Smiling Sisters and Signing

Well, the next few days were filled with a lot of shopping because I had to wait. The birthmom wanted to spend a lot of time with Virginia, and so I respected that wish. She signed the relinquishment papers right at 24 hours, which is the allowed time according to Utah state law. That was an enormous relief, after having the adoption fall through for Audrey (June 6, 2006) we knew that having the papers actually signed was a major step. The birthmom always said she would sign and she did follow through. Afterwards, Carl and I felt a major weight lifted off.

Earlier that afternoon, I was able to bring Anna to the hospital so she could meet her "baby sister, Ginia" as she calls her. This was a moment of pure joy for Anna and for me in seeing her delight in her new baby sister.

They both smiled.

Not too cheesy...huh?

So, after Virginia was born, they took her out of the operating room and into the neighboring room where they started to suction out her mouth and clean her off. Virginia was covered in white pasty stuff, I asked the nurse, what is that? She told me something, but then said we call it cheese. Then of all the funny things to say about a newborn she said, "She is not too cheesy, really." After a minute or so, Carl was allowed in this additional room so he could see Virginia the first time. We just said, "Hi, baby. You are beautiful" to our new little one. After a short while we were led to the nursery, where I was allowed to go in and watch them do all of Virginia'a assesments, give her a bath and attach the "mandatory" bow. I chose a beautiful green one for her. This took some time, and Carl was plastered to the window watching, trying the best to take pictures through the glass. I could see already that Virginia was trying to suck her thumb, so I promptly explained to her, she was a Westergard, and there was to be no thumb sucking. I then requested a binki which she latched onto. I also noticed her dimples!We were told that the birthmom wanted to see the baby as soon as she had come to the recovery floor, so we didn't have much time to spend with her at all. After she was done in the nursery about 1 hour, Carl got about 40 minutes to spend with Virginia in a breastfeeding room they let us use for a short time. There he got to feed her the first bottle. He was flying home the next morning so this was the last time he would see her until we came home from Utah on the 18th. Such a painfully long time for him to wait. He did the most bonding he could with the time he had.

Birthday

2 years to the day after we sealed Anna to our family for eternity in the Columbia, SC temple, our newest little one joined our family, Virginia Lee. The birth was scheduled for the afternoon, but got pushed back to 6:00pm. Sophia let me be in the delivery room with her, I tried my hardest to be supportive in all the ways I could. Finally, the doctor asked me if I would like to see the baby be born, so I stood up next to Sophia and watched them pull Virginia out of Sophia's tummy. Yes, I mean pull, I suppose that they try to keep the scar small.



So, Virginia joined us at 6:06pm, weighing 7 lbs, and being 17 inches long.



She was beautiful, and I cried.

Finally going to meet

Well, after weeks of phone calls, the birth date was scheduled. Sophia was going to have a c-section birth and the date was going to be September 8th, 2009. We booked our flights just a few days before, and Missy (me) and Anna flew out to Utah on September 4th, with planning on meeting with Sophia the following day. Sohpia later told us she was so excited, and new when our plane would land, she told those around her, "she is here now!".

On Saturday at 4:00pm, we planned on meeting in Orem at the Olive Garden for Lunch. I got butterflies in my stomach waiting. Karina was with me for all the support that a best friend can give. Sohpia and Tamara (the social worker) were running late, because Sophia had gone to a movie and it ran later than planned. So we just waited in the lobby of the Olive Garden.

Finally she showed up and little tears entered the corners of my eyes. We had a wonderful visit, and found out lots of little things about each other. Like the fact that Sophia loves alfredo! After dinner we went to a park and continued our nice visit, and let Anna run around and play.

Continued contact

We got to talk to Sophia on the phone for the first time on Friday, August 14th in a conference call. It was a great conversation, and we could see that Sophia was really a "great gal" as Carl first described her. We talked about all sorts of things. It was funny that later we found out, Sophia had this big poem planned out to say, to let us know she chose us, but then at the last minute just spoke out, "I chose you". We were really excited.

Adoption is such a roller coaster ride, and this is a major step in it. We had 6 birthmother contacts in a month, three happening in 48 hours of each other, and we were being pulled all over. It was funny on several of them, Sophia happened to contact us while Carl was in Utah, we had another contact us when we were up in upstate NY, and she was only a couple hours away in Pennsylvania and we drove over to meet her, and then another from Baltimore, a day before Carl flew out to Balimore to interview with the FBI. It was really exciting, but we kept asking ourselves, "which one is our birthmother". Truly it is up to the birthmother, and we feel confident that the Lord has guided us to this union with Sophia.

After our first conference call we had several others on a weekly basis, so that we could find out how Sophia was doing, and to build the relationship with her. All of the kids got to talk to her on the phone as well. We were so excited, it looked like things were going so well with her, and they did go well.

Smiling too big

It all began when Carl and James got to meet Sophia for the first time on August 10, 2009. In our first conversation over the phone with Sophia, she said she was afraid she was "smiling too big". I thought that was such a cute thing to say, and was an indication of Sohpia and her personality. Carl and James had an unexpected chance to meet Sophia for the first time. They were on their first backpacking trip together, after the 10 year old float down the snake river with Poppa. The weather had turned really bad, and so they cut their trip by one day. I first heard about Sophia and this adoption agency while they were up high in the teton mountains. I left a message on Carl's cell phone that there was a birthmom that had seen our profile over the weekend. So, when he unexpectedly had some extra time, we arranged for them to meet Sophia. That first meeting got the ball rolling. The agency told us that Sophia liked Carl and James the minute that they walked through the door. Later in the conversation James said soemthing to the effect that, Wow, Anna sure does piss off Emma. That just really stuck with Sophia, and let her know we are a real, genuine family. Three days later, Sophia chose us to be the family to adopt her darling little girl.