Barry and Heather are trying to Foster to Adopt a baby named
Deshawn, he was born on January 12th and came to their home a few
days later. It’s a scary situation for them, he is half Navajo and that means
technically, belongs to The Navajo Nation, also, his mother, would also like to
get her life in to place where she can take care of him. So, we don’t know what
is going to happen with Deshawn. We really hope that he can stay in our family.
This reminds me of what we went through with Kailee and we know what Heather and
Barry are going through. When Kailee was born, it was Christmas Day and we were
with Micah’s family when we heard the news that Ashlee was in labor. We quickly
canceled our dinner plans for that evening and went home and just waited for
updates. Kailee, we found out was born at 3:58 PM and that while we were not
invited up to see her that night we could go the next day before signing. We
were feeling so many emotions, we were so crushed that we weren’t there for her
birth, and we were so excited that we were going to meet her the next day.
Well, the next day came and went and we still were not invited up to see her.
When we found out that Ashlee was having second thoughts, we went over to Barry
and Heathers and spent the day with them, just being with Barry , Heather and
the boys brought us so much comfort. When our caseworker called that night to
tell us that Ashlee decided to sign, we all celebrated. Well, as the story
goes, we got a phone call the next day that Ashlee had decided to parent. We
were crushed. The pain, I can’t even begin to describe. It’s like, when your
birth mom decides to parent. Its knowing that your child will not be a part of
your family. It’s that self-doubt that maybe you aren’t supposed to have
children. Its everything. It’s not truly knowing how much you loved and wanted
this child until you lost her. No matter how we tried they both couldn’t escape
our every thought. Three days had now passed when the owner of the agency
called and said that there had been some updates and changes and that Ashlee
has decided to go through with the placement, but not for two more days, so
that she could have a full week with Kailee. Yvonne wanted to know if we were
still interested in an open adoption. We were. Ashlee wanted to know if we were
mad. We weren’t. It’s really quite hard to explain. We were crushed, devastated,
broken hearted, but we were not mad. So, Sunday evening, we cautiously switched
gears, from mourning to preparing to bring our daughter home. We told no one. We didn’t think anyone would
believe us. The plan was that on New Year’s Day we would meet at the Hilton in
Ogden at 4:00 PM where we would finally meet our daughter. We drove in silence.
We tried to make small talk, but we both were feeling the burden of the risk
that we were taking. We both agreed that the risk was worth it, but we
both couldn’t escape the weight of it. We knew that we could, for the third
time leave without our baby. That we would have to fall in love with and then
try to forget her, again. That we might need to drive home with an empty car seat one
more time. That we would have to pack away the baby stuff, yet again, and
that we would have to close the nursery door for a very long while. As we arrived to pick
KJ up, we were told that we needed to leave, that they didn’t want us to be
there when Ashlee arrived. They didn’t want to sidetrack her or for her to lose
focus, we were told to go across the street to Iggy’s for a drink and to not be
surprised if we weren’t to come back for an hour to an hour and a half. We decided to order dinner; we couldn’t
genuinely remember the last time that we ate. As soon as our dinner arrived, our case
manager called, we were to come back to the hotel- Ashlee had signed the
relinquishment. We hurried back, in shock. Before we could meet Kailee we had
paperwork to sign. After we finished signing and before we went up to meet her,
Micah, decided to take a bathroom break. Our case manager asked me if he was
okay, I told her that he was, but that he had been on a roller coaster of
emotions for the past week and was just feeling overwhelmed. The truth is, I didn’t know. I did know that this hit him harder than it hit me. I know that
every time we mourned a failed fertility treatment, he was the strong one, it
wasn’t his body that was failing it was mine, and for some reason that made it
okay for him. But this time was different. He didn’t know how to mourn this, he
didn’t know what was next, and he didn’t know when he could be happy again.
When he finally joined the group, I could see it in his eyes; he was terrified,
that he didn’t know what he was getting himself into. It really seems quite
silly now, but Micah is a very visual person, KJ wasn’t real until he saw her,
smelled her and held her. We walked down
the longest hall ever; I mean really, the person who designed that building had
no idea. When we finally arrived, the room was full of people, I didn't care. There she was, in Ashlee’s arms sound asleep. What happened next was a
bit of a blur. The next thing that I remember was pulling away from the hotel
with a sleeping baby in her car seat and Micah saying that this was the saddest
thing that he has ever seen. That seeing what Ashlee was going through made him
love Kailee more. On the way home, I sent a text message with a picture of us
holding KJ, to our nearest and dearest, it read:
I believe in being
strong, when everything seems to be going wrong
I believe that happy
girls, are the prettiest girls
I believe that
tomorrow is another day,
And I believe in
miracles.
Like this one…
And then I shut my phone off for the night, I had been
waiting for this little angel for three years, we had some catching up to do.
