GOTCHA DAY!

We arrived at the airport a little before midnight and God blessed us with all of our bags arriving safely. We carried our empty carseat to the rental car place and found our paperwork with our reservation confirmation. The lady behind the desk  confirmed our reservation and said they had their economy car confirmed for us. She then looked down at the top of the car seat and asked where our baby was. We told her that we were arriving from Texas to come and pick up our son the next morning. She began to tell us that we needed to instead rent an SUV because we’d have too much stuff to fit in the 2 door economy car and the car seat would be a tight squeeze. We kindly declined and told her we needed to stick to our budget car and that we would mostly be at the hotel anyway and not cruising around town.

She then told us that she just couldn’t send us out with that car and upgraded us to the next size vehicle for free! Praise the Lord! So we got a cute little VW jetta instead. We got checked into our Pricelined hotel and were surprised that it was right on Tampa Bay and ended up not being too shabby, as this would be our home away from home with our newborn for up to 10 days while we waiting for interstate paperwork to process and got to bring Eli home. 

Florida!

 The Sunshine State!

 Ok, so maybe we did need a bigger car for all this stuff!

We got our room all set up with the pack and play (which again was hard and confusing…geez!) and got our suitcases unloaded, required paperwork, camera battery charged, and diaper bag loaded with the essentials for the hospital. The next hard part was going to sleep! Colby and I looked at each other, and realized it would be our last night with just the two of us in our little family, and spent some time in prayer thanking God for bringing us to this place and orchestrating the details.

Ground Zero

 

Tadaa! All put together...only missing one thing!

The next morning, we were up bright and early and got things ready to go. We asked the hotel front desk member if she would take our picture. She kinda looked at us weird and then came around the desk and saw the empty carseat. We are going to pick up our baby today we exclaimed! This was followed by the rest of the hotel staff cheering for us in excitement. They kind of became our little family that week and asked to see Eli every time we’d walk in and out of the hotel. 

 On our way to the hospital, it started raining, which Colby and I thought was perfect, as it rained on our wedding day as well. It only made sense for the 2^nd most important day in our life to include rain also! We made our way to the Starbucks in the hospital, where we were supposed to meet the Gladney case workers. We were sad that our case worker couldn’t hop on a plane with us, but Megan and Erica were so sweet and great as they explained all the details to us. Our birthmother had met with them that morning and had signed her paperwork, which was a relief, but moreso another reminder that God had our best in mind. We spent a little over an hour doing paperwork, signing, initialing, reading through requirements, and then….making it official!

 Arriving at the hospital

 

Breakfast and waiting for the caseworkers

 

Signing Paperwork!

 

Blessed!

 Finally….we were going to be able to see and meet our son! We weren’t allowed to see any pictures of him prior to this because of confidentiality reasons, so the anticipation was thick. We got checked into the Transitional Care nursery as official vistors, got our hands washed, and then our case workers talked to the nurses. After this moment, the nurse pointed in the corner over to a bassinette where a little baby was wrapped up and in the corner by himself and said, “He’s over there!”

I guess the rest of the story can be understood by the pictures. Tears, PURE JOY, and an overwhelming sense of pride for this sweet baby boy that God chose to be in our family and made our responsibility to raise and love. Colby scooped him up first and we marveled at him while the case workers snapped photos, which I’m so thankful for. We kissed his fat little cheeks, nuzzled him and let him know that we were here, how much we loved him, and that he would no longer be by himself. Be still my heart. Throughout those first 48 hours that he was on this Earth, I prayed that God would surround him, would give him the best nurses to care for him, and that He would send him our love from afar and know that we were thinking of him and waiting for him to be in our arms.

Seeing his sweet face for the first time

 Hello son!

 Our most amazing blessing

 

Our First Family Photo

 Mama holding you for the first time!

 This is really happening!

 Thank you Lord for this gift.

 

Eli Shane

With our wonderful Florida caseworkers

 We spent several hours at the hospital as we waited for lab work to be completed, were able to feed him and put cute clothes on him, and snapped pictures to send to family as we were finally able to share his sweet face and name with them.

100% O2. Thank you Lord for protecting him!

 Family photos just don't get old

 Can we see your eyes?

 Getting you dressed for the first time

 You were pretty squirmy, and so little!

 Your old man face

 Daddy was a baby hog!

 And then we were discharged, and got to wheel him out in the bassinette and load him up in our rental car to head back to the hotel. We spent a good 10 minutes trying to figure out how in the heck to install the car seat, as we had little time to prepare beforehand, so this was pretty funny as the medical assistant watched us struggling with this. Finally safely strapped in, we pulled away with our little family of THREE!

 This can't be THAT difficult?!?

 All loaded up and ready to leave the hospital!

 

We got back to the hotel, showed him off to the front desk staff, and as we sat down holding our little 6 lb. 3 ½ oz bundle on the hotel bed, we just stared at each other in complete awe and wondered…what do we do now?  It was probably the most surreal feeling in the world, since our birthmother was not at the hospital, and it wasn’t a typical placement where she hands him over to us. Instead it felt like us playing house with a kid they let US take away from the hospital, but we knew instantly that he belonged with us!

We skyped with family, got our 2 hour cycle down pretty well of feeding and changing, and celebrated our Got-cha day by ordering a nice meal from the hotel’s restaurant. We sat out on the pier of our hotel where it was quiet and ate our dinner as Eli snoozed away.

 Back at the hotel for your photo shoot...since the couple hundred we took at the hospital wasn't enough!

 

 Well there are your eyes handsome!

 Big Yawns!

 Getting some Florida Sun!

 Florida was so green and beautiful!

 Great Daddy!

 Token newborn shot :)

 Our hotel was right on Tampa Bay, which was a beautiful place to be "stuck" at for a week

 God's grace was definitely with us!

 Our celebratory Gotcha Day (To-go) Dinner on the Pier outside our hotel

 That's better! Good night sweet one!

We spent the weekend mostly at the hotel, but did take a family drive to see the Tampa Bay stadium and then drove over to the Gulf side and walked on the beach for a bit with Eli in the sling. Do you typically take a 3 day old on the beach, nope, but you also don't typically have to stay in a hotel on the bay with a newborn either. :)

 I have to note and remember that two different people stopped us on the beach asking, “whatcha got in there?”  One person thought it was a dog and the other a bird. Really? Yep lady, I carry a bird around in a sling on my chest…ha!

Morning devotional Bayside

 First "bath." Our sweet baby bear

 All of the newborn clothes we had were huge!

 Baby "B" that we had been praying for was now Baby Eli :)

 We realized after your first "bath" that you had CURLY hair!

 Huge clothes for a wittle bitty boy!

We wish we were able to have brought him home sooner to meet family, but we had to stay in the hotel and in Florida until the interstate paperwork was completed. This really was a sweet time of just the three of us with no other obligations or chores to do around the house, just loving on our little man and we didn’t have to share! 

The Phone Call that Changed our Lives Forever

On Wednesday August 15, 2012, I went to work like any other day. I was on Neurology hospital service and it was a busy day, as I had many consults to complete. I was in the office dictating on the hospital phone a patient History & Physical when I looked down and saw my cell phone ringing. I hit pause on the dictation service and answered my cell phone and our amazing caseworker Jennifer was on the line. After telling her I was at work, I asked her if I needed to "suspend" my dictation job and she said that would be a good idea. I came back on the line and she said, "Well Joanna, I have some great news, you and Colby have been MATCHED!"

I sat there in shock and disbelief for a few seconds and asked over and over, "so what does that mean?" or "so what do we do?" I had talked to Jennifer so many times before on the phone for various reasons, so surprise is an understatement. She then responded, "Well, I'm about to freak you out a little bit. Your birth mother went to the doctor today and they've decided to induce her, so she's on her way to the hospital right now. So depending on when she delivers, you'll need to be in Florida sometime in the next 2 days."

Ummm....recap. We basically were just told, you are going to be parents today, your son will be born today! The most beautiful words I had ever heard, and ones that we had been waiting to hear for a long time.

The next moments involved calling Colby (who had the day off) and was on hole 13 on the golf course and I dropped the bomb on him and he just kept asking me the same thing, "what do we do?" At this point, I told him to finish his round of golf, as it might be the last one for awhile! :) I then came out of the office and announced to the few people that were at the nurses station of the unit that I was on (as all knew we were adopting) and said "It's a Boy!" After a few hugs, tears, and congratulations....panic set in! Don't get me wrong...were we shocked? Yes! Physically, we had lots of things to do, but emotionally our hearts had been prepared and yearned to be parents long before this day.

I went and talked to my fabulous practice managers who essentially put all the paperwork into effect for me to leave on maternity leave, sent my schedulers notification to cancel all of my appointments, and worked with my amazing team of NPs to re-work the schedule so there was coverage in the hospital. I must tell you that work was what I was most nervous about in the adoption process as "planning" really isn't a possibility and I hated to leave work in a bind, but let me just tell you that God's timing was perfect and He timed it right before the new schedules would be issued and appointments made and "damage control" was at the very minimum...hallelujah!

After this, I then had to work the rest of the day! Nuts. I tell you. Nuts! I kept re-reading all of my documentation over and over, making sure prescriptions were right, could barely answer questions that my doc had asked me and basically couldn't get my mind focused on ANYTHING else! I'm going to be a mom was pretty much the only thing reiterating in my head. Glorious!

Colby came up to my hospital so that we could call our birthmother for the first time, as she was getting set up in her hospital room for induction. Nerves, oh my goodness. We dialed and the sweetest voice answered. We got to talk to her briefly, make sure she still wanted "us" for the job, laughed, cried, and sent our well wishes for a safe and smooth delivery. And then...the rest was out of our control. Colby and I made a Buy Buy Baby run for formula, diapers, and a few essentials and notified close family and friends of our excitement. At this point we wanted to tell the world, but needed to wait until paperwork was officially signed.

On Thursday morning, August 16th, we received a phone call that our sweet baby boy had been born at 5:42 that morning and was healthy and beautiful! This meant that we needed to be in Florida by Saturday morning so this day involved flight arrangements, hotel, rental car, and lots of logistics with Colby's work and trying to get him off of work as well.

One of my besties Sommer came over and literally held my hand walking me through things I needed to do. She drove me halfway to my parents to drop off my furry dog children, took me to Babies R us for essentials, and helped keep my scatter brain together. Child care, college fund, nursery, etc. swarmed through my head! And she reminded me all those things could wait...ha! Members of our small group brought us dinner and lunch and showed up at our door with bottles and a few outfits, skyped us to show us how to set up the pack and play, and blessed us immensely with their prayers.

We weren't allowed to see pictures of him until our birthmother would sign paperwork at 48 hours, so my mind dreamed of his sweet face and my heart cried out to God to protect him while we weren't there with him and for peace with the waiting process of paperwork.

Colby went to work on Friday and when he got home, we finished our final packing and then headed to the airport to go get our baby boy...the best feeling in the whole world!

 These were our "baby announcement" pictures that our neighbor took when we got home from work and we texted to family and friends to tell them about our match. I'm clearly in work attire and Colby in golf attire.

 

We'll call this giddiness at its finest. 

 

At Buy Buy baby, I asked Colby to act like he was overwhelmed by the baby stuff. His response was that he does not in fact need to act! :)

 

Buying our first outfits!

 

Colby figuring out the pack and play.

 

This suitcase sure does look different than any one we'd ever packed! 

 

Entering Dallas Love!

 

All ready to go! 

 

Wouldn't want to go through parenthood with anyone else!

 

Whew! We were pretty tuckered after a whirlwind of a few days and finally made it on the plane! 

 

No rest for the weary...Dr. B still had to study while on the plane

 

Celebratory milkshake on our layover 

 

Our last meal with just the two of us!

(To be continued!) Lots of details needless to say, but I want to remember this day and God's provision for us always! The Sunday before our Match day, there was a huge storm that came through and knocked out powerlines, fences, a mess. Hard to believe we went from having no power at our house, having to stay with friends, and stressed by the mess that our neighborhood and house was, feeling sad from the ups and downs of the adoption journey and knowing that we hadn't matched...to pure Joy and the greatest surprise ever! You might notice that my last post was on the day we were leaving to go get him and God had totally used that song to speak to us that He HAD come and He is our Mighty Deliverer!

You'll Come

I have decided I have resolved
To wait upon you Lord
My rock and redeemer shield, and reward
I'll wait upon you Lord

As surely as the sun will rise
You'll come to us
As certain as the dawn appears

You'll come let your glory fall
As you respond to us
Spirit Rain, flood into our thirsty hearts again
You'll come.

We are not shaken we are not moved
We wait upon you Lord
Mighty deliverer triumph and truth
We wait upon you Lord

As surely as the sun will rise you'll come to us
Certain as your word endures.

Chains be broken
Lives be healed
Eyes be opened
Christ is revealed