A Baby Story - Adoption

Every time we have a child I come and share about our birth story. The little details leading up to the moment we first held that little baby in our arms. With Nixon, it wasn't anything like the others.
I was going to come on here today and share what we recently found out about our little man's birth. Like the fact that he was born at 6lb 6oz, the smallest of our babies by quite a bit. Instead, I decided to share the months leading up to his arrival. A "What to Expect While Expecting...a Foster baby" kind of post.

It all started with a call on our lives...
We always wanted to adopt but never though foster care was the route. Not until God put it on our hearts. I mean foster care is messy and scary but God is bigger and His plan is always bigger than ours. So we followed.

The prep was not nearly as long as we had thought it would be. When we decided to dive in we instantly started looking into agencies. We knew from the beginning we wanted to go with an agency vs the county but weren't sure which one. There are so many great agencies in the Orange County/Los Angeles area, if you are local feel free to email me. We will get you resources. I felt totally overwhelmed by the decision and went to FB for input. Within an hour we had talked to people and decided on Serenity Infant Care Homes. This was such a great decision for us. If you are in the area, I would highly recommend them.

The process started with an in home interview. They got to know who we are and what our hearts were.
We took classes at the agencies for 3 weekends, I believe it was. We heard the horrors stories and the victories. We were equipped with tools to face some of the hardest challenges I could imagine as a parent.
From there, came the packets and paper work (which some people did ahead of time but classes were starting right away when we called, so we did that first), Oh the paperwork. We answered questions about our past, present and hopes for our future.

Little Details were taken care of. We had DMV records mailed, a vehicle inspection and were LiveScanned. I think it all cost us around $300. If that. The fees are so minimal with Foster care.

We had a home study where we shared details that only my closest friends know. After answering things about our childhoods, sex lives and everything in between, we were approved as fit to raise foster children kinds of parents.

Then the wait. We heard how many kids entered the system daily. So when the first 24 hours passed, I questioned whether or not they really thought we were fit or if they just said that so I'd leave them alone. Haha.

On day 6, August 22nd 2012, around 10:45am, I got the call. I remember it like it was yesterday. A four month old baby boy. A few details about his case and his parents. We said yes. Well I said yes, Steven agreed after I hung up. Since we are with an agency, they had to call the county to let them know and make sure he wasn't already heading to a different home. 2 hours later, a second call. He'd be in our homes in a few hours.

That evening, a knock on the door. The transporter placed him in my arms and told me "he has a couple bags" and walked to her car. There he was. The most beautiful little guy. We soaked him in, the woman came back, handed us two raggedy bags and had us check him from head to toe. We marked anything wrong. Signed a few papers and she left.

His birth or gotcha day story had 298 days left to be complete. A million hurdles along the way. However, that was the day he entered our lives...for what we didn't realize would be forever.