Today’s Wednesday’s Wild Chronicles brings us to the decision that would forever change how we viewed a family unit. Starting out this journey we envisioned the average American family: Mom, Dad and a boy and a girl. We figured if our first two children were the same gender, we’d make one extra attempt at having both genders. Never could we foresee a family with two mothers, a father, adoptive sibling(s) and the potential for step-fathers and half-siblings. But, that’s exactly what was about to happen.

After meeting Mama-A for the first time, we established that I would take her to all of her doctor appointments and ultrasounds. Her next follow-up was her 16 week appointment. We figured that would give us several times to meet up and get to know each other better.

The 16 week appointment came and went. Mama-A was pretty detached from the pregnancy. It came time for the infamous 20 week ultrasound. Sitting in the ultrasound room was one of the more difficult moments of this journey.

Mama-A lay on the table staring straight at the ceiling, not watching the ultrasound monitor at all. I was a ball of nerves. I stood there with silent tears rolling down my cheeks as I learned that she was carrying our potential son. I was torn as I watched her trying to will herself against forming a bond with the baby and attempting to keep my emotions in check, not making her feel like I was disrespecting her difficulties. It was still very much her baby and her body. For her to allow me to watch the ultrasound was an absolute gift!

As the pregnancy progressed, she and I became increasingly close. I often stayed at her mom’s apartment for a while after the appointments talking with her and her mom.

Around the 7^th month, I remember having a conversation with the hubby that I could see the prospect of the adoption turning from a semi-open to an open adoption. Part of it was selfishness on my part. I simply could not imagine in a few short months never having contact with Mama-A again. I grown to care deeply for her and wanted to continue to have her in my life.

Thankfully, hubby was in agreement that he could see the benefit of changing the adoption status. We, however, wanted to respect Mama-A’s original plan and not press her into something that she would not be comfortable with. In our minds we had gone from her not even wanting to hear the baby cry to wanting her to be an ongoing part of the baby’s life. We had no idea if Mama-A held any interest in this whatsoever. The plan was to leave the ball in Mama-A’s court.

Around the 35^th week of pregnancy, Mama-A’s aunt, my co-worker, cued me in that Mama-A was beginning to have second thoughts about the adoption being a semi-open one. She let me know that Mama-A wanted to talk further with us about it, so I suggested that after her 36 week appointment, we go out to dinner and discuss what she had in mind.

Mama-A and I sat down to a 3 hour conversation, laying out what each of us was now envisioning. Gratefully, we were very much on the same page. The initial plan was for her to continue in his life with visits a couple of times per year. It seemed we both felt like we were at a point where we were just winging it. Neither of us knew of anyone else doing an open adoption with contact, so there was no defining what it was “supposed” to look like. It was a starting point and we both left it open for flexibility depending on how the visits went.

Later we would find out we sat down for that conversation just in the nick of time. Turkey-man had some other plans as to when his due date was going to be!