[Waiting4Celeste]

Piggybacking off of robandjulie's thread...

Was your baby almost NOT your baby? What I mean is did something happen that almost changed the course of your adoption that would've led you to adopt a different baby?

We were on our agency's waiting list from September until December (2005) and I was going NUTS waiting!!

We had decided between two attorneys and we were getting close to the top of BOTH of their lists at the same time.

I called our agency to see if they were planning to send our dossier on down to Guatemala - and if so, to which attorney.

They thought attny #1 was getting a referral soon, so they were going to send it there... then the NEXT day they heard that attny #2 had a birthmother who was carrying a girl and was due in the next week or two, so they decided to send our dossier on down to attny #2.

In the mean time, a 2 month old baby girl was relinquished and our agency called us to see if we wanted to accept her referral or wait and see if the other birthmother would still choose to place her baby.

I just KNEW that the baby that was not yet born was meant to be OUR baby, so I told the agency we would wait until the baby was born.

Another Mommy got her baby girl and we got Celeste!

Celeste was born on December 18 and we KNEW she was meant to be ours because she was born on the 18th and that is our family's "lucky" number. (DH and I had our 1st date on July 18 1996, were engaged on Oct 18 1997, Jacob was born on Feb 18th 2002 and then Celeste was born on Dec 18th 2005... and this Spring my niece was born on March 18th)

Anyone have a story to share??

[cbmstephanie]

Gosh I always look for coincidences like that in my life and don't seem to find any. Don't get me wrong life is great...I think my brain just doesn't see things in that way. Anyway...I do know that for some reason beyond what I can comprehend we were drawn to Guatemala because our daughters were there. It is an amazing feeling to know that someone else had to have a hand in that!!

[Waiting4Celeste]

Stephanie -
I TOTALLY agree that Celeste was meant to be ours... and I didn't even realize how things could have TOTALLY been different until I "met" the other girl's Mommy on our agency's message board.

It took me a few months until I realized that we were offered her daughter's referral first! (oh, and I explained to her that we didn't "turn down" the referral, we were just waiting for the baby that we believed was meant to be our daughter.)

Her daughter fits into their family so perfectly, as does Celeste in ours. They definitely are with the right families... and I think that is a God thing!

But it is soooo interesting to think that decisions that are made by agencies and attorneys have SUCH an impact on our futures and who eventually joins our family.

Makes ya think, doesn't it!?!

[Mindybeth6]

As I near our referral day anniversary...which is June 30th...I have been thinking again about all the circumstances that led us to Mikayla. It all started with delays in our our 2nd mortgage coming through...that held us up over a month that we WOULD have been ahead...then there was my retarded mistake of sending USCIS $10 TOO much for our I600a which delayed our approval by about three weeks. For our agency you have to be 100% paper ready to accept a referral so I had to have it. I often think about what WOULD have happened if the mortgage had come through quicker therefore allowing us to begin quicker and if I had NOT made that mistake on the I600a. Coincidence? I think NOT. God working out his plan? I think so! I absolutely think so. Mikayla was meant to be our child. Kris and I were just talking about it all. Since there wasn't much wait...a week or so for a girl referral at the time...we would have for sure been offered another baby girl. But no....God had other plans...He knew Mikayla wouldn't be born by that time and He wanted HER for US. Amazing when you think about all the things that COULD have happened. Just amazing.
Hugs

[Waiting4Celeste]

Mindy - can't you just see God sitting up there orchestrating the whole thing....
like making you send the wrong amount because He knew that you needed to WAIT for YOUR daughter!
AMAZING!!!!
We started the process once or twice in late 2004/early 2005 but our other house hadn't sold yet so we couldn't afford to start the process. Finally the house sold in May and we got moving on the paperwork for Celeste.
AND there were some delays in our paperwork that added some extra time - just the RIGHT amount so we'd be ready for Celeste!!

[SKL]

Hmm . . . interesting question.

I submitted my dossier paperwork to my agency just before Thanksgiving and expected to have a referral within several weeks. (I was hoping before Christmas.) Then a typo was discovered in my home study, so a few weeks were lost while they fixed that and had it re-certified, etc.

So Christmas came and went with no referral, and a bit later I got a call saying I still didn't have my referrals (I had specified 2 infant girls), but there was a sibling group (toddler boy and infant girl) available if I wanted them. This was hard! But in my heart I felt that I was not meant to be a single mom to a boy, so I kept waiting for my girls.

My referrals finally came near the end of January. I knew instantly that these were the children God selected for me. Had my referrals come much earlier as I'd expected, Sara would not have been born yet.

Although I expected both babies to be very young at referral, Norma was 3.5 months old. I feel a very special connection with her - more so after the visit trip. I haven't been able to find out what her history was before her referral, but I am pretty sure God was at work making sure she found her way to my referral file at just the right time.

[Tiggysgirl]

Actually quite a bit! The first time I looked into adoption was with my ex-husband. I called MANY agencies, we were financially stable and could have probably paid for the adoption completely without help from family and without planning.

BUT, none of them ever called me back!! My husband and I also had two offers of private domestic adoptions which did not ever work out; one about 2 years ago and one right after we started looking into Guatemala. THEN, we were referred a darling little boy who shared my dad's birthday. We loved the "coincidence", but in those two weeks I had a difficult time really thinking of him as mine and I chalked it up to disbelief and it just being too soon. We lost him as his birthmother decided to parent. We truly believe that he would have struggled to live if he hadn't come into our agencies foster care (he was very premature) and that was good enough for me.

One week later we received the referral of our son and within moments I just somehow KNEW he was mine. And he is!

[candkss]

good thread....I had posted before how I knew Kya was ours the minute I saw her face...So that is an lod story...but I am happy to read this becasue...Letting the cat out of the bag here...we MAY have the funds to start again in AUG-SEPT...and I am already wondering who this baby will be and wil I know like I knew last time and will it ba a baby or a toddler...can't wait to see God work this one out for me...now If I could just give it to him instead of thinking about it night and day...hehe

[au06]

We have coincidences in our story too. My husband lost his grandmother in Sept. of 1999. We started the paper chase after Christmas of 2000. We recieved our referral in June of 2000 of a little girl born on his grandmother's birthday (may 28th). We brought her home at 3 months old exactly one year after his grandmother died. We feel that she had some hand in it as she always wished for a grandbaby with black, curly hair! and... We were on the waiting list for a while. last year a little girl enrolled at the school where i teach and daughter goes. she was from Guatemala and i met her parents for the first time. she was born 3 days before our daughter. they used the same attorney and agency. she is beautiful, bright, etc. but somehow I know that my daughter was meant for us and she was meant for her family they must have been just ahead of us on the list.

[KJones5]

Your post is very interesting to me. However, I'm starting to think about this from the other side. We've hit every imagionable (and some unimagionable) hurdles which is causing me to wonder if this baby is really suppose to be ours.

The sun, the moon, the stars and even the dates lined up just as they should for our first son so I can see that perspective.

[wannabamom]

I lost two referrals!!!!! The first one was almost done--and the agency closed down, so no baby!!!!! It was devastating!!!!! When I was supposed to visit the third one, I got high fever both times, and had to cancel our trip. So, I just knew that that was not the baby for us, because we already knew the baby that was meant for us, and we're so lucky!!!!! But this wait is killing me!!!!!!

[hopin4ababy]

Yep....our dd referral was offered to another family first and they turned her down because of possible medical issues and lack of info from the facilitator in Guatemala. We received her referral at 2 months of age. She fit into our family so well that there is no question that she was meant to be ours!! Ali

[guatmom2007]

My story starts with my last pregnancy. I delivered my son by emergency c-section late on March 11, 2004. I never saw my son or touched him until March 12th. Later, every single time someone would ask me my son's birthdate, I would always say March 12th. My husband would elbow me and correct me. I felt like a horrible mother because I couldn't remember something as simple as March 11th.

Fast forward to our adoption and waiting for a referral. We turned down our first referral, a 4-month old little girl, because of her shaky medical reports. I felt sick for days about doing it, but I knew that I could not handle a special needs child, not with 2-teenagers and a toddler.

A couple of weeks later we submit our completed dossier to the agency and they call us that Friday with another referral. A little girl only 4-days old. As soon as I looked at her picture, I just knew. But when I saw that her birthday was March 12th, that was it!! I knew she was meant to be ours.

[giovanni7460]

Wow was Giovanni ever meant to be ours. The agency had all our paperwork and were going through changes in the Guat program. The new women taking over said we were next on the list. She asked if I wanted a boy or a girl. I have 2DD and 1 DS so I said it didnt matter to us. I hung up. Within seconds I called her back and said " Dont tell GOD that my husbands only wants a son".I added " that doesnt sound like a Christian , does it"? I hung up. Exactly 3:05 pm (May 22, 2003) she called back. Her words were, " Hello mommy, we just got a little 6 week old and guess what? He was created for you, his name is Cristian. Yep that was his birth name.
Let me just add that I am Catholic. But I have never in my life EVER said the words "I am a Christian". I dont know where that came from. Thats a lie. GOD put it there and I know that. I have to add that in my conversation to her that day. I was talking about the road of infertility. I bealieve I used the word Christian several times to describe how I got through so much to get here finally, and be waiting for a baby. That is not me at all. So yes Giovanni (my little soul mate) was meant to be ours.
Patty
mom to 5 including antonio and giovanni

[becky]

I had waited 3 months for a referral from my first choice agency. I wasn't really moving much on the wait list...in fact I had moved down a couple of spots when some adoptions failed and the families had to get a new referral.
Anyway, I was pretty patient all of these 3 months...but then one day I just couldn't take it any more. I called my #2 and #3 choice agencies, just to see what they said. The #2 agency told me they had a 6-8 week wait for a referral...so that wasn't going to help me. Agency #3 said that as of that moment they didn't have any families who were completely paper-ready, so that if a baby was born before one of their clients got ready they would call me. Fair enough.

So...I went out to lunch with my son, and when I got home there was a call from Agency #3 telling me a baby girl had been born the night before and that the agency director was meeting with her to take photos and videos and would send them from Guatemala the next day.

The following morning I saw my 'not so beautiful' Bella for the first time. She was screaming her lungs out, but I could see she was healthy and that was all that mattered.

She was and is the absolute perfect fit for our family...so glad that after all those months of waiting I made that phone call that morning!!!