The Conference Call

Deep breath. Things are good. Stress levels are better and we are excited. :)

We had our case worker, the attorney (and owner of the agency) and the financial lady all on the phone. Its a very confusing situation when you 5 people on involved in the same conversation!

We first discussed the financial questions that we had. Basically we are well above the budgeted average and there is nothing that can be done for it. The good news that came out of it is that they are willing to give us the 6 months post placement time to pay the phase 3 fees which we need and is a good thing. That helped alleviate a lot of stress right there because the last bill was due within 24 hours of us getting it and that was not fun.

Next we discussed what all to expect from this point forward. I know that attorneys (at least successful ones) generally are smooth talking and friendly, but if this is all a show he is darn good at it! I really enjoyed talking to him. Anyway...they basically have our back which was good to hear since so far they have been the silent partner in all of this. We only need our picture ids and they will have sent notification to the hospital in advance that we will be the adopting parents.

Once we head out there for the birth (less than 70 days away!!!!!!! :) we will be expected to not leave the hospital and act as the birth family. As long as the hospital has the room, we should get a private room where the baby will sleep with us. Our birthmother has requested (at this time anyway) to not have any involvement with the baby once he is born (she doesn't want to see him) so we will need to be there to feed and take care of him from the get go. She will sign a form giving us the ability to make all medical decisions once he is born too. Once the discharge is final a social worker from our agency will have her sign her consent for the adoption. This takes place at the hospital so that we part ways with us heading to the hotel with the baby and her heading home. Once there we have the baby in our custody but she can still change her mind until 5pm the next business day (if she has c-section thurs the 29th and gets discharged over the weekend we would have him through tues at 5pm). According to our case worker, if a birthmother is going to change her mind she does it prior to signing the paperwork and they have not had it happen after that. After 5pm we just need to wait for the interstate travel agreement to be official which the attorney says will take only 3-4 days. He said his experience is that WI takes 24 hours, fed ex to CA, then they take 24 hours. Then we can head home!! So total time shouldn't be the 2 weeks we thought :)

As we were finishing up the conference call the birthmother texted me that she had a dog question for Dusty :) He called her back and has been talking to her while I am writing this.

Honestly, I keep wavering between unbelievable excitement and smiles and happiness and a wariness that I don't want to be that way and get destroyed if she changes her mind. Deep breath.