Our first meeting!

I apologize to all of our friends and family who have been patiently (or not so patiently) waiting for an update on our recent phone call. I know you’re interested in how things went, so here you go…

Before I begin, I’ll let you know that Heidi and Brandon are the birth parents and Michelle is the paternal grandma. This will make my story-telling a little easier.

“A little anxious” does not even begin to describe how I felt on Tuesday. Throughout the entire day, I kept thinking about the possible conversations that would take place that night. Thankfully, my work schedule was a little busy in the afternoon, so the time flew by. I knew that they would probably be feeling just as nervous, but that didn’t ease my nerves at all. When I got home from work, I changed into really comfortable clothes and sat quietly for about 15 minutes. Matt can tell you that to have me sit quietly for that long is almost a miracle. It was nice to just be still and focus my thoughts…an episode of The Office helped too.

At 5:30pm, we turned off the TV, gathered everything together, and said a prayer. Dialing the phone was exciting and scary, all at the same time. Michelle picked up and we talked with her for about 30 minutes. She described Brandon and Heidi and a little about their situation. At one point, she stopped and apologized for “rambling” and told us how nervous she was. What a relief!! We told her that we were just as nervous, and everyone seemed to feel a lot better after that. She then put Heidi on the phone (Brandon wasn’t able to be there). We all asked each other questions, and shared a little about ourselves. We were pretty excited to learn more about their family since we didn’t have a lot of information. When we hung up the phone, we said another prayer and then tried to focus on other things.

Some details that I think you’d want to know about:
•While they are not sure, the expected due date is in May.
•We do not know the sex of the baby, although they haven’t had a girl on Brandon’s side of the family in four (yes, four) generations.
•Almost all of their family is supportive of the decision to place their child. There are a few that are not 100% comfortable with the idea yet.
•They are hoping for an open adoption, which is exactly what we would like as well. With our family living relatively close, we can easily find time to visit Brandon and Heidi in the future.

Our next step would be to arrange a meeting, if they so desire. We want them to be totally comfortable with this process, and so we are allowing them to make many of the decisions. We’ve told them that we are happy to talk to them whenever they have questions, and would be happy to travel out to Minnesota to visit with them in person.

You are welcome to e-mail me with questions that you have. I won’t guarantee that I’ll answer everything, but it’s worth a shot. 

Please pray for Brandon, Heidi and the rest of their family as they continue to think and pray about this.