Thanks for coming back! (I hope someone is reading this!) :)
Warning: This post is long!
To pick up where I left off, we had contacted an agency in October of 2004
(I also jumped ahead to his birth) but will give more details now!
It was very much a relief to not have to "worry" about getting
pregnant month to month since we had decided to go the adoption
route. But we did quickly realize that we had some "work" to do
in preparing for adoption. First thing, we were required to make
a scrapbook of our life! Say whaat?? (imagine hearing the "say
whaat" line from Dispicable Me..or not if you haven't seen it!)
I had "played" around with scrap-booking but I was NOT good
at it and in my mind, this book had to be amazing! This would
be the book that the agency showed to potential birth
mothers, potential women that would be giving us their baby,
potential women that are completely selfless, potential women
that are amazing for going this route instead of abortion!
You get the idea, it had to be good! So I enlisted my good friend
Alicia who can "craft" anything, seriously! She is Ahh-mazing when it
comes to being creative, and she is a pretty amazing person as well!
So we got busy, there was no time to waste! We were getting ourselves
a baby daggumit, there was no stopping us now! The book needed to tell
our story, the whole story of our lives together. We did not have time
to "fluff" it up, we just went to town with some pictures, threw in some
cute paper, a couple of embellishments and we were done! Nothing
fancy but it told our story! The book we have is a "copy" of the
original book that was given to the potential birth mothers. Here are
a few pictures of the book, there were too many pages to show them
all but you get the idea.
At the front of the book we wrote a letter to the "future" birth mother.
We put our engagement pictures in the book. The #1 to the left
is a poem that Kyle wrote to me on our first anniversary, so creative he was!
We put wedding day photos and other random pictures. I seriously
can't believe I am putting some of these pictures in this blog for all
to see!
We asked a couple of our friends to write a letter also, it was very
sweet. Our parents also wrote her a letter that is in the book.
So, once we finished the book and had our home study the wait began!
Fast forward to February of 2005! We had not had anyone
look at our book, we were getting very discouraged but were still
trusting God.We were at church one Sunday and our Pastor at the
time said he wanted to talk to us after service. He had received a
call from a lady that he had known 20 years ago from a church
where he had been the Pastor. Her name was Mary and she had just
found out that her daughter Tracy was pregnant. She wanted to know
if he knew of anyone that was looking to adopt! Seriously?? Only
GOD could orchestrate that! He said that he gave her Kyle's
phone number and that they may call. Honestly, we really didn't
think anything of it and didn't think we would hear from
them. We tried through all of this to not get our hopes up, our
hearts had been broken far too much. The following Thursday
I was at work and received a call from Kyle, he said that
Tracy (the potential birth mother) had just called him and we were
meeting her the following Saturday. I am pretty sure at that moment
I thought he was playing a dirty trick on me, I couldn't believe it!
This is how the conversation went...me: what, when, what, what???
You already made the appointment?? What?? What did she say,
what did she sound like, what do you know about her, when is
she due, is it a boy or girl??? I am sure there were more questions
and much to my dismay, his answer was "I don't know" TO ANY OF IT!!!
Seriously!!!! I said, give me her number! I called her back and got
a little more information!
Tracy was her name, she was 38, she had 3 girls the youngest
being 5 at the time, her mom had custody of her girls because of
mistakes she had made in the past. She had not had any prenatal
care, she was pretty sure she was due any day now and she
wanted to meet us! Let me tell you the next 3 days were a blur and
seemed like a life time! We decided to meet them at a restaurant for
lunch. A couple of ladies from our agency went with us, there was a
counselor there for her and one there for us. We had no clue how to act,
what to ask and we were both so nervous. Tracy came with her 3
daughters and her mom, it was neat to have them there from the
beginning. There were no secrets! We had our book with us and she
looked through it while we ate lunch. After we got done eating,
Tracy and her counselor went to the bathroom. When they returned,
Tracy said she would like for us to be the parents of her baby!
I can't even describe how we felt when we heard those words,
parents..us..she wanted US to be the parents of her baby. WHAT
AN HONOR! Of course we were so excited but the next question was,
when will this baby be here! Our agency made an appointment
with a clinic the following Thursday so they could measure her to see
if they could tell us when the baby would be here! They told
us 4-6 weeks, whew we had time to get some stuff! We had
nothing but an empty room waiting for a precious baby! Tracy
kept saying she was further along than that and thought the
baby could come any day, and she was right! That Saturday
(one week after meeting her) her water broke and we got the
call to meet them at the hospital! We were actually on our way
to Target to register! At 7:58pm on February 19th, 2005 our sweet
baby was born. Tracy had asked me to be in the delivery room but
since her blood pressure shot up, she had to have an emergency
c-section and only her mom could be in there. Mary or Maw Maws
as we call her now brought him out to us and introduced us to
Ethan Samuel Gibbs! :) That moment is still clear as day to
me, I really couldn't believe that he was OUR son! He was so
precious with a head full of red hair! God is so good, He gave us
the desires of our heart!
1 Samuel 1:27
I prayed for this child, and the LORD has granted me what I asked of him.
That is a lot of information to share! I tried to keep it short
but it was hard!
More to come in Part 3! :)
Be blessed!
Kim
