First we wanted to thank all the people at American Adoptions who helped us with our adoption process. They helped make our adoption process a very rewarding experience. Specifically we would like to thank Laurie Walker and Sarah Anderson. 

 

After having a successful adoption we thought it would be a good idea to share it with the waiting adoptive families so they could see that all their efforts and waiting will eventually result in a wonderful adopted baby.

 

Our adoption journey started when we requested the application package from American Adoptions on March 2nd of 2007.

 

We returned our pre application package on March 22nd.  We then started working on our APQ and Profile. This was a very interesting period during the process because it forced Tony, my husband, and I to sit down and put into words why we wanted to adopt a child and also to really look at who we were and what kind of family we wanted. In June we completed the Profile the APQ and the Home Study. On June 18th we received our Activation Agreement and then on July 9th we became “active."

 

Now it was the hard part to sit and wait. During that time we read books about how to raise an adopted child which we found to be very helpful. Since we already had a biological child we were specifically interested in dealing with sibling issues. We tried to maintain our normal routine as much as possible and looked forward to the weekly issues of the Adoption Newsletter that American Adoption puts out. It had a lot of good information on how to deal with the waiting period and how to prepare for "the call." We also read the Preparing for a Successful Adoption manual several times.

 

However, we still got quite anxious and started to analyze the status of the waiting families and what changes were happening each week and wondered why we were not being selected. We did elect be in the Traditional II Program because we had hoped that we would shorten our waiting period.  During this time our Adoption Specialist, Laurie, was very patient and was always willing to answer any of our questions.

 

On October 18th we were notified of a possible adoption situation, but as we received the details we realized that this was just not the right one for us and that we would rather keep waiting. We had read so many times in the other adoption stories on American Adoptions' Web site that when the right adoption situation came up it was just meant to be.

 

We then updated our profile and increased our budget in November, hoping that this would increase our exposure to potential birth mothers.  This time of the year was very hard since Christmas and family gatherings were just around the corner. We were looking forward to our vacation we had planned in January to the Bahamas. We had taken Laurie’s advice and continued our normal routines which included our annual vacation as well as planning our daughter Alyssa’s 5th birthday in February.

 

So Christmas came and went and we started to dream about being on a warm sandy beach. Then on January 8th we got “the call." I had just sent an email to Laurie inquiring on our status since we were just about at the 6 month mark so I when I saw American Adoption on our phone ID, I thought it was her calling to give us some feedback. However, the person on the phone introduced herself as Sarah and that she represented a birth mother then I knew it was it! 

 

Sarah was very sweet and tried to call my husband so he could hear the details but he did not pick up his phone at work. Sarah told me that the birth mother, Stephanie, was going to be induced on January 21st so we would have to make plans to get to Arizona where the birth mother lived.  We also found out that she was having a little girl and we were very excited. We started to see the many connections between the birth mother and our family immediately. Her name was the same name as our only niece. Stephanie had two children already and one of them was named Valerie, just like me. It was hard to believe that our wait was possibly over. We keep telling ourselves not to get too excited because there was always the chance the birth mother could change her mind.

 

We then realized we had to do something about our trip to the Bahamas. We were scheduled to leave on January 26th and we did not take out trip insurance (which we now recommend) so we decided to push up our trip and go before we had to go to Arizona. So we had the baby things we saved from our daughter shipped to a hotel in Arizona while we went on our vacation. During our trip we had a call with the birth mother. We were very nervous about the call. We wondered if she was going to like us and that we would say the “right” things. Sarah was really great and helped us get through it perfectly fine. We were to meet the birth mother the night we arrived in Arizona at a local restaurant. 

 

We were very nervous, however, when we saw the birth mother and her family we were able to calm down. We got to meet Stephanie’s mom, her sister and her two children. We had a nice dinner and got to know each other a little better. We then said good bye and that we would meet at the hospital on the following Monday. 

 

That morning at about 5 a.m. we got a call from American Adoptions and I knew what it was. Stephanie had gone into labor and we needed to get to the hospital right away. We grabbed the blood cord banking kit we had shipped to the hotel and woke up our daughter and drove the 20 minutes to the hospital.  We got to go into the labor room and we found out that Stephanie was close to delivering so we wished her well and left the room. About 4 hours later our baby girl Kiera Rochelle was born. They took her to us right away in the nursery and we got to watch her get weighed and bathed. Boy did she have a lot of hair! It was such an exciting moment!