This weekend felt like the first day of spring after a long hard winter.  The sun was high in the sky with a cool breeze blowing.  The air felt light and there was no humidity.  It was the first time I can recall that it was not cold and raining during the Cherry Blossom Festival.  While it would have been nice to go out and take pictures of the brilliant blooms at their peak, I did not relish the thought of competing with my fellow humans.  I prefer a solitary existence or at least an existence where there are no crowds. 

But, I had cabin fever and needed to get out of the house as much as a bear needs to get out after a long hibernation.  My son has been alive for five months now and had yet to experience the great outdoors.  I suppose that is the problem with being born in the winter.  On Saturday I had an appointment to get a haircut so I decided to pack the family into the car and take them along.  After the necessary grooming, we walked across the street to a restaurant for an equally necessary meal.  It seemed to me that every parent who’s child was born around the same time as ours had the same idea.  The dining room quickly filled with strollers, high chairs, car seats and infants from the age of three months to one year.   

After the sustenance and baby watching, we walked a block down to the park along the river.  This is the park where Jennifer and I would come on dates when we first started courting.  My goal was to enjoy some sun and fresh air and to take pictures of Andrew outside since all the pictures so far have not only been indoors, but most have been inside our house.

Andrew was a bit cranky and seemed a little warm as I held him.  He often feels warm to me and I assumed the runny nose and cough were the leftovers of the respiratory infection he had that put him in the hospital.

He was cranky all night long and awoke frequently.  Sunday morning, as we were getting ready for church, I picked him up and noticed that he felt warmer than the day before.  The thermometer had his temperature at 102 degrees.  We called the pediatrician, who fortunately has office hours on the weekends as well as weekdays and nights.  She asked us to come into the office.  We noticed he was also struggling to breathe.  The doctor proclaimed, and we agreed, that this was a new virus and not the one he had before.  The symptoms were completely different from the previous illness.  He had never had a fever or runny nose with the other infection.  The doctor was at a loss as to what to do because he had just finished 10 days of antibiotics so she told us to go home and watch him.  She said she would call in the evening to check on him.  As we were packing up to leave the office she remarked on a whim that maybe we should give him a flu test.  Five minutes later, Andrew was diagnosed with the flu.  The doctor was excited about this because now she had something she could treat.  We picked up a prescription of Tamiflu from the pharmacy on our way home.  So far he has not gotten any worse and his fever has gone down - all good signs.

Today, Andrew’s pre-school emailed to inform the parents that three people (not including Andrew) had contracted the flu.

Andrew has been sick for about 6 weeks now. It started out as what seemed to be a cold and developed into a viral infection of the lungs affecting his breathing. At first, we were not too concerned. He had just started daycare and we figured that catching a cold was pretty normal. When it didn’t clear up in two weeks, we took him to the doctor. He didn’t have a fever and was laughing and energetic, so she told us to just watch him and bring him back if he got worse.

The next week he started having trouble breathing and the doctor prescribed a nebulizer treatment. The week after, he continued to get worse and the doctor added a steroid treatment. The following week, when he was not responding to any of the treatments, she told us to go to the emergency room. He was clearly in respiratory distress at 70 breaths per minute and an O2 level of 90%. To make matters worse he is about 20% underweight.

We spent a long week in the hospital worrying about out little boy. They put him on oxygen, a diuretic, and a breathing treatment. It took him about a day to stabilize and the rest of the week to be weaned off the oxygen. Once his breathing came down to 40 breaths per minute and he was able to keep his oxygen level up on room air, they released him from the hospital. He is still wheezing and very congested and while we are grateful to not be in the hospital anymore, we are still concerned that he still has this infection. Our doctor said if he does not improve in the next few days she will consult with a pulmonologist.

It has been a crazy and stressful March and I hope that April will be a bit calmer. All the stress has finally gotten to me. In the last few days I have started having panic attacks, which is something I have not had in a while.

Having a baby through adoption is different than having a biological baby. For one thing, you don’t have a baby growing inside your wife for nine months so you don’t get attached to the baby as it develops in the womb. How will you instantly love this little person right after birth when you have never even experienced so much as feeling a kick, hearing the heartbeat, watching your wife’s belly (and baby) grow or sensing the anxiety about what you will do when your wife’s water breaks.

It is also different because the baby is genetically different than you and will not have your nose or her eyes or anyone’s hair. To make matters worse, you have no insight or control over his inherited medical issues. People will be able to see that this is not your baby. He is not made up from parts of you and therefore you have no biological or natural claim to it. 

Although I knew that whatever baby came into our life, that was the baby we were meant to have and raise, I still had these fears and thoughts about adoption. I thought when a baby was born, that I would have a detached sense of responsibility towards him that would over time grow into love. I also wondered if I would ever feel like he was truly my son since I had not created him and he was not biologically part of me. 

When I met the birth parents five weeks before Andrew was born, I was surprised at the similar personalities, educational backgrounds, career paths and ethnic heritage. This proved to solidify my belief that Andrew truly was the baby that we were meant to raise. The ethnic similarities gave me confidence that he would have similar features to my wife and me and allayed my concerns that he would not be biologically or genetically ours. The parallel personalities, educational backgrounds and career paths were eerily alike and made me think that I might have it all wrong. In essence, it was as if God was saying to make you believe that I have selected this child for you, I will show you traits of yourself in the birth parents. 

Andrew at 1 Day Old

We were in the waiting room during the delivery. Once Andrew was born, the nurse brought us back to meet him. As I saw him through the glass of the window of the nursery, my heart dissolved. That was MY son I was looking at. Immediately, our futures flashed before my eyes and I saw pictures of him crawling, talking, cheerios and goldfish, pumpkin carvings, playing catch in the back yard, going camping, his first date, his first car (panic attack), graduation, Halloween costumes, Christmas, and him growing up to be an old man. I didn’t have to wait for the love to grow over time; I was already in love. 

We were fortunate in that, we were given our own private room at the hospital. Andrew stayed with us in our room and the doctors and nurses came to talk to us about whatever needed to be discussed or decisions needed to be made. It made us feel as if we were the ones who had given birth. 

Andrew at 10 Weeks Old

Now, 11 weeks later, I love him with all my heart and there is no question in my mind that he is MY son just as if I had created him.

We spent exactly two weeks in Dallas although at the time it seemed like an eternity. Legally speaking, we could not leave the Republic of Texas; practically speaking, we were confined to our two room suite for a fortnight. The building was old and the furniture was worn and depressing, and the television, with its limited selection of channels didn’t do much to help with the confinement. The worst thing was that the hotel’s internet connection was worthless. The weather was getting cold and Andrew was just a week old so we did not want to take him out unless we had to. I used my points and got the entire stay for free so I was not in a position to complain or change hotels. Plus, the staff at the hotel was very pleasant and made us feel welcome.

It was an unusual feeling spending four days in the hospital with people who until a few weeks ago you didn’t know. It’s also hard to describe the emotions of bonding with someone you don’t know very well over something as intimate as a child. During our time with them in the hospital, we got to better understand their relationship and their reasons for placing Andrew for adoption. This gave me confidence that they would go through with the adoption when the time came. They both also kept saying to us that we were the only people they would want raising Andrew, which made us feel like they saw in us what we see in ourselves as parents.

It was a good thing we were in Dallas because we had to print documents, have them notarized and mail them off to the attorney. I tried doing this at the hotel but I was unsuccessful because of the internet issues. We decided to go my Dallas office where I could have the office manager help me. She was great and took care of everything. All I had to do was sign on the dotted line. My staff in Dallas got to meet Andrew and promptly started to rub it in to my staff back home. Needless to say, my staff back home is now jealous and really wants to meet him. I also went into the office another couple of days just to do work. The rest of the time I worked from the hotel room.

We spent the rest of the time making trips to doctors and getting supplies at Target which was conveniently located across the highway. I was eager to start my new life and new routine back in my comfortable and familiar house.

As anyone could imagine, it has been a stressful and exciting two weeks since Andrew was born. We spent four days in the hospital with Andrew.

The nurses were very nice and went against hospital protocol and gave us our own room. We kept Andrew with us in our room. When the nurses came to check on him they talked to us as if we were his parents even though at that point, legally we were not. My wife says it made her feel as if she had given birth to Andrew herself and made the whole experience richer for the both of us.

On the second day in the hospital, we ran into a legal glitch that got me worried. The national adoption agency we are using contracted with a local agency to handle all the paperwork for the adoption and be the agency of record. This local agency didn’t like our paperwork and wanted us to have our home study re-done. Our adoption specialist made a few phone calls and then called me to tell me that we needed to change horses in the middle of the race. They said that instead of doing an agency adoption as planned, we would do a private adoption. They got us in touch with the lawyer who would handle everything. He explained the differences between agency and private adoptions. A private adoption has less rules which works in our favor but it also has more risk. We were planning on taking on that risk anyway so we agreed to go this route.

On the third day, the doctor told us that Andrew has a hole in his heart called a “VSD”. The cardiologist said that it will likely close up by itself but that it is something that should be monitored until it does. We also found out that he has two blockages in his arteries which are also common defects in newborns. These are also expected to improve as he grows. The cardiologist spent time making sure we understood that there was nothing to be concerned about. Naturally, I still worry, but I try to remind myself of the doctors words.

Everyone was released from the hospital on the fourth day. The birth parents signed over guardianship and custody of Andrew over to us. I got my camera out and took a few pictures of everyone and then we hugged and went our separate ways. Since then we have been living in a hotel in Dallas waiting for approval from the state to allow us to leave.

Living in a hotel, in particular this hotel, has been quite depressing. I am eager to get back home where we will all be more comfortable. I am also eager to get back to my routines so feel like I have my life back. This state of limbo has made me feel gloomy. I think some of the sadness also has to do with the stress of a new life change.