Disclaimer:

Do not worry about our family. We have our daughter.  This post was what I wrote when we were in the middle of potentially losing her. I wanted to share it because I think there are nuggets that might be helpful to others…

I want to write passionately about adoption, particularly about our personal adoption journey. However, at the moment, I’d have to first scrape myself up off the highway because I feel as if I’ve gotten run over by a Mack truck.

Is the adoptive family barely functioning at the thought of losing their child?  Well they will just have to sit and wait another 2 weeks for a meeting that will be blown off for another placement— at the last minute.  Hey, they’ve already paid and there’s another placement fee check on the line!How will they find this out? By text message.  No need for a phone call.  We are busy and important adoption professionals.  Take what we’re offering. We are in control.  Don’t you know that we can make it so your book never even gets shown?

Forget all the things you’ve carefully considered about your adoption plan. When you are holding the child you believed was yours in your arms, what lines will you cross then?

I never wanted to become one of those adoptive parents.  The ones the birth mothers talk about on their blogs. The ones that lie.  Make promises they never intend to keep.  Our promises to our daughter’s birth mother were (and are) sacred.  Etched in my heart.  Made carefully.

But what will I say now?  Can I look a birth father in the eye and say, “I’m sorry. That is not something we are prepared to do as a family. You can just have her back.”  Or will I convince myself that whatever type of adoption he thinks he wants right nowI will commit to for 18 years?Of course all of this is hypothetical. I don’t know what he wants.

Do I believe our daughter’s birth father had a right to meet us? YES.  I believe birth parents have a right to choose the adoptive families they are relinquishing their parental rights to.  However, I think that should have happened well before she was placed with us and we were told we were her parents.  Well before our children met their new baby sister.

Well before I held her in my arms and knew I would die for this child.

Now, instead of meeting a birth father about a child we may potentially adopt, we are meeting with a birth father about the daughter we stand to lose.  Those who oppose adoption may say that is what we deserve.

All through our adoption process it was important to me that we didn’t leave a train wreck behind us in the wake of our blessing.   But never did I consider that the train wreck left behind would be my family.