On December 6th, we got an email from our amazing social worker about a birth mother. My husband and I were both at the office, in the middle of getting ready for our office move to a new location. People were frazzled trying to get everything packed on time, but we managed to duck into a meeting room and call her on the speakerphone.
So what happens in this first call? Our social worker tells us the circumstances of the pregnancy. We are told the ethnicity, ages, occupations, medical history of the bio-parents and their family. We are usually told why the birth mother is exploring adoption. And then we are asked if we want to be presented to the birth mother for consideration.
In this instance, we immediately said yes.
A couple of days later, we dropped our profile photo book to the adoption agency, and emailed a copy to the birth parent counsellor, who had been working with the birth mother.
And then the waiting begins. During this time, the birth mother is given a few profiles to choose from. After that, she might ask to see the home study, which is pages and pages of everything about us... from our relationships with family, to income, to what our house is, to what our childhood was like.
More waiting. I can't even remember months later, but I don't think we told many people we were being considered. We remembered what it was like in July, and tried not to dwell on the possibility that we would be picked. Work kept us busy, as did preparations for Christmas.
Finally, we were told December 14th that we were not chosen.
This wasn't a huge heartbreak for some reason. I did think about feigning illness to get out of Christmas, but I cherish spending time with our families so much that I sucked it up and went and loved every minute of it.
We carried on and tried not to think about the baby that was not meant to be ours. And that brings us back to the present...
