The Initial Phone Call

They way that the system works (or at least worked in our case) was that when an expectant mother decides to give her baby up and meets with an agency or attorney, she tells them what she has in mind as far as an adoptive couple/person.  The agency or attorney then helps her find people who meet these criteria.  When we fit our agency or attorney would share our profile and the link to the blog we created just for this purpose.  She looks through several and decides who she wants to meet.  We made it this far once in December 2013 but ultimately weren't chosen.  During the first week of February 2014 we got a call from LDS Social Services that we met the criteria for an expectant mother.  After a brief description of her we, without hesitation, allowed them to share our profile with her.  The following day she said that she wanted to skype with us. 

**side note here...For anyone who believes in miracles there are so many of them in the story of how Gavin became a Forbes.  For anyone who doesn't, there are some amazing coincidences.  Many of them begin about here. 

This expectant mother is deaf so our call was delayed a day while the social worker lined up an interpreter.  The week before we learned of her, a deaf man I worked with started offering a sign language class over lunch once a week.  I attended so I had a bit of a head start (not really but I did remember most of the alphabet) and it showed her that I had an interest in learning sign language.  It was a nerve wracking but really good call but we had no way to gauge how she felt about it.  The following morning while I was at work I got an email from the expectant mother that intimated that she had picked us after our call the previous night.  I showed a co worker and forwarded it to the social worker.  And yes, she had picked us!  Wow.  So many emotions and a fair amount of disbelief.

We made phone calls and told our families and tried unsuccessfully to keep from getting our hopes up.  And we put up the crib we'd had shoved in a corner of our third bedroom nursery.  Part of me had a hard time believing that we'd ever really become parents but here we were.  There was still a lot that could go wrong and some of it almost did but we made it this far and we were cautiously optimistic overjoyed at the prospect.