Our Midlife Miracle, Our New Song

At some point within the last year, Mr. M and I decided that, as good and pleasant as our life was, a baby would truly complete our family and allow us to live the rest of our lives with no regrets of what might have been.  So, we started the process.  The first step was to study and look into the different types of adoption and foster care and to talk to each other and decide which was right for us.  Once we decided that domestic infant adoption would be the best route for us, we started working on a home study.  That included running all over town, getting fingerprints and driving records, copies of our marriage and birth certificates, blueprints of our home, watching webinars and writing essays summarizing them, reading some required material, and much more.  We met with a social worker several times.  Then, on Jan.2, the social worker called us to tell us she was sending our home study to her boss for approval.  We had an adoption law firm chosen.  We had met with them, and liked them and their excellent reviews.  However, their popularity worked against us--although in hindsight, it worked for our good.  They couldn't sign us on until March.  In February, the lawyer called us to tell us it would likely take several years before a birth mom chose us because of a neurological condition I have.  That was a tough time, so I got busy.  I started looking into alternative ways to adopt.  I found a match maker on the internet, who was very kind, but ultimately no help to us--although again, she was a help to us in hindsight.  In a very circuitous way, God did use her in our story.  She found us an agency in Ohio who represented a birth mom in Riverside.  So we spoke with this birth mom, and it seemed like this was going to happen.  We were cautiously excited.  Then, a lawyer from Riverside, with whom we had previous dealings-we knew and trusted him-well, he is the lawyer for this agency in Ohio, and he called us to tell us that the birth mom we had talked to had actually chosen another family, and she had actually given birth earlier that day (2 months early), and the other family had taken the baby home.  So that was another "no."  However, as I said, we had had previous dealings with this Riverside lawyer-specifically, we had talked to him about adopting a baby girl whose mother was schizophrenic and bipolar and incapable of raising a child.  Some time went by, and the woman had a manic episode and was deemed incapable of making the decision to place her baby.  We waited, but she didn't recover in time.  So that was another "no."  At that point, Mr. M and I just thought it would never happen for us.  So we looked into embryo adoption.  It was risky, very risky due to my age and my neurological condition.  But we decided it was worth the risk, so we started the process.  We met with doctors, and we worked with the original adoption agency to take the necessary steps.  Since they had done our home study, the process would be fast for us.  However, weaning myself off the necessary neurological meds I need proved too much for my body.  So we were at the bottom of the barrel, hopeless.  Then, one magnificent May afternoon, I was sitting on the porch reading, and the Riverside lawyer called and said that he had taken the liberty of sending our profile book to an agency he works with in WA, who was representing a birth mom due at the end of the month.  And that is the story of Donny.  I got a phone call one morning in May, and the voice on the other end of the line said, "You're a mom.  It's a boy."  I wept like I never had before, and we found a flight to Seattle that day, and were holding our son that night.  It was so good of God to give us our precious and perfect son.  He had said "no" a couple times, but in faith we believe both those "nos" were for our good.  Maybe both of those situations-a premature baby, and a baby with a schizophrenic and bipolar mother-would have been more than we could handle.