Josie

I remember the day like it was yesterday.

I am a morning person to the fullest, so it’s no surprise that I wake up around 5 am most mornings. On this particular morning I woke up at 5 am and I started the daily debate  - do I get up and run and eat donuts today or do I not run and skip the donuts. While contemplating my life changing decision, I grabbed my phone and checked my email and then did the ultimate time ruining thing – I checked my Facebook. I remember seeing the small little number 1 on the bottom of my page, I had one unread message.

That’s the message that forever changed our lives. That’s the message that opened the door to our second adoption.

Fast- forward some months and we’re at a specialist. When we arrive at the specialist, both the birth mom and I, believe it’s just a routine visit, the doctors are just checking on the baby. Then a nurse walks in, smiles and says, “Okay, let’s check her brain.” Akkkaaaexcuse me. We both lost our breath for a moment and I’m sure the look on our face is what made the nurse leave and go get the doctor. You see, our birth mom was late in the game, she didn’t make her initial pregnancy visits, instead she started seeing the doctor around 7 ½ months, so … we knew something could happen, but we didn’t know what. Long story short, the doctors found nothing wrong with her brain, but that’s the appointment where they told us the baby would be big and come early, most likely around Christmas or on Christmas day.

Fast-forward a couple months and our birth mom is officially 39 weeks and a couple of days. The doctor schedules her for an appointment for the next week. Um, what? Our birth mom is beyond angry and miserable. It’s now past Christmas and no date in sight for this little gal to be born. We return the next week; she’s now 40 weeks and a couple days over due. She’s larger and more miserable. The doctor is busy so he has her meet with his nurse practioner. She’s no peach and doesn’t like the idea of inducing labor, so after some begging and almost tears, the nurse practioner and doctor schedule to induce the following week – Yep, that’s another week overdue.

So at 5 am on January 14^th I meet her mom in the waiting room. Our birth mom is in the back getting checked in and we’ll be called once she’s settled in her room. An hour passes and nothing. I can tell her mom is worried and I’m trying all my Mercedes tricks to calm her down, but I’m running out of happy-go-lucky attitude.

Then two nurses walk into the waiting room and ask us to follow them. I failed to mention, but this is a new hospital and this is the first adoption they’ve ever handled. It’s beautiful and still smells new. We’re walking down the hall and finally enter her room. Our birth mom seems miserable, she’s in pain and they haven’t even started the meds to begin to induce labor. It’s about 6:40 am and two nurses walk in, they both tell us their shift ends in 20 minutes and they won’t start the meds until the next shift arrives. Around 6:50 am the nurses jog back in and I can see the look of terror on their face. They put some oxygen on our birth mom’s face and ask her to shift left and right. They walk out and about 20 minutes later they come back in and introduce the next shift nurses. These nurses will work 7-7pm and will most likely be present during birth. It’s about 8 am and the nurses rush in again, same look of terror over their faces, and again they put oxygen on our birth mom’s face. They shift her left and right. I can’t understand their codes or terminology and neither can our birth mom’s mom. So I finally ask, “what’s going on?” They look at me and look at our birth mom and say, “The baby’s heart rate is dropping.” I’m still oblivious and I feel like my mind is going 100 miles a minute. They stabilize the heart rate and leave the room. I call C and tell him what’s going on and I try not to worry him, which clearly I’m not good at. He keeps saying, “I’ll leave and head that way.” I reassure him she’s not even close to delivery, so I’ll keep in touch and let him know more when I can. The time is about 10 am and the nurses rush in again and this time the head nurse accompanies them and then another two nurses come in and each nurse has the same look of terror on their face. One nurse shouts to the head nurse, “call the doctor.” I can’t help it; I need to know what’s going on, so I walk in the hallway behind the head nurse. I ask her what’s going on. She looks at me and pauses for a long time, she knows I’m adopting this baby, so she chooses her words wisely and says, “the baby is losing oxygen and that’s not good.” I call C again and I tell him, this time he’s beyond worried and tells me to go back in and tell him play by play. The heart rate keeps dropping over the course of the next hour and again the doctor comes in and he finally determines it’s best to do an emergency csection. I’m sad for our birth mother, she didn’t want this to be her birth plan/route, but she knows the baby needs to come and quickly.

I walk out in the hallway and I called C, this time it was a little different. You see, before I walked out of the hospital room, they told us about the csection, but they also told us that only one person could go back to the surgery room with our birth mom. Her mom reached over and told her, “in the next couple of minutes you need to decide who you want to go back with you.” When I heard her say that to our birth mother, I knew, I knew it didn’t need to be me, but I was still sad. When I called C, he felt the same way. So when I got back to the room the nurses asked me to get all of my belongings and to follow them. I wasn’t sure what they meant really, but I did it anyway. We walked past every empty room, until the last room on the right, the room furthest away from our birth mom and any other patient. When we arrived, it was just me and two nurses. They told me this would be our room until we were all released and that the baby would come here in about 35 minutes. They explained that the birth mother had expressed her wishes for a closed adoption and wished to not see the baby. My heart dropped. I felt like I had lost my breath and I wasn’t able to move or speak, I just nodded. Just as I was about to sit down, C walked in. He asked me a million questions about the baby, birth mom, hospital and I just snapped. I needed a minute to take in everything, I mean in the last 30 minutes we went from an open adoption to a closed adoption, sharing a room with our birth mother to having our own secluded room I needed just a minute. About the time C and I started talking, a nurse turned the corner and entered our room with a  perfectly swaddled baby. She was all smiles and told us she was healthy and beautiful; she congratulated us and left the room.

I remember looking at Josie and feeling like I was the luckiest person in the world, like it was a dream. Then I remember looking up and seeing a hospital bed pass by slowly and seeing our birth mom’s mom and locking eyes with her. Our birth mom was just out of surgery and entering the recovery hour and the bed passed our room.

The next two days in the hospital were a little weird and tiresome. The hospital staff was great, but also very reserved and nervous. The legal situation surrounding adoption worries everyone, so with this being their first adoption, I knew they were scared of messing things up.

On Sunday night I was talking to C about our life and I told him how I felt extremely blessed. I mean it. The statistics that surround adoption, infertility issues and just births in general, is scary. It’s hard for me to grasp that two separate birth moms picked us to parent their children, that we now have 2 babies, 2 little girls that fill our days with laughs, diapers, tantrums and joy.  Not to mention, we haven’t prepared a meal since leaving the hospital,  Baby J sleeps & eats like a boss, we were gifted so much formula that Baby J will be 4 months old until we will need more, we didn’t buy a single outfit for Baby J, nor did we pay for fabulous family pictures. This is just a small list of blessings we’ve had in the last week and we are forever grateful for the generous people that surround us – our family, friends and complete strangers who have helped. Thank you to everyone who has joined together to make this journey extra sweet. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts, it means more to us that you could ever imagine.

Also, if you’re reading this, I know I’ve told you in person a million times and I know we shared a special “mom” moment in the hospital, but know that your gift is something we treasure. Thank you for choosing life and thank you for choosing us. We’ll never take you for granted and you’ll always be part of our family. Thank you.

Love,

Mercedes