Minneapolis Red Thread Session:: Ava

Happy Monday to you!  I am at it again sharing another sweet Red Thread Session that I was able to be a part of.  I received word that sweet Ava had been “stork dropped” to Jody and her husband one evening.  Not being familiar with the terminology, this is exactly what one might think: Jody received word the night before Ava was born that they would be welcoming their sweet little girl into their home within the next 24 hours!  Below are some questions I asked Jody to answer.  Hope this brings you as much joy as it did me on this Monday morning!

How were you introduced to adoption?
We had struggled with infertility for a couple of years. During that same time I was working with a designer who was in the process of adopting internationally. She encouraged us to attend an adoption open house at the agency she was using, Lutheran Social Services. We chose to attend and learned a lot about our options (internally and domestically), we spoke with adoptive parents, asked questions and listened to a panel. We registered with LSS just days later and thus our journey began.

How did you know adoption was for you?
We knew that we wanted to be parents more than anything else. How our family was formed was never a concern to us. We reached a point with our infertility where we needed to decide if IVF was a path for us to take. This was after the devastation of a miscarriage at which point I knew I could not go through that same experience again. This is the fork in the road that we came upon and we easily made the choice to go down the adoption path.

Tell me about your adoption journey.
I feel I should start with our first adoption. Those early days when we made the decision felt like a huge relief – a 50 pound weight had been lifted off my back. Then came the paperwork, a government shutdown (which delayed our FBI background check by 6 weeks) and finally our approval in March 2014 – 10 months after we first attended the adoption fair and registered with LSS. We received a call in January 2015, just a week after I returned from a 3 week work trip overseas. We knew that a baby boy had been born 5 week earlier and that his birth mother wanted to meet us and another family. We were scheduled to meet with her on a Wednesday (Feb 4^th) and the other family would meet with her the following day. I left work at 3:30pm on that Wednesday, we drove to LSS and met a sweet, shy woman. We left about an hour after meeting her and begin our drive home. This is when we received a call asking us to return. We turned around, went back to the agency and were told that she chose us to be her son’s parents and had canceled her meeting with the other family. Then we also learned that we could pick him up that night – in two hours. We signed paperwork and made a mad dash home, installed the car seat and just like that we became parents.

Our second adoption started the moment our first adoption became final. The two social workers that had helped with our first adoption attended the finalization at the court house. As we waited for the notarized documents they asked, “Are you going to get on the list for your second?” We laughed and said, “This adoption literally just finished and you’re on the second?” Then we thought about that 10 month wait just to be approved and found ourselves registering with LSS just weeks after our first adoption was finalized. The paperwork was manageable the second time around and took only a couple of days to finish. In June of 2016 everything we were approved for our second adoption. We went on the waiting list to get into our agency’s “book” (which is shown to birth parents when they are choosing a family to place their child with). We were number 13 on the waitlist and knew that meant we had a 4-6 month wait before we got in. Then LSS had 7 matches in one month and with a blink of an eye we were in the book (much, much sooner than we expected).

Five weeks after being in the book we received a call on our son’s birthday. An “urgent” case came up where a birth mother called LSS while in labor at the hospital. She wanted to meet us asap. We received this call on a Thursday evening, made plans on Friday and Saturday we drove to meet her. At 10am we met a strong, courageous woman. We had the opportunity to talk with her for a while and instantly felt connected to her. During our meeting she asked us to parent her daughter and to love her as much as she does. We cried and said we would. Just 2 and half hours after meeting this woman we found ourselves at the hospital holding our baby girl. We’ve been told that it’s HIGHLY unusual for placements to happen this quickly, but for our family that’s all we know and it’s been a perfect whirlwind.

How has adoption changed you?
The most obvious and biggest change is that I’m a mother. I’ve learned a love that I never knew existed – a big, all-encompassing love that a parent has for their children. I’m more empathic that I used to be and I have become an activist, working to promote the need for parental leave.

What is the most rewarding aspect of adoption?
The most rewarding part of adoption is being a family. It’s no different than a bio-family – the love that we each have for one another, the memories we create and the family bond that exists are all the most rewarding things I have ever experienced.

What do you wish people knew about adoption?
I wish that people knew adoption isn’t about a mother “giving up” her child. Adoption is about a birth mother or birth parents choosing a family to love and raise their child when they don’t feel that they can. It’s not about one person losing and another person gaining. We adopted our son, but our family grew tenfold. We remain in contact with his birth mother, her sister, her mom and her brother. We all support one another and treat each other as extended family. That’s what adoption is – its openness and merging your family with another.

What are some myths about adoption you wish you could dispel?
Birth parents are not horrible people, with checkered pasts who can’t raise a child. Birth parents are the most humble, sweet people I know. They are making an enormous decision based on the wellbeing of someone other than themselves. They love their child so much that they want to ensure the best life for him or her. This is the motivation behind the decision – it’s out of love.

What are some of the greatest resources that you have used in the adoption process?
The best resource has been a group that my employee has called the Adoption Network. It’s a place for all adoptive parents, hopefully adoptive parents and adoptees to meet. We share stories, resources, ask and answer questions. Another great resource has been our agency and FB adoption groups.

What’s openness mean to you? ( An open Adoption)
At first the idea of having an open adoption was scary for us. We couldn’t relate to the woman on the panel who let her daughter have sleep overs at her birth mom’s house. That felt odd, weird and (again) scary. As time has gone on and in meeting our children’s birth mother’s it all has come together. Being open means something different to each adoption. For us it means that we have open communication. We have our closed FB group to share updates and photos. We text, we talk and we see each other. We have grown to love our birth mother and her family. To us they have become extended family – the cousins you see a few times a year and update on any life events.