Friday, December 23, 2011

Phone Call with the birth parents

We were lucky enough to get the opportunity to talk with the birth parents on a conference call on Friday, December 23.  The birth mother counselor, Cole, set up the call for all four of us to be on including him at 2:00pm.  Brett came home from work so we could be together on speaker phone to talk to them.  We also spoke with our counselor before hand and she gave us great advice on what to say, ask and how to do so.  That conversation just mostly reassured us that we needed to follow our instincts and just go with the phone call.

We talked with them for about 50 minutes and had great conversation.  They seemed like such super sweet, genuine, and mature people.  Of course, I cried in the beginning trying to express to them how thankful we were that they chose us and how much this meant to us.  We talked about things like what we wanted to name him, what color the nursery was going to be, their interests, why they chose us, her family situation (not supportive), how open they wanted to be, and how her pregnancy has been.  We were all nervous at first.  The counselors had told us that it would be like being on a blind first date.  We all loosened up after a while and the conversation flowed smoothly.

They are open to having an "open adoption" which is what we want as well.  They are comfortable with letters, phone calls, pictures, and e-mails.  They want to keep the visits open ended because they only want to meet if him if he wants to meet them.  They want it to be his choice when he is older--which is very mature of them.  They also asked permission to give the baby some gifts when he is born and as they gather stuff along the way after his birth--also so mature of them to ask us. :)

One of the first questions they asked us was what names we were thinking of.  We told them our name and asked them what they were thinking.  They told us a name they each liked.  It obviously was something they both cared about a lot for it to be the first thing they asked.  Brett and I talked about after the phone call and decided that we liked both of the names they came up with as middle names so we would let them choose the middle name.

During the conversation, she called the baby "our baby".  Hearing that was the most amazing thing ever.  It brought up so much emotion in me, I almost wasn't able to hold it back.  It was so reassuring for us to hear her say that.  I am sure she will never know it, but that one comment calmed my heart so much and allowed us to "jump in" with two feet and embrace them and our baby!

We were given each others e-mail addresses at the end of the conversation and told that we could talk back and forth as long as we copied the counselor.

We then packed the car and headed to Chicago for the Christmas weekend with my family.  It was so exciting to be able to be hours away from sharing the joy of our news with them face to face!

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