Atkinson Family Addition

For Coretta’s first twelve (and a half) weeks of life, I was with her. Together in the hospital. Together in Nevada. And together here at home. The most time apart we spent, was a couple of hours-maybe a few times. I need her. I need to feel her head resting on my chest. I need to hear every coo, every cry, every sigh. I need her fingers wrapped around mine. I need to run my fingers through her gorgeous dark hair. I need to whisper in her ear. And I need to kiss her cheeks. So when our time was up, I couldn’t possibly prepare. For two weeks, I cried. I wanted to cherish every second of our fleeting time together. Every diaper change. Every bottle. Every massage. Every snuggle. And most intensely, every smile. I spent much of those final days just staring at her. Holding her gaze. Smiling at her through the tears pouring down my cheeks. Smiling and telling her how much I love her as those tears landed on her cheeks and head. I was terrified. But I was not terrified or s...

This is it. The moment we’ve been waiting for. We were in M’s maternity room and the nurses wheeled in a tiny little babe that was just about to have her first bottle. They showed us where the necessities were, handed me the bottle, and left the room. And then it was us. I scooped up that tiny little squish and held her close to my chest. Travis and I stared at each other in complete and utter disbelief. This was happening. This was our reality. In this moment. We stared at baby, completely and utterly smitten. We spent the rest of the day in the room with M and baby girl. We talked. We laughed. She rested and slept. We stared at baby and never set her down. Travis fed baby girl a bottle and instantly got her to burp. He confidently responded with “I just have the touch!”. To which, I replied with “I will remember that at 3am…”. M laughed and she reminded Trav that we thought he “has the touch” any time baby girl fussed. When we noticed baby girl’s extremely long finge...

Here we are. In the midst of the most intense, heart ripping, emotional, surreal time of our lives. On Wednesday morning at 4:30, we awoke to a chilled house from the cool air. I asked Travis to get me another blanket and snuggled back in. I leaned over to check what time it was and there it was: Missed call from M. A text from M saying “U should come”. I calmly set my phone down. In shock that this was the moment. The one we had been waiting for. I asked Travis if he was awake and then handed him my phone. I couldn’t even say the words. We then immediately called M. She was in labor and walking down the hallway at the hospital to the labor and delivery unit. IT WAS TIME. After that, life is a blur. Booking plane tickets, taking showers, packing the last necessities, and getting our puppy and house ready for us to be gone. Before we knew it, we were sitting in a car on the way to the airport. Breathing heavy. Sweating. M texted saying she was dilated to 6 c...

When we started this journey over a year ago, I had no idea how much I would learn; how many mamas would inspire me with their words weighing heavily on my heart or uplifting my mind; how many times my heart would be torn open a little further; how many prayers I would pray. I didn’t know what I didn’t know. Though I still don’t, nor will I ever, have all the answers, I have gained exponentially more insight and knowledge from an incredible group of adoptive and birth mamas. Be that good, bad, incredible, hard, or beautiful...or more often than not: incredible, hard, AND beautiful. A Birth Mama that I recently discovered (thanks to Cari) posted a blog that I let sit on my heart for a bit. Her words echoed so much of what I have been feeling since being chosen. She writes about the importance of honoring the voice and right to choose of birth mamas in this process. Travis and I have tried to be intentional about our word choice and how we talk and think about the baby girl that...

With hearts ripped wide open, we are ready to share that we have been CHOSEN. During the week of all things graduate school: Travis finished his last final on Tuesday, I was defending my thesis on Friday, we were contacted with about 4 different situations. We spent a good 2+ hours on the phone Thursday night with social workers, case managers, and directors discussing these situations and what the next steps were to be. We were informed that Mama M had selected our profile and wanted to do a call with us in the coming days. (Good thing my presentation was pretty much finalized by that point!) I cried tears of joy. And I started to sweat. I was equal parts ecstatic and terrified. Ecstatic that an expectant parent felt comfortable and confident enough in our profile to take the next step; and terrified that I would say something ridiculous or freeze up on the call and squash that confidence and comfort. We scheduled the call for Sunday night. We made notes, came up with que...

In this time of great wait, we are trying to get ourselves and our lives as prepared as we can. So that when “the call” comes, we are truly ready. Last week brought us our final major TO DO list item: finishing graduate school. After the past few years of spending many Saturdays in classes, nights and weekends doing homework, reading, studying, and generally being stressed out by working full time jobs AND pursuing our grad degrees, we ARE DONE. Walking into our home after we had both finished our “final finals” was like a giant fog had been lifted. We could see again. And it felt GOOD. We celebrated with a Saturday morning at one of our favorite coffee shops FREE of homework for the first time ever! It was glorious. Amidst this final stretch for both of us, we have also been on an intensely complex portion of our journey. Our profiles have been shared with an additional two agencies in different states. The past two weeks between all of our grad happenings, work happe...

Now that our profiles have been distributed to agencies throughout the nation, reality is a knocking! Remember all those feelings and worries when we were creating those profile books? Where we hoped to share our love for each other, for our families, friends and church, and for our future child all in the pages of that book? When I hoped and prayed that our personalities, souls, and love would seep into the pages of those books that will bring us our future child? Yeah, all those feelings have exploded. Now I can’t help but think about all the “what ifs”. What if they’re looking for a home that’s bigger than our little, old duplex? Or a doctor instead of a teacher? Or what if they’re looking for parents that have been married longer than we have? Or a family that has a cat instead of a dog? Or the million other thoughts circling my mind. But what if our little, old duplex; new-ishly married; dog-loving family is the absolute perfect fit for a baby that’s growing inside their mama?...

Bursting Seams As we continue to prepare to grow our family, we have also been preparing our home. We had been working on a basement remodel, painting, and touching up several projects around our house and planned to get them all finished before our family and friends held a baby shower for us. Which was ambitious. We spent many late nights hanging crown molding on 100 year old plaster walls (not easy), touching up with caulk, and painting. If I never have to fill in another nail hole, I won’t be disappointed. After some late nights, and long weekends, we got nearly every project complete and our house clean and free of drywall/plaster/etc. Dust! Finally. Major victory for my anxiety. The completion of projects also meant that we could finally get our basement space back! Travis has space for woodworking, I have space for painting and polying, and our very patient renters can get to their storage space again. The weight of these tasks on our to-do lists has been lifted! On Sund...

If you have spent some time with Travis and I, you have probably heard us talk about our church--we love it, we can’t help it. Recently, we joined in relationship and prayer with our partner congregation to match with another family/couple/individual to be prayer partners. We somehow managed to be paired with a fellow adoption journeying mama! She lives in our neighborhood and has recently begun the process of searching for agencies and programs and we are so grateful to have made another connection on our journey--especially one that includes daily prayers for each other! We’re excited to continue our journey with our new-found connection beyond the 5 weeks of prayer as we support her in her journey as well. We pray that she find clarity amidst the heaps of information when choosing an agency/program; that she find peace in her decision to choose adoption; and that she feels supported and encouraged by the people in her life as she embarks on this new journey. We have also begun t...

Autobiographies   After meeting with our wonderful Social Worker a few weeks ago, we were given our next "assignment": writing our autobiographies for our Home Study Assessment. The autobiography consists of eight solid pages of questions that guide us to reflect on our past, think about our future, and prepare ourselves to be parents. It's been an enlightening process so far: we are getting to better know ourselves and what has made us who we are, each other and how our lives fit and work together, and who we hope and want to be as parents after we are matched with a child. We will also be writing about our support system. Here are a few of the questions: Describe your current and future support systems and other available supports in the community (family, friends, church, counselor, club, support groups, therapists) List 3 support people and what each of those is willing to do to help. Please be specific. Who might be a barrier to your adoption? No...