Caleb's Adoption: Meeting His Birthmother and the Match Meeting

Note:  I had written this post back in February around Caleb's birthday, but never published it.  I had started looking for pictures that we had taken on our match meeting trip and lo and behold I couldn't find them.  And then things got very crazy and out of control in our lives.  I talk about that in a different blog that I keep private and only allow individuals to read it with an invitation.  If you would like an invitation to read it,  please send me an e-mail.

I have written about various parts of Caleb's adoption over the last few years, kind of as the mood hits me and haven't ever really sat down and written the entire story down in full.  With everything that we have been through, I have been urged to write a book and one of my goals this year is to start working on it.

If you would like to read Caleb' adoption story in order, you can read it by clicking on the following links:

Caleb's Adoption: The Beginning

Caleb's Adoption:  Meeting Caleb's Birthmother and the Match Meeting

So after getting the initial phone call from Caleb's birthmother saying that we were the family she wanted to raise her son, we scurried to arrange a time to go and meet her and have what the agency called a "match meeting."  A "match meeting" is basically a meeting to discuss what type of contact the birthparents and family is going to have, who is going to name the child, who is going to be there when the child is born, who the child is going to be discharged to from the hospital, and on and on and on.

With Tony working as a contractor for a government agency, he would have a three day weekend, so President's Day Weekend was the perfect weekend to do it.  Our counselor was willing to work the holiday as well to get the match meeting done.  We were able to get a flight out on Friday afternoon where we didn't have to change planes, but did have one stop, but we didn't arrive into Sacramento until like 10 p.m. California time.  

We were able to get to our hotel and get some sleep.  The next morning we got up and headed out to meet Nova, Caleb's birthmother, at the maternity home where she was living at the time.  To say that we were nervous, would have been a HUGE understatement.  My stomach was in knots!!!!!

Nova had all sorts of things that she wanted us to do.  She wanted to take us to the home that she was in when she received our "Dear Birthmother" letter so that the residents there could meet us.  So that, I believe, was our first stop.  We then drove downtown and she showed us where the hospital was where she would go to when she went into labor.

Nova also wanted to go to the State Capitol building and show that to us.  We toured the inside and walked around the grounds.
 

Nova also wanted to show us Old Sacramento, so we spent some time there.  We took her out to lunch, did a lot of driving, a lot of finding her orange juice (she always kept telling us that the "baby is taking all the calcium from my bones!").  By the time it was time to take Nova back to the maternity home Tony and I were exhausted!

Sunday we stayed close to our hotel, since we did so much running around the day before.  We also had a very early day the next day for our meeting.

Spending the time with Nova, Tony and I spent the weekend very much out of our comfort zone. We did a lot of driving in areas of downtown Sacramento that we would not normally go to; walking into a maternity home, with the residents knowing that we were adoptive parents, as most of the residents there were planning on keeping their babies; spending a lot of time with someone who we had just met and were hoping that she would allow us to parent raise her unborn child. 

On Monday we picked Nova up and drove to our agency's office for the match meeting.  The meeting went well, as there really wasn't any surprises.  After the end of the meeting, we took Nova shopping and got her some clothes, took her back to the maternity home and went back to our hotel.  We had to be at the airport early the next morning, as our flight left at 5:30 in the morning to head back to Raleigh.  Fortunately, we were on the opposite route as our flight out, stop in Phoenix but didn't need to change plans and then on to Raleigh.

Caleb's Adoption: The Waiting

{Here's the story from when we received the call!}

On February 28th, I received a call  from Caleb's birthmother's friend saying that she was at the hospital in labor.  I called our counselor and she told us to start getting ready to travel.  I left work and began finishing our packing and changing our plane tickets to fly out the next day.  Later that afternoon, about 4:45, we received the phone call that our son was born.  We were so excited.  I could hardly sleep that night!  The next day we began the long flight to California.  I called the hospital and talked to our son's birthmom before we got on the plane.  She told us that the nurses said it would be okay for us to come to the hospital as soon as we got into town, even though it would not be until about 10 p.m. that we would even land at the airport. 

We did go straight to the hospital and this is the first time I was able to see our son, Caleb Alexander:

This is an absolutely horrible picture of me, seeing it was actually 1 a.m. North Carolina time and I'd spent seven hours on an airplane!
 
Caleb spent five days in the hospital and then was discharged to us.  His birthmother was resolved in her decision and signed all the necessary papers when she was asked to.  We even had to do it a second time due to the fact that there was some mental health questions and we found out that she needed to have a psychological exam performed before actually signing the papers.  So we had to hurry and get all of that accomplished.

We were told that it could take weeks to get the necessary ICPC paperwork approved, which meant we had to stay in California until that happened.  It so happened, that because our home study would have expired while we were in California and would need to get it updated as soon as possible, we were actually able to receive a conditional approval and leave California to go home to North Carolina within a week of Caleb being discharged from the hospital.

It was wonderful to be able to go home with our little boy!

So that is some of the major points of Caleb's adoption story!!!! There are other stories that are intertwined with this that I may share at other times of individuals who helped us during this very exciting, but stressful time in our lives.  God blessed us with some wonderful friends who blessed us in ways that we could never have imagined.