The Schoonovers

When we signed up to be adoptive parents, we committed to love, care for, and look out for the best interest of any child we brought into our home.

Last Tuesday, June 10th, we received a call that DCS was going to return baby girl to birth mom and we would have to meet DCS with baby girl on Friday, June 13th. With adoption, you always know that there’s a risk that things will fall through. While that’s never the call you want, it’s always a risk. That’s what you sign up for. While we’d still be heartbroken, we would return any child in an adoption situation that fell through if it was safe situation to return them to.

In this case, it’s just a complex situation. There were some general safety and welfare concerns that we did not feel were being properly addressed at the time we were asked to return her. Because our responsibility is to look out for baby girl’s best interest and general wellbeing, we filed an emergency action with the court to retain custody of her for the time being.

We were granted legal custody of baby girl for now and have a hearing on August 22nd that will determine where we go from here. There’s still a lot of directions this journey could go – some contain joy and some contain heartbreak – and really each direction contains a bit of both for different reasons.

For now, we are relieved that baby girl is safe, loved, and in a stable situation and will remain that way for at least two-ish more months. We’re also glad we can breathe easy and enjoy our time with her with a little less chaos (hopefully) for a while.

Our time with her has been great but Matt and I have been emotionally spent from the chaos of the last few weeks. It’s worth it but we’re also grateful for a bit of rest before the next step.

We truly believe that God is allowing things to unfold the way they are with purpose even in the moments where we don’t understand, wish it was less complex, or are asking why.

We remain committed to advocating for baby girl and her best interests and loving her with everything we have as long as we have her, and taking it all one day at a time.

Please continue to pray for wisdom and discernment for us and all involved as we continue in this journey.

With love,

The Schoonovers