Footprints of a Family, our second adoption journey, part 10

this journey begins here I hung up the phone, looked at Dave, and said...."The baby is coming." We were instantly awake and our gears were running. The first thing I did was phone the airlines to have our flight rescheduled. While I was on hold with the airlines, I went straight to our clothes dryer and started folding clothes.


My husband sees what I am doing and incredulously asks me, "Why are you doing laundry now?" I looked at him and said, "I have no idea." To this day we laugh about that. I guess in my subconscience mind, laundry was a mind numbing, soothing act and that is what I needed in that moment.


Laundry aside, we changed our flight to that morning. My parents were going to drive us to the airport and watch Cassie while we were gone. Our good friends offered to drive our dog up to the kennels for us. Our other dog and cat were staying home and our neighbor was going to take care of them. We were set. Our bags had been packed for awhile. We were ready to go. As we were leaving the house our phone rang. It was L's mother again. Apparently it was a false alarm. We were literally walking out the door, one minute more and we would have missed the call. Now what should we do? The plane reservations were made, the car was loaded, the dog was gone, our daughter was taken care of....should we still go, or stop the process knowing that this whole scenario will be repeated again? Most likely within a few days.


We decided to go. Our momentum was going, we were unable to stop. Off we went to the airport.


We flew into Atlanta. We were planning on renting a car and driving to South Carolina. We have good friends in Atlanta so we decided to stay a night with them, since we were no longer in a complete rush. We had a wonderful visit with our friends and the next day we rented a car and drove the 2 hours to Columbia. Our friends would have liked us to stay a bit longer but we were anxious to get to our final destination. Even though we were in constant contact with L and knew she was doing fine, we wanted to be in Columbia. We knew that there was a reason for us to be there early, we just did not know what is was yet.


We arrived in town and checked into our hotel. The day was Sunday, February 6, 2000. We called L and made arrangements to meet her and her mother for dinner. In the meantime we went to the grocery store to purchase the essentials and unpack. Our hotel room had a kitchenette which we knew would be essential with a new baby.


Before we knew it, it was time for dinner. I will never forget walking into the restaurant and seeing L and her mother sitting there with the biggest smiles on their faces. We immediately felt at ease and had a wonderful meal. We talked and laughed like we had known each other forever. It was wonderful and we all agreed that this was a much better way to meet for the first time, rather than our first meeting being in the hospital.


We went back to our hotel. Before going to bed that night I wrote a note to Cassie. I promised to send her a card every day...and we did. Dave wrote some and I wrote some, and we wrote some together. Missing her was horrendeous, and every day we were there it hurt more.


We also made daily phone calls to my parents and spoke with Cassie. Everyday she asked us, "Is my baby brother here yet?"...and everyday we had to tell her "No". Everyday I hung up the phone crying...everyday my heart broke a bit more missing my baby girl. We had no idea how long we would be there. We second guessed our decision constantly, should we have stayed home? How long would this take? Not knowing was maddening. Patience....again....how many lessons would we have on patience.


What we did know was that we were there, and we would continue to be there until our little boy was born. As the days dragged on, the thought crossed our minds to just come home without our baby. That was when we were at our lowest...when we missed Cassie the most.


How many days until his birth....how long after his birth would we have to stay there?


to be continued....