A Pandemic Placement

0:00Welcome to the Open Adoption Project. We're the Nelsons. I'm Sean and I'm Lynette. In this episode we'll be sharing more about our family's adoption experiences. We'll be sharing the story of our fourth child's adoption which was a pandemic placement. This is our last episode for the season and we are excited to share it with you. Yeah so we'll wrap up the season with wrapping up our adoption stories and we'll be back the second week in November.

0:36Thanks for joining us for this episode. Today we're gonna start off by talking about our family and our experience a little bit more. So at this point in our family building story we had adopted three kids in about four and a half years and we were living a good life. It was busy and at this point I think we were beginning to think that our family might be complete. Absolutely. I mean we honestly were so we are so lucky to have all of these wonderful kids that we

1:07adopted and I remember when we were trying to adopt the first time seeing families with lots of kids that were trying to adopt it bugged me. I was like what are you guys doing? There's all these people without kids that want kids but I mean ultimately you've got to do what's right for your family right? And I wanted to make sure all of our kids were well provided for and that we could meet all of their needs and so at this point I know in the beginning of our podcast we talked about how we wanted lots of kids and by this point our mentality had

1:40really shifted and we didn't want that giant family. We wanted to make sure we could really provide well for our kids that we do have especially meet all of their emotional needs. Yeah but things change right? So our youngest was about two and we've kind of talked about this before but we kind of rely on the intuition that we have or feelings or promptings that we get. Lynette and I had a conversation and we both realized that we had been feeling like you know what

2:11there might be one more child for our family. I think what I was feeling wasn't quite the same as what you were feeling. I think I was feeling like we need to get approved one more time just like prove to ourselves that we're done. I really didn't think there was one more child for our family at that point. I felt like three was our number but I also knew we were still pretty young and I knew that we would have that what if because that's us that's just our

2:43personalities right? For sure. That we would wonder a lot like should we have done it again and so I was like let's get approved one more time just so that we can say we tried right just in case God wanted to add to our family and I know sometimes that can be a controversial topic in the adoption world so I am sensitive to that. So we got approved and within just a couple weeks actually I had a co-worker reach out and say that he had an acquaintance

3:13whose daughter was expecting and that she was planning on adoption. She was very early in her pregnancy at this point only like six weeks and he was reaching out mostly because he knew that we had been really involved in the adoption world and was looking for resources that he could provide to that family as they were kind of navigating the beginnings of what adoption might look like and in that conversation he asked if we were hoping to adopt again

3:43and I said that we had recently been approved and he said that he'd share our profile and he did but weeks turned into months and months and months and finally at the point where she was probably like eight months. Yeah third trimester for sure. They reached out and asked if we wanted to meet. Yeah so we went to this friend's house our mutual friend right because I think that felt like a safe neutral ground for us to meet each other so we went there and got to know this

4:18expectant mom and her dad was there too and it was really a neat experience to get to know her. We've talked about how when it's right like it just clicks right like you can feel this vibe and we didn't have that there which is kind of the telltale sign right and so I don't think we were super surprised when she told us a few days later that she had chosen a different family to place her baby with but I think a couple of the big takeaways I had for meeting this

4:49expectant mom. One thing was that I think we kind of finally mastered what an awesome meeting gift could be. We decided to make French macarons which are a labor of love if you've ever made those they're challenging to make at least they're for us. Well and Lamet's love language is food for sure. Well yeah but also we've talked about finding that sweet spot with gifts right but yeah that is meaningful but not valuable right? Yeah it was very genuine. Yeah and

5:21so I was really pleased with that I thought that was just such a good idea. Also meeting her really reinforced to me the importance of being genuine because I don't think if we hadn't been genuine she would have picked us but she this expectant mom she really wanted her baby's family to have a stay-at-home mom who was in the home and at this point I was starting to think about going back to school and getting a graduate degree and I was starting to think about going

5:52back into the workplace and I was like you know this might change with a baby yes like I might put that all on hold but I'm going to be going back into the workforce when our kids are in school and this mother her mom was home for her all throughout her school years right and that was something that she really loved and wanted for her baby and when she said that I was like you know I can't just not say anything or pretend that we're planning on that so I had to

6:22tell her you know that's really not us if that's what you're looking for. Well yeah and I mean that actually I mean that has been our reality with yeah I've been a stay-at-home mom with our kids when they're home but the chance of you going back into the workforce is a big reality right and so we don't want to mislead her. Open and vulnerable even in the moment where we knew that that may persuade her decision yeah we needed to be true to ourselves. Absolutely and I mean I don't think that would have changed the outcome if we had like I don't know fudged that or anything but I'm glad that we didn't obviously it's

6:56so important to be honest and transparent and yeah just be really genuine with what who you are what your plans are it's not like your plans have to be set in stone but it wasn't the right fit and we all knew that. Yeah and I guess for those that are whole polydopter parents we have to remember that every situation that presents itself isn't the right situation and as much as we want to have another child as much as we want to have a child we have

7:29to be honest we have to be really clear in communication and we have to be okay knowing that this might not be the next the situation like these might not be the right fit yeah and obviously this one wasn't and I think we already even knew that before we had to say that but yeah when it's right it'll work out. So we weren't chosen to adopt that baby it was totally okay but we were kind of feeling

8:00like hey we opened the door nothing happened and we're gonna feel good about letting it close so we let our homestead expire and life moved on our kids started getting older and really busy with sports and music and and everything else and I mean our kids are still not super old no but yeah things were getting busy and our youngest was getting ready to start preschool and I was getting ready to start applying for graduate school because that had been my

8:32plan as soon as he started preschool I would get the application rolling and my plan was to start grad school when he started kindergarten and I was working on you know just researching all these different programs and trying to narrow it down I had two I was weighing trying to decide which one felt right I was looking at a master's in social work and I was looking at a master's in creative writing so one was one that I felt like this kind of altruistic pole toward and

9:02the other is something I really love and enjoy and I'm passionate about but might be a little bit less of a career sort of master's degree right and so I was really torn between these and as I was trying to figure out what I should do I just kept getting this feeling that we should adopt again that we should get approved again and honestly I was kind of frustrated because we had already gotten approved again right nothing had worked and it was okay when we were happy but I

9:35was like man I don't want to put this whole plan on hold and wait and wait and have nothing happen again like I just want to take that next step and I was really excited for grad school but I was getting this feeling that I should wait on the grad school and that we should get approved again and so I talked to Sean about it and I was not thrilled to be talking to him about it it was almost the holidays and the most ironic part about this whole thing was she brought it up the day after we bought a new car that's true we bought a new car and it

10:07had enough seats for another kid but it's not convenient ideal yeah it's fine now but it's fine but we would have totally picked a different car if we had known it was very ironic it really was ironic maybe that was part of what helped me actually bring it up though now that we have a car that can fit more children no I mean like I was looking at the car and like man I wouldn't have picked this car and maybe that I don't know but either way so I brought it up to Sean and you were feeling the same thing right and I had been having some

10:37thoughts like for probably like six months but I was I didn't want to be the guy that was like hey you know how you're just about to start grad school our kids are in school by the way I think we should have another baby and put everything on hold for another five years or whatever and so I kind of just sat on some of those feelings for a while and then when she brought it up I was like okay well just so you know I've been having the same thoughts and the same feelings for like the last six months so I guess we need to do this

11:08again mm-hmm yeah and so I wouldn't say I wasn't like all in like the idea of actually adding to our family was really exciting but of course that weight and that unknown factor it's challenging it's a roller coaster and I really was feeling like I should just put the grad school on hold I'm not saying that you can't go to grad school when you have a baby right but because you did well yeah we'll get to that but but I just was feeling like it wasn't the right time

11:39and so we got approved and true to our own style we got approved pretty quickly right around the new year yeah so we got approved at the very beginning of 2020 and we had no idea what that year would have in store for us or the world but we were you know excited and hopeful but also kind of like Lynette mentioned earlier like maybe this is just the the tests again right like let's prove to prove ourselves that these feelings we've been having that you know will

12:10follow our feeling and nothing will happen yeah you want to open those doors right but we I don't I really didn't think that anything would happen for a while I wasn't like sure that our family was done anymore I was thinking there probably was another kid but I thought we'd have to wait for quite some time and I was feeling pretty sure that there was another baby mm-hmm so we got approved and we didn't think anything would happen for a while though right yeah I mean were you expecting anything soon not really yeah but we yeah we were

12:45living our life kids in school you know running races and in fact yeah Kim who we interviewed a couple of episodes ago she actually called us the night before we had a race yeah and she said hey one of our speakers at this conference fell through could you be on one of our adoptive parent panels and we said oh we'd love to we've done it in the past we really like sharing experiences and answering questions but we're in southern Utah we're gonna be running a trail half marathon tomorrow and she said okay no worries we can find somebody

13:19else and a couple hours past we're at Lynette's parents house and my phone rings again and it's her again it's Kim yeah and I'm like I wonder like she's just following up on our conversation earlier and I was like I answered the phone a little kind of hesitant like hey what's going on and she said actually I've been having conversations with an expectant mother and she is really excited or interested in connecting with you guys mm-hmm yeah we had an Instagram

13:54account that just had a little bit of information about us that was kind of our profile for anyone that wanted to learn more about us as an expectant parent and apparently this expectant mom had found our profile through Kim Kim had directed her to it because she was wanting a really really open adoption and our daughter's birth mom was on our profile with a video where she talked about our relationship and as this other mother was watching the video of Carrie

14:26speaking she just said that is the kind of relationship I want with my son and his family and so she gave us her phone number and we I tried to we tried to call and there was no answer but then we sent a text mm-hmm and she didn't reply that night no so you know it's the night before race we couldn't sleep well anyway kind of anxious jittery before race yeah and the next morning we wake

14:56up really really early yeah anyone who runs races I think knows that feeling right of waking up at 3 or 4 yeah 3 a.m. and had to drive about an hour to the start of our race and we started and probably 30 minutes into the race I got a text and normally I'm not the person who like texts and runs at the same time but we knew like we had initiated the conversation or you know tried to

15:26connect with this expectant mother and sure enough it was her and so over the next hour of the race I'm running right behind Lynette and this was a trail race for like out in the middle of nowhere in southern Utah just running on these dirt trails and Sean's texting away and sending every now and then like pictures of us running but yeah I would I'd get a text and it's really hard to read a text and run at the same time so I'd stop for a second I'd read it and I'd catch up to Lynette and I'd tell her what the text said and say how do we reply and anyway

15:59this happened for probably an hour and then I'm finally I just said okay well we'll text you back when we're done and we look forward to connecting with you later today mm-hmm but yeah I mean I think that our conversation while we were running had us both feeling really optimistic right yeah and we talked more mostly through text and Facebook Messenger right mostly text at that point I guess yeah and we just were talking a ton with this expectant mom and it was a great like kind of chemistry between us and so we finished our race and we were

16:36totally floored right we had been approved for maybe two months yeah and suddenly it was feeling like this might actually happen I was feeling really optimistic yeah for sure mm-hmm and we got back to your parents house and I think you took a nap yeah yeah we had run like 14 miles I was pretty tired and yeah it was a crazy good trail run but you were spent and we didn't sleep very well but I continued to text back and forth as texts come and answer questions

17:10about our family and about openness and what we hoped for in open adoptions and what type of relationships we had and all of a sudden the the conversation shifted to this baby or my baby to our baby like the verbiage that the nouns that she or the pronouns that she was using mm-hmm in the text and I was somewhat lucid during this is not like I was no no no then you were reading those texts to me I remember when you read that text where that shift happened and I was like

17:41wow I think she might have just chosen us like not officially but but yeah there was definitely this tangible kind of shift and we felt it yeah and so we kept that up and we we made some plans to go and visit her and her boyfriend and her older son that next weekend yep and so that came really fast and we went out and this is right before things were shutting down with the pandemic but they live a few hours away from us and so as we were getting ready all the stores

18:14started running out of toilet paper and everything shut down and the pandemic hit right like that's that was the week that everything went kind of nuts but yeah it was that wild week right and that week was wild for us for extra reasons too because we started texting with this mother about names and she wanted to name baby together and it was kind of stressed out about it but it worked out really well anyway like there was just so much happening it happened fast so we drove out we took the whole family we went to lunch all together and

18:44then went to a park and our kids played with her son who's he's between our two older sons ages and we just got to talk and just be together and it felt really normal it felt like a good fit and so we spent several hours out there together and it was pretty certain at that point and so we reached out to our our caseworker Kim and told her you know it looks like this is the plan and began

19:19to offer more services to her counseling made counseling available and we got her a lawyer we had a lawyer so that we both had legal representation yeah and then our relationship just progressed via texts and eventually we switched to Facebook Messenger and sent pictures a lot sent little videos a lot and got to know each other pretty well yeah yeah we did go out another time to take her to a

19:51doctor's appointment and the hope was that she and Lynette could go in and do the ultrasound together but because of COVID restrictions when we got there they told us that nobody else could come in but yeah we had lunch again together and spent some time and that was just a couple weeks before baby was due mm-hmm yeah and so we had talked a little bit about what her plan was for when baby was born but our plan was really just to hang tight and hang back and go out

20:22there whenever she asked us to right yeah and I mean we we had imagined and even kind of talked about we're just gonna come when you're getting discharged from the hospital yeah I mean and there were these extra precautions with coven so she really couldn't have people in the hospital and I mean we wanted to give her her space and let her time yeah let her have control over that hospital time and spending time with baby yeah so time passed the due date

20:54came and he did not he was our only baby who was overdue huh yeah he came ten days after ten days late and those ten days agonizing I have so much more sympathy now for women whose pregnancies go longer and yeah we didn't experience the same physical pain but emotionally and mentally like it was so straining I was going nuts yeah we just wanted that little guy to to make it safely here and it was it was stressful but like Lynette mentioned ten days later earlier in the

21:32morning his birth mom reached out to us and said hey my water broke headed to the hospital our son's birth father was at work and where he was working there wasn't really signal or a way to connect with him and so she went to the hospital with her mom and we stayed in touch throughout the day kind of getting updates and it pro well it didn't progress it was very very slow yeah so

22:02luckily her boyfriend was able to make it too yeah so he got off work at like five and to be there with her went to the hospital and he still wasn't coming yeah yeah baby wasn't coming and so they gave the option to do a c-section and he was born right before midnight via c-section yeah and and we were sitting in our bed texting back and forth with birth father and he finally sent this

22:32video of our son just had just been born like he was just about to be away and he was really quiet and they started crying and it was just very surreal feeling it was so surreal it was really neat and it was so sweet that he was keeping us in the loop like that yeah yeah kind of step-by-step mm-hmm and we said well get some sleep get some rest and we'll connect in the morning and see how things are going and the next morning pretty early probably 730 or 8 or so

23:04yeah his birth mom reached out and said hey my boyfriend's super tired like he worked all day he's been up all night and kind of emotionally exhausted too of course yeah and he is gonna head home so you can get some sleep but the hospital said that if he leaves he can't come back until I'm being discharged but they said that if you guys come you can stay but you can't leave until I'm discharged uh-huh and so really quickly we reached out to some friends and asked

23:37if they could take our big three kids for a couple days and we jumped in the car yep and drove out to that hospital and yeah it was incredible so we had to stay in the same room well so we were assigned a room next to mom and we were allowed to be in our room and her room right and we couldn't really go anywhere else in the hospital and obviously we were like wearing masks and stuff too but it was very like isolated yeah and so we basically lived in this

24:13hospital room well yeah so we basically stayed in her room during the day during the day and it was really sweet basically we just talked the whole day and passed baby around and for me I feel like it was one of the easiest transitions and bonding experiences both with an expectant mother now no mother and baby because we were all together in his first few hours it was really neat

24:46we got to really bond with both of them and yeah it was beautiful it was a really special time yeah I remember that first night came and we didn't know what to expect and again we wanted to give her all all the decision power right and said well we want to let you get some sleep what what's your plan for baby like do you want the nursery to have him and bring him to you in the night and she's like you need to get used to having a baby in the middle of the night and I'm gonna get some sleep so she said yeah I mean maybe I'll call you or text

25:16you if I if I felt like like I want to see him and we said absolutely and so we went back to our room and took baby with us and the feelings of parenthood started to sink in I think yeah but yeah it was really really neat we got to spend those three days in the hospital a little yeah a little extra time because of the c-section yeah and really have this special time with both our son and

25:48his first mother and so she signed papers in the hospital before she was discharged and then we wanted her mother and her older son and her boyfriend and everybody to be able to like come and see baby but since they couldn't at the hospital we ended up renting a hotel room during the day like a day hour kind of rental and so we had everybody over at this hotel to see baby and kind of

26:23have a little bit of time all together before we headed back home since we are a few hours away from them and it was really sweet so grandma got to hold baby and birth father to spend a little bit more time and and again like it had the whole time it felt really natural being together being with them was comfortable and even in a situation that was you know pretty emotionally vulnerable for

26:54everyone like it felt really good mm-hmm yeah yeah that was such a neat experience so we brought baby home and by that point when that's parents had picked up our kids from our friends home and we brought baby home and they got to meet or he I guess got to meet his big sister and big brothers and it was an exciting time yeah super sweet he's such a sweet little man we adore him and he is probably spoiled rotten but he's very adored and we love that relationship

27:27that we still have with his birth family too so we got home and I actually ended up starting grad school a couple of months later I forgot to add but Sean is a graduate of a public administration master's program so he got an email saying that they were hoping to get some more applicants because of the pandemic it had been a little sparse and I just heard him tell me that just in passing he wasn't trying to persuade me to apply or anything and I said I'm gonna apply for that program that suddenly feels really right and that is

28:00the program I think I'm supposed to do it's not supposed to be social work it's not supposed to be creative writing it's supposed to be public administration and I applied I got in which frankly I was kind of shocked that it all was so quick and worked out so well and so I'm in a grad school program right now I love it it keeps us busy but it's really been neat to see how everything just clicked into place especially considering how in the beginning I felt like I was giving

28:32all of this up to try one more time to adopt and now I'm so glad right like I can't imagine life without our fourth baby and I'm so grateful that I get to be in school too and it's worked out really nicely with having all of that fit into our lives yeah and you know having that five-year gap was unplanned but also it's been really sweet because the relationship that our older kids have

29:02with him is just really cute and different than the relationships that they had when they were little babies because of the age gap and it's been fun to see them understand more about adoption and and see how our baby came into our family and you know we have a couple pictures that we've posted on Instagram before of our daughter giving hugs to birth moms when they're still expecting and like kisses on their bellies and just kind of just this

29:32understanding of how our family's built and it's been I think just exceptionally sweet to have them witness what happened to them and obviously a little bit different story yeah every story is different but how our family grows so that's our story yeah I would say with our kids I do feel like they did have more questions about their own adoption stories after seeing baby brother's

30:02adoption which I think is really healthy and good but it has been really interesting our six-year-old was never very curious about adoption like would try to say hey look we're visiting with your birth dad or whatever and he'd be like yeah that's cool but it didn't seem to be something he thought much about but after his baby brother was born he was like wait wait wait so now my birth mom is this person right and my birth dad is this person and my birth dad's

30:34mother is this grandma and like wanting to piece it all together in ways that he hadn't really thought much about before and that is also where we started having a little bit more of that challenge of trying to help our kids understand how relationships are all going to look different and they're not going to see their birth family like the exact same amount of times as other siblings might see their birth family and you know just accepting that that does look different for everybody but it's been really neat to have all of their questions and see

31:11them put adoption together more as they've watched baby brother's adoption story unfold. It's been really sweet so that's the story of how we had a pandemic placement and how our family grew to six mm-hmm four kiddos we feel really really fortunate to have our wonderful kids and their wonderful birth families in our lives.

31:42Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the open adoption project so as we mentioned we are wrapping up our first season of the podcast and this is our last episode so we will be taking a brief break for a few weeks. I can't believe that we've been doing this for half of a year already. It's been six months. It has been six months 26 episodes one a week and it's kind of fun like we had this idea for a really long time almost to be I mean there are a

32:12couple reasons we started and we've shared those before but wanted to be able to help the community answer questions that people have and what it's morphed into that I don't know we were really expecting in the beginning was a platform to hear a lot of experiences from all three parts of the adoption triad and I think it's been so sweet to see how it's be to see how it's become what it is right now. Oh me too I absolutely love hearing other people's stories so season two is going to be all about hearing different perspectives we

32:44really want to keep our podcast from being like an echo chamber we want to hear all of these different perspectives we want to hear the good the bad the sad the ugly everything adoption and so so we're already working on season two but of course life is busy so we thought it'd be good to have a little bit of extra time to work on putting season two together to help us get a bit more of a head start since we are actually recording this episode just hours before it comes out and of course that is stressful so we are excited to be

33:14getting a bit ahead of the curve. Yeah we have a few episodes for season two already recorded some great conversations we will continue to interview members of the adoption triad a few more people that have like kind of double connections one of the first that you'll hear in season two is an adoptee who is now an adopted mom we'll also interview more adoption professionals both on the legal side and the social work side and just like Lynette said try

33:48to provide a vast variety of experiences so that we in the adoption community can have a better well-rounded view of what's happening and what people are experiencing. So we will be back on November 8th with our first episode of season two our podcast is available on Amazon Music, Apple podcasts, Audible, Google podcasts, Spotify and Stitcher that is quite a list. That is a long list. Yes so go ahead and subscribe to be updated on when our new episode comes

34:18out in November and stick with us on social media we'll continue to post on Instagram at open adoption project over the next several weeks you'll get some maybe sneak peeks at things coming up and also you'll know when our season launches. Yeah I think Sean's also planning on sharing a little bit about his bone marrow donation this next week as well and so if you're curious you can follow our stories on Instagram and see updates about that. Yep that's happening in two days. Yeah. So the time of this recording. Yeah. All right well thank you

34:50so much for listening to this episode of the open adoption project in addition we would love for you to give us a review on Apple podcasts or on audible during the break. If you don't know how it works if somebody's looking for a podcast if they search adoption or open adoption in any podcast platform or even in Google those that have more ratings or reviews are going to show up higher or first in that search engine optimization list and so we would love to be able to be a

35:23resource to more people and if you're enjoying the podcast if it's been helpful to you please jump on to either of those platforms again Apple or audible and give us a five-star review and comment leave a comment so others can know what experiences you're having. Again thank you so much for listening to the open adoption project podcast and we will see you in November. Thank you so much.

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