[goin'batty]

I thought it might be fun if we all talk about where we were when we got the call that a potential birthfamily wanted to meet you and when you got the call going into labor/come meet your new child....

I was the one who answered the phone when the agency called on a week day evening. The SW told me that she was talking to J and L. I, being the dolt that I am, couldn't figure out why she was telling me that she was talking to this couple. I thought maybe they wanted to know how we did something with our profile or something else like that. I didn't dawn on me that this was THE call. I guess I had assumed that it would only be a bmom who would be interested in us. Anyway, she finally spelled it out to me that this was a potential birthfamily that wanted to meet us. She wanted to pick out a place and time for all of us to get together. I remember that I could hear them in the background talking and I thought that was neat. It didn't really sink in though until after I got off the phone.

After about 7 months of being matched, we finally got the call that L was being induced at midnight on a Wednesday. We had a previous false alarm and knew that the time was near. When the cell phone rang, we about fell out of bed trying to get to it!! Again, it didn't really seem real. Not until he made a grand entrance and did a whole lot of squalling!

Anybody else? I thought there might be some pretty funny or touching stories out there.

L

[katieb31323]

what a fun idea!

I had my head in the washing machine around 8:30pm on a Tuesday when the phone rang...hubby answered and mouthed it was Rebecca which happened to be one of his buddies wives name so didn't think anything of it...back to the laundry...Rebeccan happened to be the name of our SW too which finally dawned on me when I came out of the laundry room and saw hubby franctically writing notes! We met our sons birthparents the next morning and brought our son home on Thursday.

I was returning a message left my a social worker who had borrowed our profile while we were on vacation the previous week when I found out about our daughter. The pbmom who had looked at our borrowed profile choose someone else so we thought the SW was calling to tell us that she had returned our album to our agency. Nope. Our album/profile had gotten mixed up with the rest of the borrowing agencies books...another SW had taken it out and our daughters birthmom choose us. DD was born on a Friday...we were suppose to have been called over the weekend, not sure what happened there....call came Monday, met birthmom that afternoon and brought DD home Tuesday afternoon.

This time I was heading into the kitchen to make lunch for the kids and hubby came in for lunch (often comes home for lunch so no big deal) anyway...he just looks at me and finally says SW called.....we are currently matched and waiting baby to be born end of September.

Such fun memories!
Katie

[LoveRiddenDad]

With our oldest child, Carrie, we were just chilling out at home watching a movie with the dogs! Not terribly interesting...

However, when we had an opportunity to adopt her little brother and we received that call, I was taking a nap (as is my way). The SW seemed intrigued that I was sleeping at 6 PM.

When Logan was born, I was actually in a bar where you can order breakfast hanging out with a friend I hadn't seen in years. I got very excited and he responded, "What? You're having another kid? And you're adopting?!?!" I hadn't mentioned any details I guess! He only knew that I had a daughter! (Not sure why Brightness didn't figure out she wasn't bio. )

With #3, got the call at work. Fairly cool and good surprise. Adrienne was born though while I was doing martial arts training. I was EXTREMELY sore when she was born and it hurt to hold her!

Amie, the baby, managed to start her way out while I was teaching a yoga class and three students simultaneously fell out of headstand when my S/O screamed the news at me!

[amom4life]

Jessica Lang (the actress) had gone on a trip over to Romania with a group of prople who were on a mission to bring some of the children out of a horrible orphanage over there and bring them to the states to have their medical needs taken care of and find forever homes for them.

Our dd was one of the children they brought over and at first Jessica Lang had thought she would take care of all of our dd's medical needs then find her a family. Well she ended up getting very attached to our dd and thought she might see how she fit in with her family. She was making a lot of movies at the time and was away from home a lot so she decided again that she should find our dd a family. We were just hanging out at home when a friend of ours who knew both us and Jessica Lang called us to tell us about dd because he knew we were looking to adopt, but told us it would be between us and another family. He also never told us who our dd was living with just a family in Virginia.

so we got a tape of our dd that Jessica made and fell in love with her the minute we saw her. About a week later our friend called to tell us that Jessica had changed her mind and planned to keep dd. About four months later we were home eating dinner when our friend called again to say that Jessica wanted us to have dd and would be calling us in a half hour to discuss everything.

Two weeks later we met our beautiful dd and Jessica at the airport and took her home.

With ds we were eating icecream and I was doing laundry on a Saturday afternoon when the phone rang and the caller ID showed that it was our facilitator. Now mind you I jumped out of my skin everytime the phone would ring Monday-Friday thinking it might be "the call" so the fact that it was a Saturday threw me off. I just looked at dh, shrugged and said it's our facilitator wonder what they want. DUH! LOL!

They were calling to tell us about a baby boy who had been born the day before and said the birthmom had chosen us as first choice out of three couples and they needed to know right away if we were interested because if not they needed to try to get in touch with one of the other families. The birthmother needed us to get to the hospital that night!

So we told them we needed to talk about it for a few minutes, we hung up, prayed, and called them back 10 min. later to say YES!! Then it was a whirlwind of getting three people packed, making arrangements for animals, Etc.. We made it to our destination that night and we took our son home 7 days later after getting a clean bill of heath from NICU.
Judy

[davinok]

I had my wisdom teeth removed earlier that week and it was a wednesday night and we had plans to go to a friend's house for dinner. I was feeling miserable, in a lot of pain and decided to stay home while my partner went to dinner with our friends. our SW called to tell us a baby girl had been born, she was a premie and was expected to need to stay in the NICU for another 2-4 weeks. The SW asked if we could come (5-6 hour drive) to the hospital and stay with her, learn to care for her, etc. So I called my partner and we spent the might making an elaborate plan for how we would share and also alternate the time spent at the hospital for a month (we were getting ready to move across ****ry in less than a month and we both needed to wrap up our jobs, we couldn't take a whole month off unexpectedly at that time). Any way, we set this complicated plan to each be at home working 3-4 days a week and for each of us to be with the baby 6 hours away 3-4 days a week too.
Then on Friday (less than 48 hours after the first call), we were called again and told our daugther was to be released from the hospital that day!! We were told we were not allowed to get her until Tuesday and that she would be in a temporary home for the weekend. Then on Sunday they called again and asked us to come the next day. Aliyah was in our arms on 7/17 and we all moved across the country (with court approval, of course) on 8/10. Just to complicate things further, we had done NO packing before Aliyah came home (we were trying to sell the house and wanted everyhting to stay looking lived in untiul the last minute -- plus we thought we still had a month before the move).
Katie

[MrsSmith]

We didn't get "the call" for a match because we did independent adoption, so we had been speaking with our DD's bmom for a few weeks (email too) and then both of DD's bparents drove here (they lived in another state) to meet us, and then wound up moving here to our town for what was supposed to be the last 3 months before DD was born. Our DD's bmom was very adamant that DH and I take one last "adults only" vacation before DD was born, as she had regretted not taking a last, childless vacation with her first husband before their kids were born. She kept saying to us that she wanted us to have this one last trip, so finally we decided what the heck? We made some last minute arrangements and flew across country to Las Vegas, where my sister and BIL were vacationing too, for Memorial Day weekend. (Bear in mind that this was 5 weeks before DD's due date....) Well, we flew out on Saturday, arriving in the wee small hours, and spent a tired but fun day with my sis and BIL on Sunday. Still feeling the effects of jet lag and long travel time, we went to bed relatively early (at least by Vegas standards LOL) and slept in on Monday morning (Memorial Day). DH got up and had headed downstairs to play some cards while I got ready, then we were going to hit one of the buffets for breakfast (gotta love those Vegas buffets!). I was just getting out of the shower when I heard my cell phone ringing. I figured it was DH calling from downstairs to hurry me the heck up, or my sister calling to see where we should meet up for breakfast. Nope, it was our DD's bmom calling from the hospital to say that DD had been born at 1:30 that morning, at home no less - she arrived 5 minutes before the ambulance did! I threw on some clothes and RACED downstairs to find DH. We then spent a few frantic hours trying to get onto the first possible flight back home - we were supposed to be there 'til Wednesday - and eventually made it onto a flight into a city a little over an hour away from our town, where we rented a car and drove straight to the hospital. Our DD's bmom placed her in our arms for the first time at 2am Tuesday - she was just over 24 hours old. She came home with us from the NICU 14 days later.

During the long wait at the airport to get back home, I figured out exactly where we were when DD was born. I was just leaving the theater at the Rio after seeing Penn and Teller's show and DH was playing poker at the Mirage. We wound up being in Vegas about 36 hours, which is crazy when you take into account that we live in NY so it's not like a place where we can just pop in for the weekend! That'll be our last Vegas trip for many years, too!

Cheers!
Heather

[saxxxy]

I was sitting in my car eating lunch, while reading a novel, on a Wednesday afternoon when I got the call. Our SW said would you like to meet a young lady? I screamed YES!!! She said she would call me back with the details because L was sitting there at the moment. I sat there and cried and then I called my husband and the news really made his day. I then called my Mom. We met L two days later. She was 28 weeks pregnant.

We took L to the hospital several times just to be sent home again. The first two times they gave her a shot to stop the labor and the second couple of times she was contracting but not hard enough to dilate past a three. They kept telling her to come back when she could not walk any longer.
We were just climbing into bed around 10:30 on a Friday night when L called and said she was at the hospital again and that this time she waited to make sure they were going to keep her before calling us. This was it. Our daughter was born the following morning.

[tb1braswell]

I was right here on the boards (the EAT thread, as a matter of fact). I was writing about how I was feeling sad and depressed while waiting for 'the call'.

I was having a poor me moment when the phone rang and the director of the agency was saying that they showed our profile to K and she picked you and dh. SHe wants you to be her baby's parents.

I was stunned!!! I had to ask her to repeat herself as I was unsure if she really said what I thought she said. I went weak in the knees and I was speachless.

I couldn't get a hold of dh--he was out of town on business and in a meeting so he wasn't answering his cell phone. When I finally got him, he, too, was stunned. He drove four hours home so we could be together and had to get up very, very early in the morning to go back to finish his meeting.

Now we are waiting for the "she's in labor' call!

Theresa

[tobeafamily]

I was on the elliptical trainer at the gym pounding out my frustrations with the whole adoption searching thing when my cell rang. A work-friend's stepdaughter was pregnant and wanted to make an adoption plan. Did we want to talk to her?

Ryan's bmom never did go into labor. We both were at work when she called to say they were inducing her in 2 days, so we packed up our bags, booked the plane, flew out the day before, took her to the hospital, etc. Ryan was born 1 day later via c-section b/c induction didn't work. I was in the delivery room with him and his bmom at her request.

Regina

[michelec]

I love to read everyone's stories. They are all so unique and such a significant moment for us all.

With our daughter I was teaching and I heard a faint beep on my cellphone lettting me know I had a message. (just so you know my students couldn't hear it) It was my husband sounding urgent about calling him back. I did, but he was so excited and slightly incoherent that I called our sw who filled me in on the details. Our daughter was born 3 weeks later. She's now 26months.

We go the call about our son on July 22 (last month) saying that a baby boy had been born and were we interested. When I could speak and think I got pertinent info about ** and baby and called my husband (who I didn't get a hold of for 2 agonizing hours) I was supposed to meet him in D.C. that night but called my mom who was babysitting and said there had been a change of plans!!! We had to wait ALL day to see if the ** would sign consent papers that night (at 24 hours). I teetered on being very excited and not wanting to get my hopes up.

At 5:30 the director called and said she had signed. YEAH!! We went to see him the next mornig at the hospital and brought him home the next day. He'll be 4 weeks old on Wednesday and he's a dream!!!

[3inCO]

With our oldest son, I was at work conducting a parent teacher conference when my friend ( the director) stepped in while I took "The Call" which told me about a baby boy who was two days old and could we be shown and were we interested? I'm sure the parents of the child I was doing the conference with thought I was an airhead when I returned and hurried them out of my classroom as quickly as I could. I was again at work two days later when they called to say we had been chosen and to bring a car seat two days later to meet B and his birthparents. One thing I never thought I would say is that I was skiing the day my child was born.

With son number two we had been waiting only three weeks, we were told to expect a longer wait the second time. So when I was soaking in the tub and the phone rang I was a little stunned when dh came bursting in asking if we were interested in a baby boy born that day. We knew we were being shown, but she was not due for three weeks and went into labor that day instead.

With our daughter, we were evacuated from our home because of the biggest forest fire in Colroado history. Staying at my mom and dad's house. We were three days away from heading to Disney Land with our sons for vacation ( I was a tad bit stressed out) I had gone to Mervyn's to get some last minute stuff when my cell phone rang as I was in the parking lot on the way back to my car. It was my husband saying our worker had called, and a potential birthmom had chosen us and wanted to meet us that Friday. We met her right before we climed in the car to head out. While she was due any day (I planned to fly back if she had her) she went over by almost two weeks. We were laying in bed at midnight when she called to talk to us while in labor. The boys and I were at the beach when we were called to come and meet our new baby girl!


Becky

[cynthia900]

For number one daughter I was in a critical meeting for a critical project at work but told I had to take this call. I was in the middle of switching programs with the State because I was tired of waiting for my daughter of any race aged 2-5 to arrive so I thought it was about the details of transferring my home study over. BUT my worker said "I found your daughter" and she really had. I waited for a fax (about an eternity but really just 2 hours) and then raced to the hospital to meet her and learn to care for her (she was a newborn and I had started at the toddler section of the child care books LOL). I had to go to three different places before they would tell me where the nursery was, and when I walked in the nurse was holding the most gorgeous little baby I had ever seen. I said to her "I hope that my baby will be as beautiful as the one you are holding. And she said, "This is your baby" (My daughter loves this part of the story) Then I raced to the baby stores to buy crib, diapers etc on the weekend and brought her home 4 days after the call.

The second time I did independent adoption, and while I had many answers to my ads (which is a thread in itself) I did not have anyone follow through with filling out the papers etc. So I had just settled down to say I would take a month or two off to enjoy Christmas and was at home enjoying playing with my daughter on Saturday Decmber 15 (the only Saturday afternoon I remember EVER being at home with her), when a birthmom I had talked to the previous week called me and said "Your daughter was born last night " I amazed myself by completing my home study that afternoon (requiring getting my agency director to go into the office to meet me since New Jersey had changed the rules in the middle of my HS), got all the stuff together for a newborn, my toddler and me to spend 2 weeks, including Christmas away from home, found someone to watch the pets and house and made travel arrangements for the next day and got my Mom to fly to meet us from Canada. The next morning bright and early we flew to Texas and drove to the hospital to meet her. We walked into the hospital room and I was talking to the birthmother (a really sweet woman) thinking why doesn't she tell me where the baby is and get her" when my oldest daughter walked over to the bed, pointed to a sheet I hadn't even noticed and kissed it - it was her little sister swaddled up!

So for all you who are waiting - don't despair - it may happen when you least expect it ! I love surprises!

Cynthia

[LisaCA]

interesting:-)

we filled out our paperwork and submitted it and had our homestudy completed by june 1st. We then went about our business, but received a few calls about children (agonizing over one in particular but finally deciding no). We knew that our facilitator was sending out our brochure, but hadn't heard anything for a week after the agonizing one. Then we heard from our agency that our facilitator had a few possibilities and would be contacting us. On a wednesday we received a call from our facilitator with info about our daughter's bmom. we were excited, but concerned because she was a teenager 8 months pregnant. We received the fax, talked it over and said set up a phone call on thursday. We received a call from our facilitator that bmom would await our call on sat. We also received permission from bmom to talk to her parents as well. We called on sat, no bmom (at the mall of course:-), but we spoke to her parents for 2.5 hours-great call! Since the next day was july 4th, and they would be out of town, we called bmom on monday and spoke to her and she sounded great and committed. She said her due date was july 12th. We then called facilitator and said it was a go. So I'm eating breakfast on that tuesday (the next day) when her bmom left a phone message that she was in labor-total shock, since they're in chicago and I had nothing planned. Ran round crazy trying to get stuff done and then got the call that the midwife said it was "false labor" and felt she would give birth in a week or so, near her due date if not later. Still it was a wake up call and I planned to take the bunnies and hamster to "bunny camp" (a babysitter's place that they love), and began to think about finishing my work to leave the next week. Woke up the next day and received a call at 10 am pst saying "this is real labor". So then i say a few expletives and begin packing. daughter born at around 1:30cst and everyone wants us out there. they wanted our daughter discharged to our care rather than a temp home. We thought they's want time to be with the child and they did but everyone, incl. bmom wanted us there asap! I fly out the next day and arrive in chicago at 8pm, rent car and drive straight to hospital and they hand me my daughter. Birthmom had just finished breastfeeding (we were thrilled that she wanted to and encouraged her) and looked gorgeous! we didn't get a picture of her since everything moved so quickly and i was amazed at how you could look good after such labor! And I was warmly greeted by her family and met sisters, and mom:-) and it felt great. Dh flew out on sunday and was in shock ( to say he's not one to roll with the punches is an understatement-he likes a couple of years to mull things over:-). I met him at ohare at 11:45pm and greeting him "dad, meet your daughter". it's a great picture of him holding her and looking totally in love. By that time bmom had signed and I felt then we could view her as ours. until saturday afternoon I kept telling myself I was just babysitting, over and over. Cried when I heard she was ours.

Back in LA, the neighbor teenager came over with her dad and babysat my kitties, and took great care of them. We hope she's interested in babysitting our daughter as well:-).

so let this be a lesson to everyone- Have a plan ahead of time! and don't believe all the "oh, she's a first time mom and 15, so she'll be at least a week late"-yeah, right:-).

lisaCA
mom to 5 week old Christiane, who plans to take over the world just as soon as mom feeds her

[PetersMom]

I was at home recovering from a hysterectomy 8 weeks before. I was supposed to go back to work 2 weeks earlier, but our agency had a lead on a birthmom. I talked to my employer about it, but since there were so many red flags with that situation, we decided to wait a week and see what happened. My DH and I decided that it had too many red flags and told the agency to pull us out of it. My employer and I decided to wait another week to get a new desk for me and then we got the call while I was reclining on the couch. The first person to hear about Peter was our boarder, Steve who just happens to be adopted as well. He got to see the other side of adoption and he was jumping for joy while I was in shock! Our social worker said, "Are you sitting down? We have a baby for you. Full Korean, 7 lbs, 10 oz. Can you come pick him up tomorrow?" At first I thought it was the previous situation until she mentioned that it was a boy (the other situation was a girl). I knew the first person to call was my husband, then my mother, then his mother. etc. Steve started to make a list of the people I needed to call as I reminded myself of who to call. I still forgot people! Oh well!

I took him to the doctor a few days after he arrived home and immediately had to have a Rx for treatment of thrush for him. While in the pharmacy, a woman asked me how old he was and I said, "Eight days". She said, "Wow, you look great!" I said, "Thanks!"

I like to joke with people that I am the only woman I know of who had a baby 8 weeks after a hysterectomy!

I would love to have that call again! Now we are headed to China and waiting for our referral sometime around December or January.

[DanniGirl]

Well, we didn't get "The Call" because ours was an independent private adoption. This is how everything came about....

Last year July of '03 we were working on our new house so we could get moved in and my DH sent me to Wal-Mart after work to get some liquid nails he needed for some tiling he was trying to finish up. I decided to park near the garden section which was odd for me because I always park in the same area near the grocery section every time I go there, but this day I just felt the need to go in thru the garden section. So, I go in get what I needed and went to check out. Low and behold who was the cashier but a childhood friend that I had not seen in over a year. She looked pregnant and so I asked if she was pregnant. She said yes, but that she was giving it up to a childless couple. Shocked, I did what I always when I don't know what to say, I tried to make a lite joke out of it. I said "Well, if you ever do it again I'd love to adopt because I can't get pregnant." (which was true) She said she'd call me and she did later that night. She said she was hoping and praying someone like me would want her baby and that she had not made any choices in couples yet. She came over and met my DH and decided we were the ones.... We talked everyday after that day.

Then about 5 weeks later one night about 10pm she called to ask me if I thought her water had broke. She said it felt like she peed and it was a pink color. I told her yes and to call the doc. Needless to say dh and I didn't sleep all night. I told her to call me when she was at 4 cm and I would come to the hospital. It wasn't until the next day while at work that I got the call to come now or miss it all. So I rushed there just in time to see C pushing. She took a few pushes and at 4:35pm my little sweetheart was born! We wanted C to be sure of her plan for adoption and make sure she didn't want to parent. After a few night alone she said it was not for her. We wanted to give her a little more time so, we didn't start the adoption proceedings until dd was 2 weeks old. All of us went together to the attny's office and C signed her rights away. Then C lived with us until we could get our homestudy approved (state law says you have to have an approved HS before placement) which was about 2 months. Of course ours is an open adoption. I talk to C at least once a month but usually every 2 weeks.....

Two weeks ago our little darling, our pride and joy turned 1 yr old!!!!

-Danni