Sorry (again) for the delay, but like I said in the last post...life has been a bit hectic around here!
After talking to the social worker, and hearing all the sweet details about Baby Boy M, we took about 2 minutes on a private phone call between Kirby and I to decide that we were in! We both frantically wrapped up what loose ends we could at work and rushed home! I remember walking into my principal's office and mumbling something about a baby born in Detroit...and we were going to go get him...and yeah, this is real and this is crazy...and I'm shaking so much I don't even know what is going on.
Part of what made this afternoon a bit less crazy (if that was even possible), was that we had just prepared ourselves for this trip 3 weeks earlier. We had all the baby stuff ready to go, I had lists written out of what each of us needed to pack, and we had plans pretty much put in place for what would happen with our 2 older boys. The one kink in the plans was that most of that baby stuff we had packed was PINK! I quickly unpacked the pink, left anything that I thought would pass as boyish, and grabbed the big plastic tote we had stored in the basement labeled NEWBORN with baby boy clothes in it. We had to print, sign, and notarize papers to send back to the adoption agency. Those papers, along with a check, had to be put in overnight mail. We had to sign and pick up our tax papers. Somewhere in there the lawyer called and let me know that our driver's licenses had our old address on them, but our homestudy was done in our new house. So, add to the list going to the DMV to get a change of address for our licenses! You know in the movies, when a woman goes into labor and everything goes crazy after that? We never experienced that when I went into labor with our 2 older boys. I guess God didn't want us to miss out on that opportunity. It was so crazy, and our minds were going 100 miles a minute, I remember at one point Kirby just pulled over the car, looked at me, and asked, "Where am I going now? What is going on?" We had to trade out my friends' vehicle that I drove home from work for our vehicle that was parked at her apartment complex. While we were there we gave the big boys big squeezes, showed them a picture of the baby, and told them we were going to Detroit to see if this is the baby God wants to be in our family. We were very careful to assume that this was going to be their baby brother...remember, we had just gone through major heartbreak and couldn't do that to them again.
Once all was settled on the homefront, we ventured off on our 13 hour car ride to meet our newest son! We left town a little bit before 5:00 pm and arrived in Detroit just after 6:00 am (local time). The drive through the night was pretty much a blur. Kirby probably got about 2 hours of sleep early morning when I took over to drive. I'm pretty sure my adrenaline was running so high that I couldn't sleep.
We called the social worker to let her know we had made it to town and she told us to, "hold tight." At this point, we knew the baby's birthmom wanted a closed adoption and no contact with us. We had been told that we would have to wait for her to be discharged before we could go to the hospital. Here we are, in a city unknown to us, feeling lots of crazy emotions, and it is 6:00 in the morning! Check back soon to find out what we did to kill our time...
