Situation #4
Continued from the previous post

A month and a half later, we were invited to meet a couple whose baby was due in two weeks. This situation was a bit out of the ordinary (but really, is there anything ordinary about adoption?). The unborn baby’s father wanted to parent the baby, and the baby’s mother wanted to place it with some friends of her family.

The mother and father had broken up and the tension between them was high. She refused to allow the baby’s father to have custody of the child. He was willing to agree to adoption, but only in the event that a couple unknown to them and their families would adopt the baby. That couple was us.

My husband and I sensed that the baby’s parents would wait until the baby was born before deciding what to do, so we set our hopes on the back burner. We tried to, anyway.

Four days before the baby’s due date, our caseworker told us that the baby’s parents had chosen us to adopt their baby. We were pleased, yet cautious.

Two days after that, our caseworker called again and said that the baby’s parents had un-chosen us. The baby’s mother had convinced the father to place the baby with the friends of the family.

Because our caseworker had known that this case was risky, she’d continued circulating our profile. The day that we received the news we had been un-chosen, we learned that we had been chosen by yet another 19-year-old woman.

It was a red-letter day for us – my husband was offered a new job that day, and we would immediately be moving to the Seattle area. God replaced the disappointment of another loss with the joy and excitement of a new potential adoption and a new job. We moved to Seattle with high hopes.

In the next post…Situation #5