When we met Alicia she was sweet,welcoming and friendly. She was extremely gracious and so grateful to us for coming. She was about 5 centimeters dilated and was having pretty painful contractions. Although she had considered having a natural childbirth before, she decided to have an epidural. The anesthesiologist had a busy night, and Alicia had to wait about two hours for her epidural. The anesthesiologist had a very difficult time getting the needle through her spine and it took almost an hour of trying. At one point I began to faint. How ridiculous! I saw the needle sticking out with all the blood and I started to go dark...literally. I couldn't see anything and Mr. Lucky Bud helped me sit down on the ground. I was so embarrassed! Here Alicia was the one in the middle of labor, with a needle sticking out of her back, and I was the one fainting!
After Alicia's epidural kicked in she felt much better and we were able to talk and get acquainted. I was glad that she had read my last email where I had laid out some examples of how things could go at the hospital. Alicia chose to have us there with her for all of the labor and for the birth, and then for us to stay at the hospital in a separate room and to care for the baby until he was discharged from the hospital.
The rest of Alicia's labor went very smooth. At about 8 am, Alicia's boyfriend, "Adam" arrived. We met him and he was so kind and gracious also. He thanked us over and over for being there. (we were the one's that were grateful to be there of course, but it was so sweet the way that they were so appreciative of us coming.)We left Alicia and Adam to be alone and went to the cafeteria for breakfast. We were speaking briefly with the wonderful hospital social worker after breakfast, when we were interrupted by the nurse who told us that Alicia was ready to push.
After a very calm half hour of pushing, Baby Lucky Bud was born. He was put on Alicia's stomach for her to hold, and then was cleaned up by the nurses. When they were done, they handed Baby Lucky Bud to me. I wanted so much to hold him, but I was anxious for Adam to be able to hold him first. Mr Lucky Bud and I soon got our chance to hold our new baby. We were filled with so much love for him and were so happy to be parents to another child. It was a very special moment that the four of us shared with the baby, and then Mr Lucky Bud and I were brought to our room with the him.
By then it was about noon, Christmas Eve. Mr Lucky Bud went home and got Little Lucky Bud, and came back later to the hospital to visit us. The rest of the day Alicia, Adam and I spent time bonding and adoring Baby Lucky Bud. Alicia and I stayed up very late into the night talking, and it felt as if we had known each other for years. On Christmas day we signed all of the legal paperwork for the adoption, and we had many visitors throughout the day.
Since the adoption was very sudden, none of Mr. Lucky Buds, nor my family members even knew that we were potentially going to adopt. It was so fun to call all of our family members to tell them that we had a baby! We had a beautiful Christmas day at the hospital with our new baby and his wonderful birth parents.
In the morning as the hospital staff completed the discharge paperwork, we had a very emotional and tearful goodbye with Alicia and Adam. We are very blessed to have an open adoption with Alicia and Adam and are so glad that they only live a half hour away. We are so grateful to be able to celebrate Baby Lucky Buds first birthday together with them on Christmas Eve, and hope to make our Christmas Eve get together a yearly tradition.
Maybe another day in the future I will write a little entry about why I love open adoptions so much! (as opposed to a closed adoption)
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| A few hours old |
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| Our first picture all together |
I've loved reading this 2 part story. You all are very lucky to of found each other and actually clicked so well :)
ReplyDeleteWhat website did you go through? Just curious as I might have to end up using adoption as an alternative someday. And open adoptions def seem like the better option for me.
We used parentprofiles.com. We loved using the website, as we were matched very quickly both times. Then you would go through a layer or an agency to do the private adoption. Just as a heads up though, as this website is open to the public, anyone can write and say they are an expectant mother, and a lot of people actually do this either for financial or emotional scams. We were contacted both times by scammers and it is very common, but they do have a place on the websites where adoptive parents can post alerts to other adoptive parents, and if you are mentally prepared for it, it is not too bad. If you don't give money then they obviously don't keep in contact with you for long. So despite this downside of the website, we would still use them again. It is around $100 a month or so with an activation fee.
ReplyDeletesorry about the typo....lawyer
ReplyDeleteWhat a wonderful story, thank you for sharing!
ReplyDelete