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Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Pretty Crappy Day

So we rode another roller coaster yesterday, it was a tough one, but our Faithful Father made sure we got off safely and held our hand the whole way.

Yesterday morning, the phone rang shortly after nine am and it was a case worker from Sheppard Care (Florida agency). Marc answered and she asked if we could both be on the phone at the same time. She proceeded to tell us that we had been chosen by a birth mom and our baby was due in September. Looking at each other through the reflection of the bedroom mirror, Marc and I’s eyes grew bigger and bigger. She proceeded to tell us the details of the birth mom; the more she told, the more I shook everything seemed so perfect! The birth mom was 25 yrs old, baby had no alcohol or drug exposure and SHE CHOSE US!! The case worker agreed to email us the profile and explained she needed an answer in 24 hrs.
Sitting at our computer, continually hitting “send/receive” the email finally came through 10 LONG minutes later. We slowly scrolled through the profile, which goes into detail regarding family hx, social background, pre natal care and birth mom’s health history. As we scrolled down everything was great; maternal grandfather was a bit short, but other than that all was good. The last page of the profile included health hx… and the perfectness became a little less. Birth mom suffered from quite a serious medical condition that the case worker did not mention when we spoke by phone.
However, even though our excitement was less it wasn’t depleted. We were still excited and proceeded to call family. Despite all the excitement we realised that we quickly wanted to speak with a medical professional regarding the medical issue. Considering it was a holiday, I wasn’t hopeful that we would be able to get in contact with any physician…BUT God opened up doors and within 45 minutes we had three medical opinions; I spoke with an emergency physician at work, dad spoke with a Dr friend and Melanie spoke with her heptalogist) and to our devastation it was more serious than we thought and could lead to chronic illness for the baby.
With much tears and much prayer, we regrettably had to decline the profile. We were devastated and frustrated that this had happened again. We looked back at our adoption paper work and confirmed that we had not checked off that we were open to a birthmom with this specific health condition, therefore our profile should not have even been presented to this mom. I know how emotionally impacted we were, I can’t even imagine what this poor birthmom must be feeling, after she spent weeks choosing a forever family for her child only to have us decline.
I know God has a plan and a baby ready for our family, but in the mean time I am not sure how many more of these roller coaster rides I can go on. This adoption process is far more difficult emotionally than I ever expected.

1 comment:

  1. Hi Natalie and Marc,
    I stumbled across your blog awhile ago...can't even remember who through, but it's a small world, hey?

    My heart goes out to you. God's plan IS perfect and even though we have not gone through what you are going though, I know what it is like to wait for something you want so bad and it being "painfully slow".

    Hang in there!

    Caroline Gilbank

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