I am soooo happy to say that I now have a family of 5! We got the call that our birthmother was in labor at about 5 in the morning. By 3 in the afternoon our daughter was born. We missed the birth by a short 20 minutes. You would think I would be upset about that, but once I saw her I didn't care one bit, I was just sooo happy that I was there. Holding her for the first time was an amazing experience with mixed emotion that I think you only understand once you are in the adoption situation. Thankfully, according to Pennsylvania these mixed emotions only lasted 3 days and the long awaited day to carry our daughter out of the hospital had arrived.
I have never heard of the term "baby bunching" until we left the hospital with Abilene. As we were walking out with Abilene in her car seat, Jerry on my hip and Max holding my hand, a nurse stops us to say, "As a fellow baby buncher, I wish you the best of luck and happiness!" I was still in shock that I was actually leaving the hospital with my new daughter I just smiled and said "thank you so much." I had no idea what I was getting myself into.
We spent almost 2 weeks in Pennsylvania waiting for everything to finalize and thankfully Abilene was in that perfect little newborn stage where she slept about 22 hours out of the day. It was a bit hard being in a state with ABSOLUTELY nothing to do. Autumn was able to stay with us for the first week (and I could not have made it through the first week emotionally or physically without her!!) and she helped me get pretty creative on activities. After spending some time watching the Olympics, soon the house we had rented was turned into a track and field stadium. We created the hurdle event by stacking books, Max enjoyed pretending to long jump over the rugs and Jerry seemed to create his own event of spinning in circles until he fell over.
The one thing we really benefited from having to stay in Pennsylvania that long was we became expert packers and finding ways to travel around with all 3. The double stroller is a must, the moby wrap, and the diaper bag has to be a backpack. We tried to create the last week of Pennsylvania like it was a vacation, but adoption is stressful and we wanted to get home. We spent time in Philadelphia, Scranton, Wilkes Barre, and Blakeslee. We were only 3 hours from New York city, but we were not able to cross state lines, so it was a huge tease to have all these fun things soooo close and unable to go.
We finally got the call that we were allowed to go home while we were looking at the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia. Reed and I 100% looked like complete idiots with our random white dancing moves (with Abilene attached to me) and Max and Jerry mimicking our moves and singing Old Mac Donald. After a few strange looks from many people we finally calmed down enough to call Mom and Dad and let them know we could come home. My mom is possibly the best planner ever because in less than 24 hours we were home! We splurged and stayed at a hotel near the airport that had room service and movies on demand. We celebrated by ordering delicious food and watching a movie (The Lorax) in bed with my new family of 5!
Once we finally got home it was such a huge relief that I felt like for the first time I was able to take a deep breath. You couldn't pay me to complete a domestic adoption again! I am happy and extremely grateful for the end result of having a beautifully perfect daughter, but the adoption process sucks. I think deep down we would love more children, but neither one of us would never, ever, ever touch domestic adoption again. Our birthmother is amazing and we will love her for the rest of our lives, but making sure boundaries are created and respected is extremely difficult and awkward. I completely understand why many people chose to adopt internationally. We are very happy with our 3 children under the age of 4...and at the moment we are done. We consider our family complete now and we are very happy about it.
so very happy for you and your growing family!
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