Abi Coop
Melissa Richard
Kristen Ryan
A Story of Love | by Poppy Kalaba
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“I’ve dreamed of this day a thousand times before but I never guessed the journey to parenthood would look like this. It’s 3am and the room is dark with only a dim lamp in the corner. It’s so quiet I can hear footsteps from the nurses walking the halls. You’ve just finished a bottle and I have no desire of letting you fall back asleep without warm arms around you. Your mom is laying half asleep on the futon next to the bed. I think it’s the first time we haven’t slept in the same bed since we’ve been together (minus a few work trips). Your birth family is sleeping in the room next door. I replay your birth in my head and the thing that sticks out the most is after you made your debut in this world, I held hands with your birth mother and she said “You guys are going to be amazing parents”. As I sit here with you in my arms, there are a million emotions running through my body. Today, you arrived in this world and showed us a depth of love and joy we didn’t even know existed. I must admit that even though the overwhelming feeling is joy, I can’t ignore that there are also feelings of anxiety and uncertainty. While I want the role of being your mom more than anything, I know I must keep my heart open in case your birth parents decide to parent you. We’ve told them a million times that if they decide to change their decision, we will still love them. It’s incredibly complicated to feel as if you’ve found your son and in the same moment be willing to hand you back without hesitation. While our feelings are complicated, please know sweet boy that the love we have for you is not. You are the most perfect babe we have ever laid our eyes on and regardless of how these next few days go, we love you. We love your biological family. Always. I can promise you that will never change. ”
Sarah and I have tried to become parents for many years. Our plan started with adoption but when that proved to be almost impossible due to us being a same sex couple, we decided we’d try to have a biological child. After years of trying and miscarrying our baby girl, we started talking about life without kids. It broke our hearts in a million pieces but Sarah and I always knew if we had each other, we had the world.
Sarah mentioned that we should look into adoption one more time since the world had become more accepting of us. After all, our marriage was now recognized in Alabama! After speaking with the adoption agency we expected to wait years. The agency we chose was a faith based agency in Alabama and allowed expecting mothers to choose their own adoptive families. We didn’t know if we would ever be picked but something told us to try. In March 2019 we completed our paperwork. Little did we know, God was already at work growing our sweet son.
In the last week of July, we got a call that a family chose us but they wanted to talk first. A few days later we gathered at the agency and it felt like we found a missing part of our family. We met multiple family members and we were excited but nervous. We never wanted to push any expectations and if they changed their minds, we wanted them to know that we would sincerely love them, whatever the decision. A week later we got a call saying our birth mother was in labor and the family wanted us there.
We didn’t expect to be in the room when he was born but once we got there we learned that they wanted us in the room. I’ll never forget that when we thanked them for letting us experience our sons first breath their response was, “Of course! You are his parents”. After we spent a few hours collectively marveling at this beautiful child we learned the family worked with their doctor to make sure we also had a room in the hospital for our sons entire stay. After two incredible days watching this sweet boy learn life outside of the womb it was time to leave the hospital.
Traditionally our adoption agency takes the baby for the first five days. In Alabama a birth family can change their mind five days after their decision. The family insisted that we take our son home and we agreed. We understood that Gods plan might have been that we took this boy home and we were only meant to be in his life for three days. We reinforced that if they wanted to change their minds we understood. On the fifth day, we got a text from the family saying “Happy 5th day.” There is no doubt that this entire process was divinely driven. We have been in awe these past three months. God is good. If you are on the fence about adopting, please talk to us! All adoption stories are not the same but we’d love to share our experiences and give hope that great situations can happen.
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