Journey to Same-Sex Parenthood. Eric Rosswood
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showed more of our personalities. We gave it to the agency and, again, we waited.
Then came the near-misses, the times when our caseworker called and said something about staying in touch or a birthmother being interested. We got our hopes up, only to have them come crashing quickly down to earth when “the call” never came. And every group meeting, we continued to hear the numbers: the number of birthmothers, the number of families. We calculated the odds and still no call came. One year turned into two and we became pretty discouraged. I was silently glad we hadn’t set up the nursery yet and we stopped making purchases for the baby. It got even harder to go to the group meetings and we started to skip some.
At that point we began to consider some alternatives. We talked to our Indiana agency and learned they were starting to do actual placement work, rather than just pre- and post-placement work. Their approach was more modern, though, with more responsibility placed on the families for some of the marketing legwork. We thought about it and decided to put our hat in their ring as well. Now we had two agencies working for us and all it cost Novia and I was a few thousand dollars for the Internet and marketing training. So we started that process as well. We took the online courses, worked on our social media profile page and waited some more.
Then it happened: We got a call! A birthmother about six weeks from her due date had chosen us. The caseworker gave us the details: She was a young African-American woman, not yet twenty and pregnant with a seemingly healthy baby boy. However, the problem was that this birth-mother was considered “high risk” for disruption, meaning the agency wasn’t really confident that she would place the baby. We had heard these stories before and knew it could be heartbreaking, but what were we going to do? Turn down the match? We’d waited so long and had no idea when or if another birthmother might choose us, so we forged ahead and accepted the match.
We met with the birthmother, talked about our plans, answered her questions and just tried to make sure we didn’t say or do anything that might cause her to change her mind and pick another couple. We began the whirlwind of preparations for welcoming a newborn: painting and decorating his room, putting the furniture and equipment together, buying more supplies and clothes and diapers. We got everything ready. We even went to one of the birthmother’s doctor appointments with her.
Then we met with our attorney and learned about the various hoops we’d have to jump through for both Novia and I to become the child’s legal parents. We knew through my earlier research that Indiana was one of the few states that allowed second parent adoption, meaning a person not married to the biological or legal parent could adopt the child without that legal parent giving up their parental rights. In essence, it meant gay couples could both be legal parents, which was not the case in most states. But it also meant I had to legally adopt the child first. Kentucky did not allow gay couples to adopt, so in their eyes, I was the only one adopting him. After I adopted him, Novia would then have to file a separate petition to legally adopt him in Indiana as his second parent. Two separate adoption actions and two sets of adoption expenses! But we were prepared to do whatever was necessary to make sure our family was legally protected. So again, we pressed on.
As the due date drew near, we grew increasingly excited and anxious: excited to welcome our son into the world, yet anxious about whether the birthmother might change her mind. We made plans to take an extended leave from work following the birth and arranged for family to help take care of our house and pets while we stayed in the hotel with the baby for what could be weeks. The due date came and the social worker told us they were scheduling an induction for the following week if the baby hadn’t arrived by then. When the induction date came, the social worker called again. This time she told us not to come to the hospital; the birth-mother wanted to wait until she was discharged before we could come get the child.
The red flags couldn’t be ignored any longer. We knew it was a bad sign and that she was likely to change her mind. In the end, that’s just what she did. After the baby was born, the birthmother decided she wanted to parent the baby herself. We got another call, the one that all prospective adoptive parents dread, telling us she had changed her mind and that we wouldn’t be taking him home with us after all. To say we were devastated doesn’t adequately convey the loss and grief we felt. We both left work immediately and went to a restaurant to talk and try to digest what had just happened. It was a very, very difficult experience. But we also knew we weren’t ready to throw in the towel and give up on our dream of having a family, so we told the agency to keep us on the active list.
More months passed and we were now the oldest family in the agency, the couple that had been waiting longer than all the others. We’d watched family after family come and go. Some came back again for child number two while we still waited. We revamped our profile book one more time after seeking some feedback. I did this one myself and made it even more personal, displaying what I thought was our fun personalities and lifestyles.
Going on our third year, we got a call one day from our caseworker in late April 2012, almost exactly one year after our first matching call. She told us we needed to get our paperwork updated: It had to be kept current every year and we were a little behind in the update. She came right out and told us, even though she wasn’t supposed to, that we had to do it immediately, because they had a birthmother who was due “very soon.” The birthmother had decided she didn’t want to choose the parents for her baby and would let the agency do it. This happened on occasion and when it did, the agency would match the child to the family who had been waiting the longest. That was us! But they couldn’t match us if our paperwork wasn’t current, so we scrambled for several days to get it done.
The caseworker wouldn’t tell us anything more about the situation for privacy reasons. We didn’t know what “very soon” meant, so we had no idea when we might expect “the call.” We anxiously waited and tried very, very hard not to get our hopes up too high. A week went by, then another, then another. We finally decided that something must have happened and the birthmother had changed her mind, either about placing her baby or about choosing the parents. This was probably just another near miss. So again, we went on living our lives and waiting.
On Monday, May 20th, I stayed home from work, because I wasn’t feeling well. I slept in and once I got up, I was lounging around the house in my pajamas. My cell phone was still on vibrate mode from work (we have no home phone, just cell phones). A little after 11:00 A.M., I happened to check it and saw five missed calls and numerous text messages from Novia. I immediately called her back and she told me to call our caseworker. After she couldn’t reach me, our caseworker had eventually called Novia but couldn’t tell her anything, because, according to Kentucky, I was technically the adoptive parent. She did, however, tell Novia that I would want to take this call!
To say my heart was racing would be the grossest of gross understatements. I think it raced so fast it stopped while I made that call. My hands were shaking so badly I “fat-fingered” the numbers on my cell phone and had to erase them and redial. When our caseworker answered, she said the words I had hoped to hear for more than three years:
“We have a baby for you!”
I think she tried to give me all the details, like the baby’s race and health status, but I didn’t care. We had a baby! I know she asked if we wanted to adopt him and I’m pretty sure I screamed “Yes!” into the phone. She told us to come to the hospital and pick up our son. I don’t think I breathed again for about an hour. I called Novia right back and somehow I passed on the information to her, although I think I mostly just said, “Come home!”
Novia came right home and we threw together some things we’d need for an overnight stay at the hospital, called a friend to come take care of our pets and then rushed to the car. We had already packed what we called our “deployment” bag (military backgrounds!) and it had everything we thought the baby would need for the first several days, since we knew we couldn’t take him across state lines for a while. We’d also left the baby seat installed in the car from the year before when we were matched. We were pretty much ready to go, so we threw the deployment bag in the trunk and off we went.
We made a quick stop on the way to pick up some things for the birthmother and a few gifts for the nurses and arrived at the hospital by 2:00 P.M. I’m not sure our hearts ever stopped