Meet Jack

This is the blog post we have waited almost five months — if not several years — to write. It's both the happy ending and the happy beginning. On April 3, 2016, we became parents to our son, Jack. On Friday, the adoption was finalized by the State of Minnesota. Now that we have completed the adoption process and all the necessary legal steps, we are excited share the news. 

The funny thing about updating this website is reading the last post we published just a few weeks before Jack was born. I remember publishing it and thinking, Watch — now we're going to get a call.

That's actually sort of how it happened. 

We received the first significant phone call from our adoption agency on Tuesday, March 29. Our social worker informed us there was an expectant mother interested in meeting us and another couple on Wednesday, April 6. (She was due on Monday, April 11.) Of course, this was an exhilarating development, but one we kept to ourselves to avoid the real possibility of disappointment for our family members. 

On Saturday, April 2, I received a phone call from our social worker while — of all things — pumping gas. She informed me the expectant mother's water had broken early that morning and she was now leaning toward Beth and I as adoptive parents based on our profile. How I remembered to remove the gas pump from my car before taking off still amazes me. Muscle memory, I guess, because every synapses in my brain was firing at once. 

Frantically, I called Beth, who was at work at the time. As with the initial phone call earlier in the week, we weren't together at the time this life-changing news was delivered. When I was finally able to get through to her, I explained we would maybe possibly likely become parents tomorrow. She claims her co-workers watched her go completely pale, and one of them even volunteer a waste basket as a precaution. (When I proposed to Beth, her first response wasn't "yes." It was, "I'm going to throw up." Luckily, she didn't.) 

We met for the first time since receiving the news later that evening at Target, where we purchased a pack-and-play, stroller/car-seat and various baby sundries because we didn't have any of it. None. We assumed we would be waiting anywhere from 12-18 months. At the time of this call, we had been in the pool for just shy of two months. 

Although everything happened so quickly, time nearly stood still over the next 20-odd hours as we waited for a call from the agency to go to the Wisconsin hospital where the birth took place. The nighttime passed quickly and we were both able to somehow sleep decently (for probably the last time since April 3), but when Sunday came, we started to become concerned by the silence. Our imagination ran wild. Like a fool, I at one point searched Google to read stories of last-minute changes of heart that left adoptive parents back at square one. So, I took a nap. Beth, who also had to work on Sunday, kept her head down and focused on her work.  

And then we received the call.

It came at around noon. We were told by our social worker to meet her at the hospital a few hours later. Beth rushed home and we frantically packed our SUV, unsure of how long we would be away from home. We took our dog on a short walk — her last as an only child — before texting Beth's brother who lives in Minneapolis to say we would need a dogsitter for the night. Then, we made way toward the hospital, anxious about what lied ahead. 

We knew that if we had a boy, we would name him Jack. We had no idea and could not agree upon what we would name a girl. We spent the 30-minute drive proposing names for a girl. We didn't make a lot of progress, and felt a sense of relief when we found out from our social worker a boy was born earlier that morning. Jack it is!

We won't go into great details about the more personal and intimate moments of our meeting with Jack's birth family, but it was a beautiful, peaceful introduction filled with tears, hugs and laughter. It was a perfect beginning to our open adoption.

Then, we met Jack. Tiny Jack, born at 6 pounds and 7 ounces, totally healthy, the child we had always dreamed of. The connection was instant. The whole experience was surreal. One by one, we contacted our immediate family members to introduce Jack via FaceTime. Suffice it to say that not one of them has missed a FaceTime call from us since!

We realize this blog post is already running pretty long, so we'll jump forward to present day. Our little guy isn't so little anymore. He's somewhere near the 80th percentile in weight. He is immediately trusting of anyone he meets and loves to be held. He has big, beautiful brown eyes, an easy smile and has shown a preference for his left hand. He despises tummy time, but is prodigious in the walker. He nearly slept through his baptism. He has already collected his first game-used ball from a Major League Baseball game. He's made a few friends at day care since he started a few months ago. For the most part, he now sleeps through the night so long as he doesn't have a cold. (Gotta love day care!) 

As for Beth and I? No question, life as parents is different, but we couldn't be more blessed to have Jack in our lives, and we're infinitely appreciative of our loving and supportive families and friends. We also are happy to report that open adoption has been fulfilling as we had hoped. (We have agreed to meet at least five times per year in person, and each month, we send an email with photos and updates on his milestones.) We look forward to continuing to add to our family through adoption without hesitation. 

At the outset, we started this blog to spread awareness and hopefully become a part of someone's adoption plan. Along the way, we hoped to share about our adoption journey, pre- and post-placement. Over time, our desire to do so has shifted out of respect to Jack's privacy, as well as his birth family's. We are incredibly proud of our adoption story, but of course, nothing could be more personal. Therefore, we invite anyone who reads this who has questions about adoption to contact us directly. Truly. We are happy to answer most any question about our experience. We just prefer to do so in a more private forum. 

If you've made it this far, whether you're a family member, friend, colleague or total stranger, we appreciate your support, and it means the world to us the way Jack is loved and embraced. We also want to thank anyone who has shared gifts to ease our transition into parenthood. (You can expect a Christmas card!) Finally, thank you for reading our adoption story, and we hope you'll consider us a resource if you or someone you know is considering adoption.