Hellobee

"You might remember that back in May I was grappling with the same question that so many of us struggle with. How do any of us know when our family is complete? I couldn’t shake the feeling back then that maybe the Jacks Family wasn’t yet whole, though I also couldn’t see a clear path to growing the family either."

"I couldn’t get it out of my head that Jack Jack might grow up with a biological sibling in our home! Somehow to me, this was the most important aspect of the situation."

"First thing in the morning, we were scrambling to see if we could work out the financials to bring home Jack Jack’s sibling. We wanted to talk to all the right people to see if we were thinking logically and putting together a plan that made sense going into the future."

"While we’re not done with our complete packet yet, we’ve knocked out the most crucial elements in the paperwork shuffle in the three weeks since we heard about the potential match."

"When Mr. Jacks and I finally decided that we’d be moving forward on this adoption, we were excited to break the news to the girls. We waited until after telling the agency we would accept the placement. This gave us a little breathing room and time to prepare."

"I don’t want to be too alarmist, but we may have run into some complications."

"I’m a naming geek and I want to find the perfect appellation for the child who will be our last. Since it is (maybe) a boy, you’d think I’d have a ton of great boys’ names stacked up… but you’d be wrong!"

"If you go with the agency version of how our process is going, you’d think that everything was sunshine and rainbows at every turn. But, if you happen to have other insights into the real day to day of a birth family before placement (as we do through our pre-existing relationship with birth mom), you know that it is all so much more complicated than, 'everything is going great!'"

"This past weekend, we did begin to review the checklist despite our superstitious fears that we might jinx ourselves by thinking too much about the baby."

"Theodore Francis Valentine was born last Friday morning. The adoption story has been eclipsed by some very serious acute health care needs, so it is taking some time to get my thoughts together about all that we’ve been through in the last five days."

"Adoption birth stories already have an extra layer of complexity, since the addition of a new member to one family means a loss to another family… but add in a critically ill baby and the story gets extremely complicated very quickly."

"As I went to bed the night before the C-section after our birth parent dinner, I was overcome with the feeling that something bad was about to happen."

"My eyes welled up. The experience was completely breaking me. I was shaking, lost, scared, and hungry. When were we going to get to see this baby again???"

"Despite the swelling, lines, tubes, and distress the baby was beautiful. I wanted to be with him and I felt fiercely protective– of him, and of his birth parents. I wished I could run out of there with him and take him somewhere safe, but I knew that for the moment this place was going to have to be that safe place."

"While I was out there, I ran into the case worker. She was cheery and said, “Are you excited to sign paperwork today?! He’s about to become your baby!” It’s hard to respond to that kind of enthusiasm when you are so wrapped up in the nitty-gritty of a critical care stay."

"Just before I was about to collapse into bed, I called the night nurse to check in. I figured we would be continuing with routine care, but his nurse was unavailable as she was dealing with a “crisis situation.” This totally flipped me out since I knew she was 1:1 with Baby Theo."