We've been selected...

Whew! I can't even put into words what I'm feeling right now. A little bit overwhelmed, a lot excited, and a little bit scared. Again, words are escaping me right now. So, I'll just start at the beginning.

Erin, our case worker left us a message this morning and asked if we could call her back because there was a birth mother situation that she wanted to discuss with us. Matt wanted to hear to, so I did a three-way call so we could all talk (I was pretty proud of my use of technology :). A birth mother has been visiting all of the different adoption agencies in Raleigh, and before she signed on with anyone, she wanted to view profile books so that she could have more options of families to choose from. And after she saw ours, she chose us! So, she's now signed on with Bethany as a birth mother. She is 35 weeks pregnant with a little boy. So, at this point, our profile book has been pulled from circulation with other potential birth parents, and she'd like to meet us. We'll meet with her sometime the week of July 13. If all still looks good, we'll continue until we take the boy home or she changes her mind (which she can up until 7 days after she terminates her rights - which is usually a few days after she's gives birth).

I can't believe it. We started being shown June 3. It's only July 3. That's ONE month! We were on the phone with our case worker for a while and she shared all the details of both the mother's pregnancy and the condition of the baby. But (and please don't think we're covering up something terrible here - because there's not) we decided a while ago, that any details of whatever child's past we received we wouldn't share. I only write this here because it's a blog about adoption, and I wanted to share some of our thoughts here.

With a previous birth mother we were presented to the situation was a rape situation. We started thinking about what we would tell the child about their father and from there wondered what if anything we would tell our family. Now our families are wonderful, but we didn't want to them to have to deal with that knowledge if that birth mother selected us. Can you imagine if one day our child had asked them to tell them about their biological father? The easiest thing on them would have been to not have that information. Also, so many times our perception of someone is colored by information we know about our past. This is so true with family. Someone can meet our sibling when they are all grown up and that person thinks they are the most with it together person in the world. (My sister actually happens to be which is always amazing to me). But, if you're family, you know the history and you know that they weren't always the way they are now and it colors your opinion of them. Can you imagine only knowing a few facts about someone and then actually starting to get to know them from there? First impressions can make or break you. So, we decided that if that previous birth mother had selected us then for the sake of our child and the sake of our friends and family, we would present our child to them as just that - our child - because that's all that truly matters after the child is ours.

I don't know if any of the previous paragraph makes sense. And I never meant to post that in the same post as "we've been selected." But, as I've called people today to let them know they want to know everything because they are so excited for us. And we want them to ask. We want them to be interested. But, there's been a few times we've paused before we answered the question or didn't answer portions of those questions. It's gotten us thinking again about how many details of our child's life before he comes to live with us will we share. The answer is - probably not many. That doesn't mean we're hiding horrible things. What it means is, we want people to see him for what he is - our child. You know us. Therefore, you know our son and how we'll raise him, and those are the thoughts we want in people's minds when they look at our son one day. So, please ask away. Be cautiously excited with us - she could still DEFINITELY change her mind. Just know that we might defer some of the questions but we don't mind you asking :).

We're excited!!!!