76 mornings ago, we woke up for the first time with a child in our lives. David was just three days old, and the whole world was new.
David was born on a warm winter afternoon in Florida. We knew the C-section had been scheduled for noon that day, and we tried not to jump every time the phone rang (and every time the phone didn’t ring). Just before dinner, we got the call saying that he had been born in the early afternoon, 20 inches long, close to 8 pounds, with good Apgar scores. We went out to dinner, triple-checked our luggage lists, and wished we could sleep.
The next morning we got up before dawn to fly to Florida. A friend drove us to the airport, and the check-in agent moved our seats so we could actually sit together. We cleared security just as the sun cleared the horizon. Our agenda for the day was simple: get to Florida, pick up our rental car, pick up the supplies we had shipped ahead, buy a car seat, find our hotel, and shop for groceries. We ran into only minor obstacles, and by the evening we were all set—as ready as anyone can be to meet their child. And then it was back to waiting.
We had been given our plan about a week earlier: we were supposed to fly to Florida the day after David was born, and meet David and his birthparents in the hospital the following afternoon. Under Florida law, the birthmother has to wait to sign papers until at least 48 hours after the child is born, and the agency wanted us all to meet after the papers had been signed. It felt really good to have a plan at long last, and we followed the plan to the letter.
That evening we looked back through the profile book that we had created several years ago, knowing that it contained most of the information the birthparents had received about us. We were delighted to rediscover that it really did capture the essence of who we are and the sort of parents we hope to be. And we held onto our hope that this was going to happen, and we tried to sleep.
The next morning, we gave ourselves lots of extra time to drive over to the hospital. We arrived very early, walked around outside in the bright sunshine, and then found a shaded bench to sit down on to wait for a phone call telling us what to do. An anole held our attention for a while, and a Northern Mockingbird watched us from a nearby palm tree. After a very long 75 minutes, the phone rang. Go to the hospital lobby in an hour, and bring a photocopy of our insurance cards.
Some time later, our agency contact finally arrived in the hospital lobby. She told us that the birthparents had signed the papers making David available for adoption. We got our hospital id badges (security is very tight on maternity wards), and went upstairs to meet the birthparents and our son.
Our time talking with David’s birthparents was a wonderful and powerful experience. After a lot of stories and smiles and conversation, a nurse brought David into the room. His birthmother asked to hold him one last time, and then handed him to L. We fought some tears of joy and relief, talked a little more, I got to hold him as well, and finally a nurse pried him from my arms to put him in the hospital bassinet so we could all go downstairs.
We signed a lot of papers sitting in the hospital driveway with our son and our agency contact, and we were handed more papers to fill out and return, and I retrieved our car from the parking garage, and the hospital transport staff checked our car seat installation, and then we drove back to our hotel with our son quietly along for the ride. Just the three of us, at long last.
This photo is from our first evening with David, and yes, at just two days old, he is smiling.
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