Our Adoption Story - Part 4: The Meeting
So what would you do if I told you that you were bringing twins home tomorrow? Would you kind of freak out a little bit? Well, I can tell you that I have never had so many thoughts in my head simultaneously as I did in the hours following that life-changing phone call. There were moments of the highest highs you can imagine - picturing our family of 4 and all baby snuggles I could dream of, but there were also some lows. Shortly after receiving what had been the greatest phone call ever, our case worker called us back to let us know that there were some hurdles that had to be overcome for everything to work out and for us to bring home the girls.
In adoption, there are always complexities and nothing is ever guaranteed, but to hear that definitely shook me. I kept thinking today is either the day that I meet my daughters for the first time, or the day we look back on and think, "remember how we almost had twins?" There wasn't a lot of time to think or stress because we had to pack and head to the hospital to meet the birth mother. I knew no matter what happened, it would all be in God's plan for us. Even though I knew HE knew what would happen over the next hours and days and trusted his plan, I didn't know, so my head and my heart were battling. My heart was SO overjoyed, but my head kept my heart guarded from becoming too attached to the idea of having twin daughters until we knew more.
All that to say, we knew going into the meeting that this day could end up being one of the best days of our lives, or one of the hardest days of our lives. (As a side note: this whole adoption series is from the perspective of my husband and I as prospective adoptive parents and our journey through the adoption process. I wanted to take a minute to recognize that there isn't a need for adoption unless a significant loss has happened. This series is a narrative of our side of the story. I recognize it is very different than the birth mother's perspective. I will spend more time on the duality of the joy and the sorrow that comes with adoption in future blog posts,)
I have never been so nervous as I was that night walking into the conference room of the hospital to meet our case workers. In my usual fashion, I had a million questions for them. I remember whenever they would talk about the birth mom, they just kept saying, "She is so beautiful and so strong." We sat there waiting for the birth mother to come, and I remember watching every woman who walked down the hall thinking "Is that her?" Finally she came, and they were right - she was beautiful!
We got a chance to talk with her and get to know a little more about her and her learn about us. One of my favorite things she said was that one of the things she liked about us was how Dale liked to fish because her dad used to take her fishing when she was little. Y'all, could that be any more true of Dale?! (Remember how I was so stressed about our book? Well Dale had a full two page layout on his love of fishing - How good is our God?)
As we continued to talk, the subject of names came up... Let me just take a second to say we had way more boy names than girls - I even joked once about what our boy names would be if we had twin boys. Never thought about needing TWO girl names! After a while of getting to know each other she asked us if we wanted to go meet the twins. YES. YES. YESSSSS.
Walking down the hall to see them, my heart could have burst with joy, but my head kept telling me keep it together... You don't know what's going to happen... Don't get too attached.
It seemed like it took forever to get to their room, but finally as we got to their room, I remember wanting SO badly to feel fully that these were our daughters, to just know - so I could tell them about it when they were older, the moment I knew they were ours. But I have to be honest, I was scared and my heart was guarded. There were too many unknowns to give myself fully into the idea that these precious baby girls could call me mama for the rest of their life.
Don't get me wrong, the moment we met them was a moment I will never forget. They were so tiny and so sweet and so perfect, and we couldn't quite figure out where to look because we wanted to just stare at both of them forever!
We got to hold them and feed them their tiny little bottles. We took turns holding each one and trying to soak it all in. Mostly, we just kept saying to each other, "Is this real life?" "Is this really happening?" I do remember at one point looking over at my husband and him saying, "you aren't pregnant, are you?!" (the answer, clearly, was no, but whoa!)
At one point, I even got brave enough to ask to hold both babies at the same time! (funny looking back now since I was sitting in a chair with pillows on either side and they didn't weigh much more than a 5lb dumbbell, and now I carry both of them for a combined 40+lbs on the regular!) It was the best feeling getting to hold them both - I remember thinking, I could get used to this! Also, I could get used to the sight of my handsome husband with a babe in each arm too - I mean c'mon!
We were already getting a taste for what it was like to have twins because, I swear, once one was done eating and getting their diaper changed, it was time for the other to eat! It wasn't until after 11PM that Dale went to go get us food for the first time since lunch (back before we even knew these sweet babes existed).
Going into the evening, we had no idea what to expect; we were told to plan on staying overnight with the girls, but things may change. Well shortly after Dale came back with our sandwiches, what we were hoping wouldn't happen, happened, and we got the boot around midnight. We said good bye to the sweetest babes we'd ever met, not knowing if we would ever see them again. We walked to the car, ate our cold sandwiches, drove home and wondered what would happen next.
Stay tuned for my next post on what happened after we got kicked out of the hospital....
