 11, we left the hospital with our daughter. In the meantime, my wonderful supportive workmates were hard at work preparing the home front for baby girl, getting diapers, clothes, and the stuff we'd need once we got home. My faithful friends were setting up a registry and getting things moving. And we were just as excited as can be to finally have a baby in our arms...

March 18th Q should have been signing the paperwork to terminate her parental rights. Instead, she told her social worker that she was reconsidering the adoption plan, and thinking that she would want the baby back to be raised by her mother, who was already raising her 10 year old daughter. Thus began a crazy roller coaster week. She didn't ask for the baby back at that point, just indicating that she was rethinking the plan. In the meantime, we said we'd continue to parent Zawadi until she made up her mind, but she needed to do that soon coz we are not foster parents. I did not take leave from work in order to be a foster parent...I wrote to our friends and colleagues about what was going on, asking for them to be in prayer for all of us (ourselves, the baby, and Q). While I was frustrated at the developments, I was also conscious of the difficulty that Q must have been experiencing, the pain and struggle of letting go of her child. I tried to extend grace, compassion and mercy to a struggling birth mother. And fought against anger...

We continued to love our daughter, sharing her with family and friends as the gift that she was (I will post a separate blog post about how she was a gift to us and to many in our lives). Wednesday March 19th, we get the call that Q had agreed to meet with me, woman to woman, to talk. That meeting was yesterday, March 24th, the actual due date for the delivery. We drove to the Twin Cities and met her at LSS. I talked with her for about an hour, asking her how she was doing those past two weeks, what was happening with her and her mom and other family members, what had changed in her life to cause this change of heart. I also shared with her what our life had been like for the two weeks with Zawadi, how she was loved by our friends, our family in the US and Africa, even my school was celebrating her presence in our lives. In the end, she insisted that she just could not continue with the adoption plan, and would take the baby back to her mother, who had offered to quit her job to be a fulltime at home grandmother to raise Zawadi.

So we are back home, empty handed. We loved Zawadi, we'd bonded with her since a few hours after her birth. It hurts. A lot.

There really ought to be cards out there: condolences on your failed adoption.

What makes all this doable is that we have a strong support system, people who have been praying with and for us since that first phone call about Q's changing mind. I am so grateful for my dean and my colleagues who have been close at hand, supporting, praying, ensuring I got leave to bond with Zawadi, and now supporting and praying as we grieve. So glad for friends near and far whose sustaining prayers enabled us to go through this with a certain sense of peace.

I will miss watching my husband bond with Zawadi as he fed, burped, changed and cooed her to sleep. My hands ache with the emptiness of it all. I should appreciate sleeping seven hours straight, but in all honestly, I would rather be waking up two three times a night to feed baby girl. But in all things, we give thanks. And continue to believe that our gift is still out there. Our baby, the one who will come to stay, is still out there somewhere, perhaps in some other birth mothers tummy baking away :-)

We grieve, but not as ones who have no hope. No, rather, in all things, we continue to believe in God's unfailing love. Jer 29:11 is still true, in spite of the outcomes of this particular adoption experience. Won't you hope and believe with us?