damn you iPhone

Of all the things I thought might blow up our adoption – this fragile, verbal commitment between you and a virtual stranger who is practically just a child herself – my cell phone service was not on the list. Not even way down there at the bottom. At the top of the list? We’d say something uncool, stupid, or hokey. We’d root for the wrong sports teams, go to the wrong church, like the wrong foods, enjoy the wrong music, movie and TV shows, drive the wrong car, wear the wrong clothes, have the wrong jobs, the wrong family, the wrong hobbies, fail the home study because there was a little dust on the bookshelf and we forgot to clean the glass doors in the back, and worst of all, pick the wrong name for the baby. The baby would scream every time I held her at the hospital, or wouldn’t take a bottle from me, or I’d do something unbelievably stupid like put the diaper on her head (that did not actually happen, although sometimes at 2 in the morning you really think it might).

Needless to say, my paranoia was running a little high during the whole entire process, especially those last few days at the hospital and yet, never ever did I think my cell service would be the thing that almost cost us our family.

I’m not going to pretend like I’m the world’s greatest cell phone person. I’m a little challenged. I never seem to know where it is, I don’t always answer when it rings if I don’t know the number, I often have it on mute when I didn’t mean to…and frankly, I’m kind of okay with that. I’m one of those old fashioned people who prefers to have face to face conversations with people and thinks that my phone is for my convenience not necessarily everyone elses. So I get it. I can be a frustrating other-end-of-the-call person. The weekend Sloane was born was not – I swear - that weekend for me.

That weekend the call came early, at like 5am and the second it rang I knew what was up. We were on the phone on and off for the whole 2-ish hour drive, with sporadic rural cell service instigating a lot of “Can you hear me now?” moments right up until just before and after Sloane’s birth, which we missed by about 15 minutes. Crazy.

Fast forward three days later after we’ve had this incredibly unbelievable bonding moment with Sloane, her birth parents (Bella and Jacob), and their friends and family. As we packed her into the car for the drive home, we promised we’d call or text when we got home and promised for the ump-teenth time that we’d be in touch. Hugs, tears, shock…and off we went, trying to absorb the reality that this perfect little baby girl was really ours. Unlike most Utah adoptions which can be finalized any time 24 hours after the birth and are virtually irreversible, ours had a little more flux. Sloane’s baby daddy is half Native American so the law requires that we all wait two weeks before the final relinquishment signing happens. So we were kind of on a test run. A legally required emotionally petrifying test run as parents.

Sloane on her first car ride home. So itty bitty!
Where are her hands?!

As soon as we arrived at Scott’s parents’ house 2 hours later, I sent a text message to Bella letting her know we were safe and sound and thinking of them, put my phone in my purse and dove headfirst into being a new mom helping Tagg adjust to the reality of being a big brother and basking in the glow of our good fortune. Who in the world is lucky enough to have these beautiful children and their amazing birth parents melding into the already fabulous families we already have? No one. Nothing is this utterly perfect.

The next day I was driving to meet my sister to introduce her to baby Sloane, and my phone starts ringing. In the trunk. In the new diaper bag. Can’t stop. So I’ll get it when I get there, I think. Bad idea. It was Bella and I missed it. I called back as soon as I pulled in but it was already too late. She hadn’t gotten the text from the night before (bad service at the grandparents’ house and I hadn’t noticed the error message) and then the 20 minute delay answering call #2? Bad news. Pretty soon I was getting calls from our adoption coordinator letting me know they were rethinking their decision. We were about to lose our baby. That is the worst call ever. EVER.

I knew almost immediately that the issue wasn’t the missed call. It was the trust. They trusted us with their baby. They trusted our promise to keep them in the loop and stay open with them. They trusted that we would text them when we got home. And thanks to AT&T’s shitty service, we didn’t. Bye-bye, trust. So I spent the next few days proving them wrong. Re-instilling that trust. Re-assuring that we were committed to the open adoption vision we’d all talked about. But also understanding that we all make mistakes and sometimes phones don’t get answered or meetings just don’t work out for longer than you’d think and that’s okay. It doesn’t mean we’re going AWOL or anything. Any of us. It just means that our relationship is evolving and someday, if we’re lucky, we’ll be a that place where you see someone after a few years and it’s like they’re still your best friend from high school with the talking and the sharing and the jokes. You have to establish that trust base to make open adoptions work because they are scary. Maybe one of the scariest things you’ll ever do. But you have to bet big to win big, and in the world of open adoption that means a lot of being scared. And a lot of blind faith. And a lot of trust. And definitely some luck. But no matter what, the risk is more than worth the reward.

This post was inspired by the Open Adoption Roundtable topic of the day - in honor of Halloween: Write about open adoption and being scared. Read other posts here. http://www.productionnotreproduction.com/2011/10/open-adoption-roundtable-31.html