A Letter to a Pre-Adoptive Mommy

I stumbled across the blog Matt and Kara Adopt, from the Dear Baby blog that I read almost daily. The latest post is an update on how they are doing in the aftermath of a failed adoption. I immedately read almost every post. I love the blog, and I'm happy to see someone who has opened her heart publicly on the roller coaster of adoption. I had to respond to her most recent post. I relate to it so much. I wish there was something I could do for her, but I remember being in her shoes and nothing really helped. I had to get through it on my own. But still, I had to write and writing it feels good for me too. I'll be healing forever, and forever praying for the baby who wasn't meant to be our.

Hi Kara,

I found a link to your blog on the Dear Baby blog. As I was reading your post and several of the previous ones, I had tears in my eyes for you. I'm an adoptive mom to a two and a half year old daughter, who came to us after a failed adoption and 4 years of infertility/adoption challenges. We had been working with a birth mother for a few months and had a name picked out and all, and she changed her mind a week before her due date. Unfortunately that poor little girl is now a ward of the state and I still pray for her every day. Her life will probably be very hard.

When our adoption failed I did all sorts of things. I cried alot for us and for that little baby who wasn't going to have a mommy at least not for a while. I hugged my family alot, drank A LOT of wine, went to NYC with my husband and we spent a ton of money we didn't have and drank A LOT of wine there and acted like kids. A couple weeks later we took all the baby girl stuff back to Babys-R-Us. This was really tough, so afterwards we went to the beach for a long, long walk. While we were walking we decided that we were done grieving, we had made it through alive and we'll be ok. We’re not overly religious, but somehow on that day we decided we had to have faith in the order of the universe. It was a very profound conversation, I’ll never forget it. We found a tiny shell on the beach. I put it in my pocket and decided that it represented the baby who was meant to be ours, whenever that may happen. The very, very next morning, on St.Patrick's day, we got a call that a baby girl had been born and were we interested. I didn't believe it, thought nothing of it and didn't let my mind even go there after the roller coaster from the last few weeks. But a few days later it became a reality and we packed up and went to meet our baby girl. It was the most surreal experience ever, going from the depths of depression to the height of joy. I kept thinking about the phrase "The darkest time of night is just before the dawn." I kept saying that over and over again as I held her for the first time.

You seem to have a very strong faith, and writing this blog hopefully helps you heal with each difficult post you write. I hope it does, and I hope and pray for you that soon I’ll be reading about the adoption that did work out for you, the baby who was and is meant to be yours. I hope this is your darkest time before your dawn.

Cheers, Laura