First, the fun and exciting stuff. Baby girl is here. She was born on Monday, May 26 via c-section at 1:07 pm. She weighed 6 lbs 12 oz at birth and was 18.89 inches long. She had a little bit of fluid in her lungs at birth and had some trouble breathing so she had a quick NICU stay after coming into the world but she recovered like a champ and was in there less than 24 hours.
We were able to bring her home from the hospital on Wednesday, and she’s been doing great since we got home. Our first night home, Matt and I barely slept more than an hour. We keep our house pretty chilly, so it was a bit of an adjustment period for all of us to find the right temperature in the house, make sure she was dressed appropriately, and could stay nice and warm. We were up most of the night keeping her snuggled in a warm blanket. While we were completely exhausted the next day, it was truly a privilege to be so tired. Bringing her home wasn’t guaranteed, becoming parents wasn’t guaranteed, and how long we get to love her is still not guaranteed, so we will gladly sacrifice sleep for this baby girl that we love so dearly.
Since then, she’s been sleeping great which means we’re also getting decent sleep. She’s also eating like a champ. Matt and I both were initiated into parenthood the first night. We both changed diapers while she was still pooping not realizing she wasn’t finished. I caught a handful of spit up with my bare hand on night one. Baby girl hates being cold so her first bath was not a fun experience for her, but we have some ideas on how to make it better for her next time. Also, every time she has a diaper change, when we put lotion on her, and when she has an outfit change, she is not happy. Other than that, she is perfectly content.
On the other side of things, adoption is really hard. You hear that a lot but you don’t always know what flavor of hard you are going to get and there’s really only so much you can prepare.
We went into the day of her c-section excited and hopeful, prepared to see and hold her on her first day in the world and share time with her between us and birth mom. We expected discharge to occur on Wednesday and were packed and prepared to stay at the hospital until then.
Our hopes and plans are just that, hopes and plans and not always reality. Her quick NICU stay threw a bit of a wrench in things at the hospital that none of us were prepared for. Also, rightfully so, things were really hard for birth mom once baby girl was here in front of everyone. Adoption is not only hard, but it’s also equal parts grief and joy in so many ways.
I was able to see her the day she was born, but Matt wasn’t. Neither of us got to hold her until Wednesday. We left the hospital Monday night in tears, worried we wouldn’t be able to come back for her, scared each phone call or text message would be one saying that we weren’t going to bring her home. While that’s always a very real possibility in adoption, it is so incredibly hard. It is incredibly hard to walk into a situation where you are ready to parent this child you’ve prayed for and dreamed of a future with and not really know if that will come to fruition or to have any parental rights initially.
Matt and I were on pins and needles for the next 36-ish hours while we waited for updates on baby’s health and whether or not we would be able to come back to the hospital and bring her home with us or if birth mom would change her mind. I think I cried off an on, mostly on, for a solid 24 hours. (As a side note, sleep does wonders for the soul and I feel like this video was a great representation of me on Tuesday. Wednesday was much better after a good night of sleep. )
Our agency let us know that they had two birth moms delivering in the same week and an adoption finalization and they were seeing spiritual warfare so strongly. We also saw how much the Lord was going before us in this situation too.
For weeks leading up to the birth, a friend of mine kept insisting that she needed to give us her house key. She lived 5 minutes from the hospital birth mom was delivering at and was going to be out of town during birth mom’s delivery, so she told us if we needed to stay for any reason, we were welcome to. She nor I really thought we’d need it, but she couldn’t shake the feeling she was supposed to give it to us, so I accepted and put it in our hospital bag just in case. When we ended up not being able to stay at the hospital Monday night and originally expected to be back Tuesday morning, it didn’t make sense to drive home and have our dog sitter leave just to have to return in the morning and stay Tuesday night. Plus, we wanted to be close to the hospital just in case anything happened. We didn’t think we’d need the key, but God knew we did, and our friend was obedient to that prompting in her, and we did end up using it and staying the night Monday night.
On top of that, we had friends checking in, interceding on our behalf, willing to be available to sit at the hospital with us, let us come over just to get a hug and listen to us as we talked through things, to pray over us, and we felt it. We had the opportunity to just go sit and worship in our church Tuesday night and rest in the Lord in the middle of the hard. Not only did we have friends surrounding us in prayer throughout the day, but friends just sat all around us that night. To us, it felt like a physical representation of the prayerful surrounding we were already receiving.
Our days were mixed with fear, sadness, prayer, coming to terms with just how out of our control the situation was, and trust that God knows best and is working in it regardless of the outcome. That was really hard to speak and say and believe in middle of the hard but we knew it to be true. He had shown us throughout this entire process these past few months that he was with us and even though things were not going the way we planned, He was showing us that He was going before us in this and revealing things to us in this process as well. There were things during those couple of days that we needed to see to know how best to move forward with the adoption with the best interest of baby girl in mind that we wouldn’t have seen or known otherwise. While we would much rather have skipped the hard, the hard needed to happen for those things to be revealed, so we are choosing to be grateful for the hard in hindsight. It doesn’t mean it was any less hard in the middle of it, but we see it as hard with a purpose.
While baby girl is home with us now, we’re still unsure whether we get to parent her forever. Birth mom’s surrender hearing was originally scheduled for Wednesday, May 28th, but she was not discharged from the hospital at that time, so it is being rescheduled. She also requested to change the post adoption contact agreement after baby girl got here, so we are working through that to come to a reasonable agreement so we can get the surrender rescheduled. Right now, we are tentatively looking at June 4 or 5 for the new surrender date. Birth mom will have 3 business days post surrender to change her mind and choose to parent this child. If she does that, we will have to return baby girl to birth mom’s care. If she doesn’t, we will get to parent baby girl forever and will be on the path to finalizing the adoption. If everything moves forward with one of the tentative dates we have, we should know no later than June 9 or 10 if we get to parent baby girl forever.
During everything, we’ve clung to the serenity prayer because we need the constant reminder that we can only change the things in our control (which is so very little), that everything has to be submitted over to God’s care, and peace comes in surrendering it to His care and trusting His plan.
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference. Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time, accepting hardships as the pathway to peace, taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it trusting that He will make all things right If I surrender to His Will so that I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with Him forever in the next. Amen.
We’d be lying if we didn’t say we selfishly hope birth mom doesn’t change her mind, because we are already so in love with this baby and I cannot imagine how difficult it’d be to return her at this point. But, God has continually shown us
- He cares for us
- He sees us in this
- He is going before us
- Regardless of the outcome, we will be okay.
We will continue to hold on loosely, love big, and take it one day/moment at a time.
With love,
The Schoonovers
The Schoonovers 
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