Bringing Home Baby

I sat at the table visiting with Wendy while the girls were playing. I remember that we had such a good, encouraging time talking about the Lord. I told her where the Lord had convicted my heart and how peaceful I was with everything going on. As she was leaving I told her that we would talk later in the day.

About 3 o'clock in the afternoon the phone rang, it was the matcher from our agency. She said that she had a hispanic 5 day old baby girl. This was the birthmom's 7th baby and she didn't have custady of any of them. No other family members (at the time) wanted the baby. If we wanted her then we had to be at a hospital in downtown LA by 5pm. I called Matt on my cell phone while I had her on the home phone line. He said," I think we should do it." I said, "really Ok." The matcher told us to hurry and she would meet us at the hospital.

I called Wendy and said I needed to drop Ivy off at her house, I called my sister to tell her to pick Ivy up at Wendy's, I called my neighbor and she came over to set up the cradle and get diapers, etc. ready for when we got home. Ivy said that she didn't want to go with us because she didn't want to go to the hospital to get adopted by someone. (Another result of Ivy's wrong thinking about this whole process that I had to re explain to her...she also freaked out when Hollie picked her up from Wendy's because she thought we weren't coming back because we went to adopt a baby. Let me also explain that I DID NOT tell Ivy that we were going to the hospital to adopt a baby. I told her that we were going to take care of a baby and we would pray if we got to adopt her but we might not. ) I made sure that at bedtime I spent time with her letting her know that she was here to stay but we didn't know if the baby was. This was one reason why we did foster care when she was young, so that she wouldn't remember any of this.

The Lord was so gracious because there was NO heavy traffic and we were going to downtown Los Angeles at rush hour. We called our friends and family on the way down to the hospital and pulled in right at 5pm. We walked into "not the most glamorous" hospital and they ushered us into the room. There were 3 newborn babies in the room waiting to be picked up by social workers and foster families. I looked at all 3. My eyes caught hold of one baby, I didn't know if it was a boy or a girl but it was definaely the prettiest. I wispered to Matt," I hope that one is ours" ......and she was. So peaceful and beautiful. Matt and I held her. (The picture above is when Matt was holding her and I snuck a picture.) It was hard for me not to get my hopes up but we were definately cautious, that is why I don't have tons of pictures. We had done this 2 other times.

The nurses talked alot, asking if we wanted to adopt her. They said they thought that she would be ours. Then they said, "I think her last baby was adopted by an aunt and I don't know if they got a hold of her yet...." I froze. Every other time a child had been taken from Matt and I , it was a family member. I started to get nervous, but then I remembered my prayer...whoever until whenever. I silently told the Lord that I would keep my end of the bargain.