Our journey began like so many other adoptive families ... trying on our own to get pregnant, then on to the dreaded infertility treatments that only brought more heartache. But we had to try everything to have a biological child because at this point it was so important to be pregnant. Then one day it hit us like a ton of bricks. It wasn’t about getting pregnant, it was all about being a mommy and a daddy. That was the day we chose to pursue adoption.

We started our adoption paperwork in November of 2004. It seem to take forever for our home study to get complete, actually it took almost 6 months. That was a very long 6 months. We went active with American Adoptions in April of 2005 and then the wait began. We never got the call that every adoptive family waits for. We would check the Web site almost daily to see if any new situations had been posted that we were interested in getting more information on. Then one day in July there was a situation posted and so I sent an e-mail asking questions, there were some medical concerns with the birth mom and after a lot of research and talking to a pediatrician, we agreed to accept the situation. So, after 9 weeks and 6 days, we were officially matched on July 12th, 2005 with Mayriah and the baby was due September 25th, 2005. That date seemed so far away ... little did we know that that time would go by very quickly. We had so much to do get a nursery ready, buy stuff for the baby when we brought him home, plus we had our normal daily stuff going on.

We had many conference calls with Mayriah, it was great to be able to speak to her and get to know her. Then we got the call on Thursday, September 15th, 2005 that the doctor  was going to induce Mayriah on Monday, September 19th, 2005 if she didn’t go into labor over the weekend so we could leave for Washington whenever we were ready. We could have just as well left that same night because neither one of us slept. Friday morning we were on the road by 6 a.m. making the 22-hour drive to Washington, hoping the whole way there that Mayriah didn’t go into labor while we were on the road. We arrived in Washington on Saturday afternoon and waited. Monday morning at 7 a.m. we got the call that we needed to be at the hospital by 8:30 a.m., they were going to start inducing Mayriah. We were a 30 minute drive without traffic to the hospital and we knew there was going to be traffic so we got ready to leave the hotel as fast as we could! And wouldn’t you know it my husband was so excited to get to the hospital he got a speeding ticket on the way. We got to the hospital about a half hour late and when we told Mayriah what had happened she just laughed and said "I should have told you not to speed on that highway."

The hospital experience was just that, an experience … walking into a room to meet someone face to face for the first time was very nerve racking. We were all so nervous but there was a connection between us and things went great. So they induced Mayriah and unfortunately after about 8 hours the doctor decided that because the baby was having some issues they needed to do a c-section. That really freaked me out, I was not prepared for this, but off to the operating room Mayriah and I went. Michael stayed in the waiting room and paced back and forth. Our beautiful son Tustin was born at 5:37 p.m. weighing 7lbs, 7oz and 19 ½ inches long. The moment we had been waiting for forever had finally come we were MOMMY AND DADDY!!! We spent the next 4 days with Mayriah and Tustin at the hospital, getting to know more about her and her family. We even talked to her mom on the phone. Then it came time to leave the hospital with the baby, but Mayriah would have to stay one more night in the hospital. This was heart wrenching for us as the new happy parents. It was very emotional, in one sense we were so happy to be taking our son out of the hospital but in another sense there was this woman who was so sad and our happiness had caused her sadness. We really struggled with her being so sad. We called our adoption worker, Laurie Walker, and asked her to please check on Mayriah. We were really worried about her emotional state and she didn’t have any support other than Laurie from American Adoptions. Laurie called us back and assured us that Mayriah was OK. Then the wait for ICPC, we thought for sure since we didn’t discharge Tustin from the hospital until Thursday evening we would be there for at least the weekend … but on Friday afternoon at 4:30 p.m. we got the call that we had the OK to head for home.

We can’t believe that we are going to be celebrating Tustin’s 2nd birthday in a little over a month, it seems like yesterday we brought him home. He is a gift from God and our little angel. We don’t have any contact with Tustin’s birth mom, but we do keep in touch with his birth grandma. We met her and 2 of Tustin’s birth brothers right after his first birthday. We are very happy that we have this connection with his birth family; maybe someday his birth mom will be ready for contact with us too, until then we will keep in touch with the others.

Thank you to every one at American Adoptions for helping make our dreams of being Mommy and Daddy come true!!

Michael and Christie
And
Tustin too