Our Adoption Story

I am so excited to write about Hudson's adoption story today. I will tell you everything I can tell you . . . but we won't be getting into the details about his birth mother. We discussed what we felt comfortable sharing on the blog and what we decided is that, just like everything else around this manor we are more than happy to share our lives and stories . . . but his birth mother has the right to keep her story for herself. So you will hear everything about our experience but again, not too much about his birth mother. What we can tell you about her is . . . that she is truly one of the most amazing people we have met and that we do plan on having on going contact with her throughout the years!

We were so very very lucky, our Homestudy was over in April but then it takes about a month to type up the final approval by our social worker. Then we had to decide on where we were going to adopted from. Programs open and close all over the world so we needed to decide on a plan. Haiti was an option for a while (but they required that we both be over 30 and I am still 29), Africa was an option but the wait list was a bit long for us, and USA was an option as well but the cost put it out of our reach. Because an adoption from the US to Canada is an international adoption we would have to pay our agency up here and an agency in the US so almost twice the cost of a local adoption from BC.  The only reason we didn't choose BC right away was because we were told the wait times can be very long. We took all of May to decide and by May 28th we had decided to pursue local adoption and submitted our local fee and our profile.

June 12th we were chosen! 

Hudson was born on a Wednesday night but we didn't find out about him until Thursday morning. On Wednesday night I was falling asleep (Lee was already well into a deep sleep as usual), and the name Hudson popped into my head. I have no idea why? Maybe I was thinking of a Canadian Store (The Hudson's Bay Company) I really have no idea, that had never been one of our hypothetical "baby names" before. I woke Lee up and asked what he thought of the name Hudson he said he liked it (half asleep still) and that was it. The very next morning, Thursday morning, around 10:00 am we got a call from our agency saying we had been chosen by a birth mom for a baby boy born last night! I KNEW it was Hudson!

I was told a bunch of info over the phone . . . all I could think of was Baby Hudson. As soon as I got off the phone with the agency I phoned Lee.
Tears streaming down my face, a frog so big in my throat I wondered if I could even get the words out . . . Lee picked up and I managed to get out "We were picked"  and what do I get in response from Lee "That's great!!! For What??" haha Still crying I was able to squeak out . . . "For a baby!"
Then it all clicked and I heard "Oh . . . Wow . . . seriously? . . . wow"

We thought we might have to pick him up that day and to be honest that's how we would have liked to have done it. But because this wasn't a long standing plan in place, the agency and Hudson's birth mother thought it was best to keep him in the Hospital for the weekend so that everyone was sure that this was the right thing to do.
So in the hospital he stayed until Monday. We hoped we would be able to take him home on Monday but the social worker wasn't sure that his Birth mother was 100% in her decision yet. So to protect us Hudson went into a care home.
I will always appreciate our social workers concern for our well being. In BC a birth mother has 30 days from the date of birth to revoke her consent, and everyone wants to avoid placing a baby with an adoptive family then removing the baby because consent has been revoked.
And so started the longest 3 days of my life.

On Wednesday we heard that everyone was comfortable with us taking him home and that Friday morning we were to go and pick up our son!!
One small problem . . . Friday was my sister's wedding day! So we asked if we could pick him up in the afternoon after her wedding and of course that was just fine. I will always be amazed by my sister's grace that day. I was a little afraid to tell her . . . but she was nothing but happy and excited to share her wedding day with Hudson!

This is a scanned version of a photograph given to us by the beautiful woman who took care of Hudson for those first 5 days out of the hospital. This is the very first time we saw him (keep in mind I am in a gown because we had just come from my sister's wedding).

So at this point 9 days after his birth, we still had 21 days to go. I want to be honest with you so I will tell you that while those 21 days were some of the best days of my life they were also some of the worst. Looking at those sweet cheeks and knowing that at any moment the call could come and he would no longer be ours was beyond scary. I experienced a type of anxiety that I didn't even know could exist. It was a pulse pounding, stomach turning, hole in your heart kind of anxiety. I still am not sure how we made it through . . . but we did.

Once we met Hudson's Birth mom in our first meet up I felt instantly at ease. So much of the fear fell away. I almost felt silly for worrying so much. Meeting her was truly one of the highlights of this entire experience.

In BC it takes 6 months after placement to fully "adopted" your child, so come December we will have an adoption party for Hudson and he will, in the legal sense, be apart of our family. But in every other sense he already is!

Seriously,  no one warned me of the tidal wave of emotions that comes from seeing your husband hold your son. It's amazing! 

So that's it . . . our whirlwind adventure. I wouldn't change a single moment. I might give my sister her wedding day but other than that it was all perfect. And a cool story "we picked you up on Auntie Kris's wedding day!"

We both wanted to thank everyone for their love and prayers and well wishes. We were amazed at the out pouring of support for us and our little family. Mini Manor readers really know how to make a couple feel loved! Thank you, sharing this journey with you has made it even more special.