So.......

The birth mother we met with decided to not place the baby due in July up for adoption. The baby is a girl. We are obviously sad about it. She did not go with another family but decided to try and parent. The more heart breaking thing about it is that the baby girl will probably go into foster care/dcfs custody once she is born and not stay with the birth mother. There is nothing we can do about it except pray. There are some other heart breaking and weird circumstances about this case but I don't think I should go into any further details. I got the call on Friday afternoon as I was working on last minute details for the infertility/miscarriage retreat that I was leading the next day. I told JJ when he got home from work and I could see the disappointment in his eyes. This journey is hard, not just adoption but infertility. I haven't had much time to process it all because of a busy weekend we had which was a blessing. The retreat went really well and I am so thankful that it all came together, more on that in a other post.  

I saw my AFGM at the retreat and she could identify with the pain that I was feeling. I was trying not to say what it felt like but she said it out loud and that made feel better about sharing it. This failed adoption feels like a miscarriage. The feelings about it are very similar but not the same amount of intensity. When I shared it with JJ he agreed that his feelings were similar to what he experienced when we lost Cecilia. It's like you got the positive pregnancy test but you are not going to get to meet or hold this baby. Sorry if this doesn't make sense, it's just how it makes sense to me. 

We went to a baptism on Monday and I was fine until they did the blessing of the mother and father at the end. That part gets me every.single.time. The last song at the baptism was Blessed Be your Name which is one of my favorite praise and worship songs. At that point I just wanted to crawl into a hole  and just wallow. The other part of me just wanted to be there and see all of our friends and have fun. I tried my best to not be so down but I don't think I was fooling anyone, ha! One of our priest friends who was there told me that I could call/text him anytime to let him know how things were going and that he is praying for us. We have such a supportive group of family, friends and church family or "churchies" as we like to call them. A lot of them let us know they are praying for us, that they are sorry to hear what happened and gave us some encouraging words. In this respect we are very blessed, I know of many other couples who don't feel supported by their friends and family. We are so grateful for the prayers and love, I know they are giving us strength and grace for this road. 

So that is where we are. Our next step is to do things in normal order like start our home study and all that. I think we are going to start the home study after our vacation in June or right before it, we haven't decided yet. Thank you for all the prayers we really appreciate it! Please continue to pray for us.