The Mysterious Magic 8 Ball

0:00Welcome to the Open Adoption Project. We're the Nelsons. I'm Lynette. And I'm Sean. In this episode, we'll be sharing experiences we had leading up to our second adoption, including some things that we did to spread the word and network. We'll also share a true story of a legitimate, omnipotent magic eight-ball.

0:39Where we left off in our adoption journey story was at the end of episode six, we were talking about how we were really hoping to have our children close together in age. And so our daughter turned one and we got approved to adopt immediately. And we were really hoping that our next baby would be born pretty close since we both have siblings who are close to our age. We were really hoping for that camaraderie for our children.

1:11And with our first adoption in all, from the time we were home study approved or approved with our agency to the time we adopted was about nine months. So I think we were probably anticipating maybe that long of a wait, but probably optimistically hoping that it would be a lot faster than that. Yeah, I think I was expecting it to be pretty fast. And honestly, we got approved and just a couple of weeks later, we got contacted by a really cute, pretty young expectant mother. Yeah. So this expectant couple actually, her boyfriend was involved as well, reached out through our agency

1:49and through our caseworker saying that she had pretty much narrowed it down to two families and she wanted to get to know us and the other family before she made a decision. It was really a familiar kind of story. I think we were pretty hopeful that it might work out. And she was expecting a girl and we were like, oh, it'd be so fun to have little girls so close in age. Yeah, she was due like three or four months later, I think. And so we got to know them. We met up at an agency and we went out to dinner a separate time

2:21and spent some time together getting to know one another. So when we originally met this expectant mother, we met at the same, actually the same building that we met our daughter's birth mom. Yeah, it was the same location. Yeah, it was kind of feeling like, wow, this is really familiar. We were here not too long ago and maybe it will have the same outcome. For that meeting, we knew that we'd be meeting with her. I think that we knew the birth father couldn't be there because of work or something like that.

2:52We took them a few little gifts to know that we had been thinking about them. We gave her a journal and I think we even had it like embossed or something on the front that said like my journey in adoption or something like that. Yeah, we put a lot of thought into these gifts and it wasn't like we spent a lot of money, but we did put a lot of thought into the gifts. We're going to talk more about that in a moment. It seemed like it went well. I don't feel like we thought it went badly.

3:24I would say we probably didn't feel that same instant connection that we felt with our daughter's birth parents. Even when we went out to dinner, I think really what was happening was you and I really wanted to have another child. We wanted to have another child that was close to our daughter's age. We were hoping that it would at some point feel right. We tried to facilitate or foster more experiences of either getting together or texting one another to maybe help that feeling happen.

3:55Yeah. But it never really did. No. This mother wanted to name the baby or she wanted to at least name the baby together. It's funny, we really didn't feel good at that point about doing that. We felt really strongly about naming our kids, which is funny because with our fourth child, we actually did end up naming him with his birth parents. Definitely did that together. Yeah, it was fun. But at that point, we didn't feel good about it and we were honest. Fortunately, we were upfront about how we weren't comfortable with that.

4:26Ultimately, it ended up being a deal breaker for her and she didn't choose us. She chose a different family. But I mean, going back to those past episodes where we've talked about this, we have to remember that in the grand scheme, this wasn't our child. It was really good to be honest and upfront about that. I remember having some cognitive dissonance about it at the time, just thinking, oh, maybe we shouldn't care so much about naming our children ourselves.

4:57But ultimately, this wasn't our child and I don't think it would have worked out even if we had tried to bend and be more flexible on that. As hard as it was to come to terms with that, I think pretty quickly we realized this isn't our baby and it's going to be OK. We'll just wait and it'll be all right. Well, and that contact happened so fast that we were still pretty optimistic that something right would happen soon.

5:27Oh, also about gifts. We do feel like it was really hard for this expectant mom to tell us that she was not going to place with us. Yeah. In fact, I think our caseworker even called us and said, hey, she's already made her mind up and she's chosen the other family. But she hasn't told you that. Just know that and make it easy for her to tell you that. Yeah, she was really struggling with knowing how to tell us. And we've wondered if part of that had to do with those gifts that we gave her that were meaningful and sentimental,

6:01but maybe made her feel a little coerced, even though they weren't monetarily valuable. So this is our soapbox. We really suggest not getting expensive gifts and not even getting super sentimental gifts at this point in adoption. I would keep it super simple. Flowers, anything edible, something homemade maybe, but like simple, low value, like homemade cookies. Yeah. The last thing we want to do is make someone feel like they have to make a decision based on on a gift or a material item.

6:38Yeah. Well, and I felt so bad that she had such a hard time telling us. We could tell it was a real struggle for her. And so we really did learn from that to simplify gifts. Don't worry about making it super sentimental at that point, maybe at placement or like at a one year birthday party or anniversary. You could do something a little more sentimental. Yeah, I think placement is definitely a better venue for something like that. So be cautious with giving gifts is what we learned from that.

7:10So we'll get off of the soapbox about gifts. So we had that first contact and after that there was nothing. Radio silence. Like really, we didn't even hear from scammers, which for those who might not know, there are adoption scammers out there. There's a lot of different reasons that people use adoption as a platform for scamming. For some, it's a way to gain like monetary benefits.

7:41Sometimes people will pretend to be an expectant parent, say things that they're in need of and somehow get those things without really meeting parents. And or there are people who emotionally want to kind of catfish people or play with people. And unfortunately, that's really sad, but somewhat prevalent in the adoption community. Yes, it's pretty common. We were contacted by a couple of scammers our first time adopting. And luckily, the agency was really good at helping us recognize when someone was most likely a scammer.

8:18But we didn't even hear from scammers the second time. Like it was silence for about 18 months. We didn't hear from anyone after that first expectant mother. That wait felt really hard and we know that some people wait for so much longer to adopt. Way longer than that. And we know there are silences that are longer than that. And it's awful. We have sympathy for that. We haven't experienced waits longer than 18 months. We've been really lucky.

8:48It was a hard thing to wait for that long. And if you have loved ones who are waiting for a long time to adopt, no matter how long it is, it's hard. Yeah, we've had friends and acquaintances that we know that have waited a really long time. And it's really difficult. In the end, the solace is the right baby, the right child will come to your family. Waiting for that child is really difficult.

9:19But in the end, the way that it works out is the way that it's supposed to work out. And it's beautiful. It's really easy to say that in hindsight, but in the moment, it's really hard. So in the moment, you need to do things to occupy yourself. You need to do things that will help you cope emotionally and mentally that will help you not think about adoption 24-7. For me, probably just, I don't know, a few months after we were approved that second time, I was going crazy.

9:51Looking at different statistics on people that had visited our websites, it was just kind of overwhelming me. And my thoughts and everything I did revolved around adoption. And so I remember Lynette and I were talking about ways that we could pick a new hobby or do something that would help. And I started running. So that's when I got back into running. I loved running in middle school and high school, but took a really long break. And that has been a really good thing for me emotionally, mentally since.

10:23And so, you know, for the last seven years or so, that's been a big part of my life. And it really did help me cope and think about something else other than waiting for another baby. I actually love running too, but I did not pick that hobby up at that point in time. And in fact, I don't think I had any hobbies other than hanging out with our daughter. And so I loved hanging out with her, but I was pretty much obsessing over adoption all the time.

10:54I was blogging a lot, as we mentioned a couple of episodes ago, and pouring all of my feelings out onto the Internet. I really didn't do much to preoccupy myself with other things. I did plan a media blitz. Our caseworker suggested that we look at a media blitz to get the word out that we were hoping to adopt in hopes of networking and maybe finding a birth family that way.

11:25So when you say media blitz, what do you mean? So a media blitz is when you have a lot of information about something and post it in a short period of time, in a short window, and make it a kind of celebration or promotion ordeal. I don't know. And so we planned our media blitz to be what we called Adoption Week. And when I say we, this was mostly me. Definitely, definitely not me.

11:55This was kind of my brainchild and my coping mechanism during this wait. When I was still in school, I was working full time. You weren't in school? Oh yeah, you were still in school. I'm in my undergrad. Yeah, that's crazy. Yep. And so I was obsessed with this media blitz and with other endeavors, but we figured the media blitz might actually be a helpful idea for others. And so we'll share that instead of all of the other projects I had that probably aren't very helpful.

12:25So we planned this Adoption Week. We talked to different family members, including our daughter's birth mom. And they made different things for us. We had a family member who had a chocolate company and donated chocolates for our media week. We had my mom make some baby blankets. My sister made some cute crafts like wall decor and a bag. Your brother made? Yeah, I have a brother who's a really good woodworker and he made beautiful jewelry boxes.

12:58We had family members donate a couple of different DVDs and CDs. We had a friend from the Adoption World who had a really cute Etsy shop and donated some earrings that she made. And I feel like there were a couple of other things. It was a great little campaign week where we had these four different giveaways with things all donated by loved ones. And we posted every day that week a different educational post. Most of them were guest posts. So we had our caseworker make a post about adoption, like 101.

13:34We had some friends post about positive adoption language, some friends post about infertility, others about open adoption. And we tried to just make it this celebration educational week. And I had a lot of fun planning it. It was a great activity for me. I'm not sure if it actually benefited anybody, but the giveaways were fun. It was fun to post something online without feeling super obnoxious because there was a giveaway, so there's something in it for other people.

14:08And yeah, it was a lot of fun. It was a great way to distract myself and feel like I was doing something that might help us build our family. During the waiting time, again, finding meaningful things to do with your time. Picking a hobby, finding a skill, doing something that will help you cope is a really important thing to do. Yeah, I wouldn't recommend being completely obsessed with adoption like I was. But you could take the media blitz idea, and it would need to be modified now.

14:41This was eight years ago, nine years ago. Yeah, it was eight or nine years ago. And so it was a while ago, and so it was mostly based on my blog. Obviously, you'd want to modify this now. Because social media was nothing like it is today. Not at all. So you could do a lot of fun different things now with YouTube. And I don't even know what you could do. You could do really cool stuff. For sure. It is a fun idea, I think, if you want a distraction that's not going to completely distract you.

15:12But I do recommend, like Sean was talking about, about finding a good hobby or something to focus on outside of adoption that you enjoy. So time had passed, and we probably were becoming a little bit more discouraged. Tried to try to stay positive as we could. We looked forward to fun things and life events in our life, like buying our first home and spending all of our money on that first home. Yeah, we bought our first house and literally had no money in the bank for the first couple of weeks while we were waiting for that first paycheck.

15:50It was fun, though. But we moved into this nice neighborhood and we really liked our house. Really nice neighbors. It was a great place. We did have neighbors that had lots of kids. And I remember my daughter would go outside and play by herself, and I always just felt so sad watching her out alone. And hearing so many kids everywhere else. She was a little too young, really, to go play with other kids outside of our yard. But I remember wondering if that would just be how our family was and if that would be what I needed to get used to and be okay with and happy with.

16:29In our very first episode, we had talked about how you and I wanted like eight kids. And obviously our perspective and our expectations had shifted by this point. But I think we both still thought, you know, maybe there will be more than one. But it was definitely a thought and conversation that we had. Yeah, because being an only child is something we didn't really have personal experience with. And we wanted to do the best for our daughter. And so it was something that we were thinking about, wondering if that would be our family's story.

17:04And maybe we were starting to feel a little bit okay with that. I think we were starting to. Like, I remember feeling maybe a little sadness about the idea still, but more acceptance too. Yeah. Yeah. So we had just bought this home and we needed to update our home study. So our caseworker came on a Friday afternoon and, you know, did the thing, toured the house, made sure everything was safe, that we had our fire extinguisher and fire alarms, those type of things.

17:40Carbon monoxide detectors. And we had a good conversation. And I remember asking her, have you heard of anybody thinking about us or have anybody asked any questions about us? She was open with us and sadly, no, there was no updates. And we were like, okay, thanks. And it was always fun to be with her. We always had pleasant visits, but it was also kind of like, man, all right. Well, I really do remember starting to think about maybe we shouldn't be approved anymore.

18:12Maybe we should just find happiness where we are. In that long way, it was so hard to be hoping for more, but not wanting our daughter to feel like we weren't happy with her and like she wasn't enough. I mean, she was so young. I don't think she would really translate those feelings. But there were definitely the feelings that we were having for her. Yeah. And we didn't want her to feel inadequate because obviously she's enough. We just were so unsure about what we should be doing.

18:45And so I remember she left our home after that home study and I felt so conflicted, like maybe we should just take our names off the list, get off this roller coaster of waiting and just be happy with where we are. And so we actually went on a date that very next night, Saturday night, and it was a major budget date because I mean, I know it's really classless to talk about how we were broke, but we were broke. And so we went to Target for our date and just walked around, didn't buy anything.

19:18I think this was after we went to dinner or something. I don't think we did anything. I really don't. Maybe we had a gift card. I don't know. We went to Target and just walked around and we ended up in the toy section and found this magic eight ball. And I was like, what? My mom always thought magic eight balls were like the devil's toy. And so I was like, oh, these are fun. I never got to really play with them.

19:48And so we picked up the magic eight ball and started asking it questions. So the first question we said was, OK, magic eight ball, will we have a baby in the next year? And it was like all signs point to yes. I think it was like most certainly it was something very definitive. Yeah. And then I then we looked at each other and said, you know, magic eight ball, will we have a baby in the next month? And I think it was just a yes with an exclamation point that time.

20:18And our last question was, well, will we have a baby in the next week? And we're just laughing at this point because we really were so disillusioned. But we said, well, we have a baby in the next week. And it said it is possible. Right? No, it was like definitive, like absolutely or something. No, it wasn't. Was it? Yeah. I thought it was a possibility. No, I remember it being. And we laughed. Right. Like it says, yeah, we're going to have one a baby in the next few days.

20:48And we were just like, let's put all of our trust in this plastic ball that has water in it. And some crazy dice or something inside. Yep. And so we had a good laugh about that and went home. Then Monday came and I went to work like a normal Monday. And at about 10 o'clock in the morning, my telephone rang and I saw that it was our caseworker. My first thought was, well, maybe she forgot to ask us something on Friday when she was at our house. Or maybe there's some other background check or something else that was out of date that we needed to update.

21:24But instead, she said, hey, there was a baby boy born this morning and his birth parents had not picked a family yet. And we're wondering if it's OK with you to show your profile on such short notice. And I said, I am sure that that's fine. Let me let me call Lynette real quick. Yeah. Why didn't she call me? Because everyone knows I never kept my phone on me. You never answered your phone. So I called Lynette and she answered.

21:55And we talked about it for just a second. And I called back our caseworker and said, yeah, go ahead and take our take our profile. And she had shared a little bit more information about the situation. And we were like, OK, we'll see what happens. Several hours later, about two o'clock in the afternoon, my phone rang again. It was her calling back to say that they had taken a handful of profiles. They took a binder of profiles. That's right. By the way, this was old school. Back in the day. I mean, it really wasn't that long ago, but apparently they still were using a binder.

22:27So we had scrapbook pages that we made as part of getting approved. And we're not I mean, I think we might be a little artsy, but we're not scrapbook kind of artsy. Definitely not scrapbook artsy. No, no, no. And so we had these hideous scrapbook pages. They were fluorescent. I remember that. They were neon. Yeah. It was like neon pink with some pictures glued on it and then a neon green page. Anyway, they weren't great. So they took that scrapbook with our page front and back with pictures about us. Plus a bunch of other families. Yeah. Right.

22:58And two o'clock comes around. Caseworker calls back and says, hey, they have narrowed it down to two families. And you are one of the two that they would like to meet with tonight in the hospital. So can you meet at the hospital at about seven o'clock? We're like, OK, yeah, we'll be there. And yeah, we were freaking out, right? Because what if magic eight balls actually work? Right. And what if this was happening? And then, of course, the other side of our minds was like, this isn't going to happen, right?

23:32We are about ready to give up on this plan of having another child. Well, and yeah, and the situation just seemed so crazy, right? Like this baby was already born that morning. Like he was here. It was this wasn't like, hey, I'm expecting a baby in four months and there's going to be this four month long roller coaster of emotions. But no, this was ours. And so Lynette had made probably two dozen homemade cookies. Yeah. Yeah, I made some cookies. I had to borrow some flour from our neighbor.

24:05She was the sweetest neighbor. We had a very sweet neighbor. And so we told her what was going on and she was so excited for us and was praying for us. Sweet, sweet grandma. Yeah, she was the best. We love her so much. In addition to the cookies, I bought a small bouquet of flowers from the store. Yeah, like supermarket flowers. They weren't crazy, but they were nice. And we drove to the hospital, which was about a half an hour away from our home. And as we arrived, we met our caseworker in the lobby and I can remember walking through the halls of that hospital and like feeling my heartbeat in my ears and like like my chest was pounding.

24:46Just so nervous. We were so nervous. I mean, I think we've talked before about how it can be the blind first date kind of vibes when you're meeting an expectant parent. And it's not a perfect comparison, but it's this butterfly anxious, terrified kind of feeling. And we were just, yeah, and I think we were wired. I think we knew at the end of the day, literally at the end of that day, they were going to choose either us or another family to be the parents of this baby who was there that was already born.

25:21And so I think that just added to our anxiety and emotions at this point. So our caseworker showed us to the room. And as we walked in, all of the family of the birth mom was in the room and they all hugged us and said hi to us. And there was just this amazing feeling in the room of almost deja vu, like we had known these people before, like they were family, like this kinship.

25:56It was really an interesting feeling. I've never experienced anything like that before or since where we just felt this connection. And then we met these birth parents and even more so it just magnified this feeling of I know you and I love you. And that's really weird because I don't know you. But it felt like we did. And it was just this emotional but beautiful moment of meeting this family.

26:31And I think within moments of entering the room, even maybe the moment we went in and felt that, a lot of our anxiety and those nerves kind of melted away. Yeah, it really dissipated as we felt this connection. It was an amazing, surreal experience. It's hard to articulate. So we sat down and they started eating Lynette's cookies and we started talking. And it felt like Lynette mentioned just so comfortable, so right.

27:01And after, I don't know, I can't remember. Time is just really weird in that memory. I can't. Like being on happy gas at the dentist. Yeah. Probably shouldn't keep that in. Maybe. But yeah, so after a little bit of time, the birth father leaned over to our son's birth mom. And said, like whispered in her ear, I really like these guys. I'm like, loud enough that we heard.

27:32And right after that they asked us if they wanted us to, if we wanted to hold him. And we were like, yes, but no. Yes, if you're going to pick us. But no, if you're not. We didn't say that. That was obviously the feelings that we had. We said yes. Yeah, and so they brought in this sweet little really blonde haired baby boy. He had white hair.

28:02It was so cute. And they let us hold him. And I can remember looking into his little eyes and just thinking, this is my son. I felt the same feelings. It was really an amazing, incredible experience. It was so beautiful. Just, we've talked in one of our episodes about bonding and how the experience was different with each of our kids. But this experience really was this instant connection, I think for both of us, where it just happened.

28:38We knew that he was supposed to be ours. But at the same time, we didn't know because they hadn't told us yet. But we really felt it deep inside. Yeah, so we spent some time there. We gave them lots of hugs and wished them the best. And we left. And we got home. And I said, I'm setting up the crib. And Lynette looked at me and she's like, you are going to jinx us. And I said, we had a magic eight ball. Tell us we're having a baby. Just jokingly.

29:08But I mean, I felt really confident that I felt confident, too. But I really did think you were going to jinx us. I know. But I did set up the crib. And then we went to bed late and we were just laying in bed wide awake. Luckily, the technology hadn't been created yet where you can like snooze your phone from different times of the night. And right before midnight, my phone rings and it's our son's birth father.

29:38And he said, I'm so sorry to call you guys so late at night, but we just had to tell you tonight that we know you're his parents. And we're ready to sign papers tomorrow morning. We just kind of like we're in shock for a little bit. Obviously, so happy like expressing our love on the phone. But then after hanging up, it was like, we're having a baby tomorrow. What do we do? And so we called our parents, called our parents late at night and told them the exciting news.

30:09And it was so exciting. It was surreal. I remember texting one of our family friends and saying that we were going to have a boy the next day. And the wife in this this couple texted us back and said, Hey, I just sorted out our old baby clothes and was getting ready to donate some. And I have them in bags by sizes and we'll drop them off at your house tomorrow. It was amazing. We had we still do, but we had amazing friends that really blessed us and helped us in this last minute adoption.

30:42It was incredible. It really was. We woke up the next day and went to the hospital with our daughter to she came to meet her baby brother. And we had a really, really sweet and simple placement. Again, the feelings that Lynette described when we walked into that room the first time, those feelings of connection and family and familiarity were there and were really strong. And it just felt so right.

31:13It was a really beautiful experience and just incredible. And so we now were a family of four. We started to figure out how that was going to work out. Also, we really do need to add the rest of the story about the magic eight ball after baby was born and we adopted him. Sean actually went back to Target and tried to find the exact same magic eight ball. We will assume that he got the same one.

31:44I'm sure it was the same one. Yeah. Yeah. And so he actually bought that magic eight ball so that our son could keep it as a momentum of the one omnipotent magic eight ball in the world. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Open Adoption Project. We'll be back with a new episode next week. And until then, enjoy listening and please share with your friends and family members who are part of the adoption community.

32:22Thanks so much.

32:52You.

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