3 Month Brief

The weeks since we returned home from New Orleans have been joyful and challenging. The shock of nstant parenthood gave my internal compass a spin, leaving me feeling a bit wobbly. Now that we've covered some ground I am beginning to get my bearings and so am taking a moment to enjoy the view.

I've put up some of our favorite pictures from the past 13 weeks, so you can see Audrey's progress from an itty-bitty newborn to a strapping 10-pound-and-some-odd-ounces 3 month old. I've also added some notes on high (and low) points of the weeks as they have passed. (To get a larger view of any picture just click on the image).



Week 1
See previous post.




Week 2
Audrey was a champ on the plane ride home. Mom and Karin moved in with us for our first several days of settling in, for which we were most grateful. Everyone was exhausted but it was wonderful to be home. Ed returned to work and started a long 2 months of working like a crazyman to make up for lost time.


























Week 3
Garlic harvest begins. Audrey supervises from beneath a mosquito net. Her height and weight put her in the 1/2 percentile for her age. We receive 2 weeks' worth of meals from the wonderful women at East Lincoln Alliance Church! What a great gift.















Week 4
Audrey outgrows Ed's hat. Garlic harvest is completed. Friends come to rescue my vegetable garden from weeds! Too good to be true. I return to working one day/week at the farmers' market doing chair massage. Grammy Svenson provides childcare. Ed's parents come up from Indiana for the weekend to meet Audrey.





























Week 5
We send our first update letter and pictures to Audrey's birth mom along with a stuffed brown pelican (Louisiana's state bird). We kept an identical bird for Audrey and named it Drusilla. Drusilla shows up in some of our pictures so that Audrey's birth mom can see how much Audrey has grown. (I cannot take credit for this idea...this was an adoption agency suggestion).







Week 6
Mom helps me make pickles...the only thing I managed to can from the garden. Ed's work truck breaks down. Audrey picks up a new social skill - smiling. :)

Weeks 7 & 8
Audrey moves up into the 3rd percentile for height and weight. Ed's truck breaks down again...and again. It gets towed home twice. We buy a new work truck. Our car breaks down on the way to the dealership and gets towed to a shop, so we leave it in MN for repairs.
















The ladies of East Lincoln Alliance Church throw a baby shower! We drive home in the truck loaded down with new baby stuff, with pages full of precious advice for a new mom, and with hearts full of love and gratitude. We are so blessed by our church family. I would also like to note here that we have received tangible expressions of love and support from an amazing number of people! friends, neighbors, family members, friends of family, and Ed's clients (who knew that people gave baby gifts to their farriers?!) . We have been touched by the thoughtfulness of every gift.

Week 9
Audrey charms her way through Indiana, visiting Ed's family over Labor Day weekend. She wishes her Yaya a happy 60th birthday! We send our second set of pictures and an update to Audrey's birth mom.





























Weeks 10 - 13
Audrey is getting downright conversational when she's in a chatty mood. She's got a healthy appetite, and has eaten her way into the 10th weight percentile. My free moments are spent in the greenhouse clipping, sorting, and weighing garlic while Audrey naps or rides in the pack. This has become my favorite time of day. Life begins to settle into somewhat of a routine.

I had a friend say to me, "It is completely expected to be discombobulated for the first three months. After that you can work on getting combobulated". Though there is still seemingly never enough time in any day and never enough sleep in any night, I can see that the steep climb is starting to level out ever so slightly and there are glimpses of a combobulated life here and there. I don't think I'll ever get it all together, but I do have hope that I will someday clean the house! I am learning to appreciate the beauty of weeds, the lovely wildness that is creeping around the edges of our un-mowed lawn and marching across the once-cultivated fields. Everyone says you must let some things go. This is most certainly true. Life has telescoped down to a very small circle with a brown baby in the middle of it. But, oh what a lovely circle.

A few weeks before Audrey's arrival on our scene, I worried out loud to another friend about whether or not I was up to the whole world of motherhood. She told me that being a mom has been the best thing and yet the hardest thing she has ever done. Now that I'm in the game, all I can say is "Amen, sister."

















We could not be more pleased with the outcome of our adoption experience. We feel like we won the baby lottery. Looking back we can trace God's goodness through every scary and maddening step along the way. And while we have received a great gift in Audrey, her birth mother has made a great sacrifice. So if you remember us in your prayers, we ask that you would remember her too.




Thanks to all for the great love that has been poured out on us!

Heading home!

Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.
James 1:17


We have all been doing very well. We have been taking it easy in our hotel room and taking in some of the sites around New Orleans. The baby continues to be laid back and easy-going about most of life. The parents are still trying to get into a good sleep routine. Most days require recovery naps for me and Ed. The baby naps almost all the time with a break every 2 to 3 hours for a "meal". She eats 1 to 2 ounces of formula at a time, then is usually back to sleep.

We've had some great times visiting with my good friend Wendy. She and her family are moving to Baton Rouge at the end of the month, so she has been in LA this week on a house-hunting trip. It is amazing and wonderful to all be here at the same time.

Friends of Ed's sister took us around the French Quarter yesterday. They took us for cafe au lait and beignets (pastries) and then showed us some of the historical sites of the city. We've also been enjoying some of the local parks for mini-outings. The plant-life here is wonderfully lush and beautiful. Flowering crepe myrtle trees are everywhere. The baby gets a lot of attention when she makes an appearance outside the hotel room, being so small. Some people, you can see they are trying to figure out if she's "mine." One man told Ed that she looks just like him! We couldn't tell if he was joking, but I laughed anyway.

The latest on the ICPC paperwork is that it made it through LA Tuesday. Yesterday it got through Utah, and this morning it got to WI and within a couple of hours, we got the OK to come home! Whoopie! Seemed like a real stretch for it to get processed by both UT and WI by 5 pm Friday, so we were preparing for me to have to stay with the baby through the weekend into next week. But no more! We'll all be getting on the plane tomorrow night. Karin will meet us at the airport in Minneapolis to take us home.

When we left the hospital, Jane gave us 2 garbage bags full of little girls' clothes that she had saved from her older daughters. It was very sweet. We can't take them all home, but we will take what we can. Ed went out to a thrift store to buy a suitcase so we can get our growing collection of baby things home. He also found a second-hand miniature guitar to play while we're here.

We had a doctor visit today for the baby's first check up. All is well. She's already surpassed her birth weight and is up to a whopping 5 pounds! She looks a lot bigger to us already. For her name, we've settled on Audrey Louise.

We've enjoyed seeing the Big Easy but we are so ready to come home. Ed suggested packing tonight and sleeping at the airport. What a great gift, to all get to come home together. Thanks to God. It is so much better than we expected. Thanks for all those faithful prayers. We have been well provided for.

First baby pictures

This is the birth mother and her family. They were very kind and welcoming toward us.







Our first visit at the hospital, we were unsure if the adoption was going to work out at all. We thought we might be going home without her.








The next day, we were new parents.






The nurses gave us some baby care lessons, we had her "footprinted," then they wheeled me and the baby out the front door in a wheelchair. ("hospital policy")


















And then we brought her "home" to our hotel room for our first happy night of minimal sleep.




What a ride.

It's a girl!

Well, the baby just couldn't wait. We got the call at about 1 o'clock on July 4th. The baby came early. Scrap the Utah plan and get down to New Orleans as soon as possible.

24 crazy hours later we were headed to the airport. At the gate, ready to board our plane, we got a call from the adoption agency inUtah saying that we've got a problem. The state of WI may not accept the legalities of this adoption, since it was being conducted in LA by a UT agency, using UT law. A few minutes before boarding, we were talking on a 3 way call to both adoption agencies (Utah and Wisconsin). Turned out that in addition to the legal concerns, there were fears that the birth parents were shaky on relinquishing their parental rights. Both agencies advised that we wait a day before flying down, to see what would happen.
We got on the plane anyway. It sounded like everything was about to unravel, but we weren't going to sit around an extra day in MN to find out. As our plane left the ground, I got the giggles. It was all too much.

When we got into New Orleans, we went to the hospital to meet Kim, the adoption social worker from Utah. She tried to get us in to meet the baby and birth mom that evening, but it was past visiting hours, so we headed to our hotel. The next day we spent the morning with Jane, the baby, her 2 grown daughters and grandson. The situation there seemed promising - they were friendly and welcoming - but the birth father was still uncertain. And there was one more complication, in addition to the aforementioned troubles, that we needed to address, so we excused ourselves for the rest of the day to work on it from our new-found internet headquarters - McDonalds.

Our last FBI background check expired June 1. We sent in new sets of fingerprints to renew our clearance at the end of May. Before we left home, I called the FBI to see how our background checks were coming along and could they hurry it up please? The answer was, no expedited checks. We'd just have to wait - maybe up to 5 more weeks. Utah and WI do not require FBI clearance for adoption, but LA does. Without those background checks, we cannot leave the state of Louisiana with an adopted child. From beneath the golden arches, we surfed the internet and made phone calls, trying to find a way to get an FBI check with a 72 hour turn-around, as we were told some adoptive families have been able to do in the past. Our search was fruitless, and we resigned ourselves to the possibility - if the adoption went ahead - that I may be here for an extra month with the baby while waiting for our FBI checks to come through.

Here's how it all shook out on Thursday.

Parental rights: In the morning, the birth father came to the hospital to sign away his parental rights. He was very unhappy about it, but Jane prevailed, reminding him that this had been her plan all along. We're told that with his signature (Jane signed the day before, after meeting us), the legal risks to our parental rights were pretty much over.
WI's acceptance of the adoption: Both adoption agencies talked things over with the state of WI and got the nod to go ahead with this 3-state adoption plan.
Fingerprints: Because Utah law is being used, LA requirements for FBI clearance will not apply to us when the ICPC (Interstate Compact on the Placement of Children) paperwork gets processed. Our ICPC paperwork must go from LA to UT, back to LA for approval, then finally to WI before we can leave LA with the baby. If the state lets us go without the fingerprints, and our ICPC paperwork is processed by next Friday and we can come home on time, it will be simply miraculous.

Kim and the hospital staff were all super nice and very helpful. The nurse in charge of our baby told us she had been praying for us since the baby was born. After we signed a pile of documents and officially became parents we got our baby care orientation before being discharged from the hospital Thursday afternoon. I was afraid they would just bundle us out the door and say "see ya later," so I was grateful for the baby care lessons.
Being a bit of a premie, she's just a little thing. About the size of a loaf of bread when she's all swaddled up. Here are her specs from her birthday, a week ago now:

Born at 9:37 pm July 3
Weight: 4 lbs 7 oz.
Head: 11 in. circumference
Length: 17 1/2 in.
Term: 37 and 2/7 weeks

Frankly, we're amazed that this is working out. When we got to the hotel with her, it felt like we were just borrowing someone's baby for awhile. We're slowly getting used to the idea of really being her parents. It's been a bittersweet experience. We're so grateful that God has placed this child in our care. And yet we're aware of the pain of those who have lost her. We are glad to keep the adoption open, sending letters and pictures to Jane and her daughters via the agency in Utah. We're exhausted, but happy. She's a super easy-going baby. Even so, we're finding that caring for a newborn makes catching up on lost sleep a challenge. It's probably good to be stuck in a hotel for awhile with no appointments to keep.

Her name? Well, we're still trying to come to an agreement on that. When our adoption is finalized in 6 months, her birth certificate will be changed. That gives us a lot of time to procrastinate. For now, she's got a handful of nicknames, and she doesn't seem to mind.

Thanks for your many many prayers. We are so grateful for everyone's support and love. We're thankful to have this sweet baby in our care instead of returning home with empty arms. We will probably be finding out on Thursday or Friday (the 14th or 15th) whether we can all get on the plane home on Friday evening. We'll try to keep ya'll posted.







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Due Date

It looks like we've got ourselves a match. :)
Life isn't exactly turning on a dime, but 6 weeks from profile-viewing to baby delivery feels like a tight enough turn for us. Last week we signed on to a contract to adopt the baby of a birth mother from New Orleans. Her official due date is July 22.

After reading through her profile I liked this birth mom. She was brief with her thoughts, but I appreciated what she had to say. And the smiley face next to her signature won me over. We have spoken with Jane* on the phone a few times now. The adoption agency connects us up on a 3-way call. The smiley face, from what I can discern over the phone, is consistent with her sunny disposition. Our conversations have been brief, but she has been warm, friendly, confident, and humorous. All this despite what would appear to be less than ideal circumstances. We are agreed to an open adoption, sending letters and pictures, with the possibility of visits in the future.

Up until Wednesday there were some questions as to whether the delivery would be natural or C-section and whether she would have the baby in Louisiana or Utah. (Once again we are working with a partner agency in Utah and a birth mother in a different state). Wednesday Jane arranged a call from the doctor's office so we could get the latest information. The baby is breech, so they are calling for a C-section. Jane has also decided to deliver the baby in Utah. The good news about a C-section is that we can be there for the birth -- if the baby doesn't come early -- since it is now a scheduled event. That would be July 13 . . . 19 days from today. The reason for Jane traveling to Utah is that she will receive more support than if she stayed home. There she will have the benefit of the agency's staff and possibly the company of other birth mothers.

We're still struggling somewhat to prepare for an event, a person, that seems like something from the world of make-believe. Being matched with a birth mom has brought a touch of reality to it all, and yet . . . . People ask "are you excited?" Mostly I just feel nervous. I'm busy trying to prod all our ducks into a row. This weekend, I'll be packing our bags, so we are ready to go at a moment's notice if necessary. It's time to explore the pile of boxes full of baby things.

At the doctor's office, Jane offered to hand the phone to a nurse so that I could find out the sex of the baby. I declined. Jane thinks its a boy. We're happy not knowing for sure until we meet. And then, she held the phone up to the monitor so that I could hear the baby's heart beat. I love that she did that. I wish I could hear that heartbeat all day long. Because that was real.

* not the birth mother's real name

p.s. We would appreciate your prayers for Jane, for the baby, for our preparations, and for our FBI clearance to come through on time (more on this later).