About, um, maybe 2 minutes after I wrote my last blog post, the one where I found out that the potential birthmom we had been working with, who our agency was concerned was a scammer, had reclaimed her baby from another adoptive parent... well, I contacted her. At that moment I felt an intense need to explain to her why we hadn't gone forward, to let her know that we didn't have any hard feelings, but we just didn't think she had been ready to make an adoption plan and that we needed to be protected since maybe we also weren't ready to go forward since we had just gone through so much with Olivia in the days before.
I got a message back from her immediately. She had hated the woman she matched with, but it was a last-minute type of thing and kept thinking her feelings would change. When they didn't, she & her husband decided to take the baby back and try to find another placement for her. She asked if we were still interested. So, that set off another couple weeks, maybe just a week, of craziness in our household again. Our agency was really, really adamant that the risk was way too high. I truly think we could have handled the emotional risk, but unfortunately, the financial risk was not something we were able to handle. If she had been in our state, or even in a state that our agency was licensed in, then we probably would have gone forward. We left things on a good note, although she was very, very angry at our agency... but at least we got the "closure" that I seem to crave.
My next update is on sweet Olivia. I must say thank God for open Facebook walls... I had sent a couple of e-mails to Olivia's dad trying to find out what was happening with her, and other than thanking me for sending over some pictures, I never heard anything more from him. About a week or so ago he changed his FB profile picture to a current one of Olivia. His wall said he loved his baby girl, and there was one other picture. My God, she is a doll. She was smiling in one, and in the other she was being held by someone. But, there was nothing else... then Friday there was a post - "I hate court!" and when people asked what for he said to get his daughter back. I checked that page nearly every half hour for another update. Then yesterday evening, I checked again, and he had closed his wall :( Randomly, I clicked on one of his friends, and guess what? they had made a comment on a new post he had made, and I was able to see the post, and the comments (Facebook really sucks, privacy-wise, though for snoops like me - hey, I used to work for a PI, it is a godsend)... anyway, he said "thank God I got my daughter - full custody."
Could you imagine if we had tried to stop him? First, how wrong it would be since he obviously wasn't in favor of adoption, and second, Olivia is now three months old - three months of legal fighting... losing her was so hard after two days... we can't even imagine after 3 months... we feel peace, once again, and I know that she is with family that loves and cherishes her.
So now we're back to square one. We've had very few hits on our website, though our letter has been sent out about 18 times since January. I'm adding our links to any free adoption sites out there, and on one message board a young woman left her e-mail address and asked me to contact her, but she never responded back again. That was a week ago... I'm trying to get our name out there, but it seems so futile sometimes.
I try to keep this blog and my adoption networking efforts separate, but if you'd like to Like our Facebook page, I'd really appreciate it. You can send me an e-mail to dragonflybride at gmail dot com, and I'll send you the link...
