The Meeting with the Birthmom

We met with the birthmom in Delaware on Saturday . . . it was a good meeting. Like the last time we met with a birthmom, we got there really early (there was a discrepancy with the "time with traffic" and the actual time it took us to drive into Milford, Delaware . . . go figure, not much traffic on a Saturday toward the end of beach season). Having some time to kill, drove to a GameStop & took advantage of Delaware's lack of a sales tax: Rock Band & a few other games for the 360, and Wii Resort.

So, after spending money that we probably shouldn't have, we drove back into Milford and pull into the restaurant a few minutes before noon - where we mention that we're going to be meeting with two others, but hey, they're here! After introductions (we all bonded over a love of food in just about any shape or form), we got into the nitty-gritty of what we were there for.

As we had known, Birthmom has four children, the first three from a long-term relationship. Then birthmom met birthdad and had a little girl just under a year ago. The timing of everything (along with false-negative pregnancy tests) lead to a delayed discovery in the pregnancy -- she only really found out five months into the journey, and that's because the "baby belly" she was carrying suddenly was turning hard. Adoption was the first thought she had.

Of course, adoption wasn't the obvious choice here -- when birthmom was young, there was an adoption situation with her elder sister, leaving a bad taste for adoption in birthmom's sister's mouth. The birthmom's sister was won over when she saw what the birthmom was working through.

Obviously, there was talk of race -- birthmom is white, birthdad is black, but I think we managed to allay any fears that we "didn't know what we were getting into". Then there were the words that most any set of adoptive parents want to hear: "I really feel like I'm just carrying this baby for somebody else". Heck - she even mentioned that she has sonogram pictures for us (they were left at home), as those work really well in the front of an baby book. Aside from the serious stuff, there was sports talk, and school talk and random chit-chat. The biggest hurdle we may have is the fact that the birthmom is in Delaware, but her eldest three are in NJ. Birthmom is working to move back to NJ, and spending as much time in NJ now as possible . . . if she were to start going into labor naturally while in NJ, we have what's known as a "three state adoption", which will add a pile of legalwork for us to get through, but it's nothing huge.

As we left, we realized that we had parked right next to the social worker & birthmom . . . made us chuckle.

Our next steps - we should know when a C-section will be scheduled within the next few days, and then it's a waiting game -- so keep watching this space, or Twitter, or Facebook . . . or just wait for a primal scream of joy -- that'll be us.