All through our relationship and into our marriage, he expressed his desire to adopt. While I had absolutely no qualms with adoption, I just didn’t ever think it would be an option for us. I had always heard about adoption taking forever, being super expensive, and I still wanted to become a mother through pregnancy. I wanted to know what it was like to be pregnant. I wanted to experience labor and delivery.
About 7 months into our marriage, we left everything we knew and moved to Hawaiʻi. We grew up and lived with our entire lives, until that point, in Southern California. Making a move across the ocean from our family was one of the hardest things we’ve done as a couple. While it’s definitely gotten easier, there are times where being so far hurts.
You may be asking, ‘Then why did you move in the first place?’ We honeymooned on Kauaʻi and absolutely fell in love with the culture of Hawaiʻi. The people, the aloha, the land, we love it all. We knew we wanted to raise our eventual children here, away from the hustle and bustle of where we grew up. At first, it was just a dream. I remember thinking a sarcastic ‘okay’ with an eye-roll when my husband proposed the idea of moving.
I lived in the same house my entire childhood. Moving, especially to a different state, just wasn’t something I was accustomed to. I told my husband, ‘We can move if I find a job.’ Well, within a couple months, I had secured a fabulous job and they were willing to hold for me until we made the move a few months later. My husband was also able to find an awesome job that would start after we arrived on the island.
Next thing on the list somewhere to live. Luckily, one of my childhood friends lived in Hawaiʻi and is a realtor! We had a home secured before I even knew it. Everything was falling so perfectly into place, it felt too good to be true.
About 5 months after making the move to Hawaiʻi, my mother saw an ad for a holiday craft fair whose proceeds would benefit a local organization that supports foster care and adoption throughout the state. My husband worked at a resort and never had weekends off, but just so happened to have the Saturday of the craft fair off. We decided to go check it out. Even if it was a bust, at least we’d get to explore the island more. At the craft fair, we did the typical wandering and perusing.
My husband didn’t think twice about it, but that night, I couldn’t sleep. All I could think about was the teenager and how they were having to wake up before the sun to get on the city bus to trek all the way across the island from the shelter to make it to school on time. The plan was for the teenager to be reunited with her father by the end of the school year. It was currently February, so it would only be a few months. The next day, I told my husband I wanted to provide foster care for the tee
We had common concerns – violence, vandalism, and a whole bunch of other negative thoughts. But, we ultimately decided we had the space, ability, and desire to provide care, so why not? Within a week or so, the teenager moved in with us. We went through the typical ‘honeymoon’ phase where everything is hunky dory while everyone is getting comfortable with each other. Once there was trust and the teenager felt safe, the true emotions came out – fear, anxiety, anger, to name a few.
I did lots of research, and we leaned on our educator friends for support and advice. Before bed each night, the teenager and I did a check-in. The teenager told me one rose (positive) and thorn (negative) from the day, and one hope for tomorrow. The teenager would communicate responses with an, ‘Ugh, do I really have to?’ attitude each night, but on the occasional night where I’d forget to ask, they made sure to remind me. ‘Aren’t you going to ask about my rose, thorn, and hope?’ It was a safe space to express fears and frustrations, but also a time for the teenager to grant permission to themselves to experience joy, if even for a moment. Our preconceived thoughts about all the things that could go wrong were the furthest from reality. Was it a walk in the park? No. But usually, the things that matter most in life aren’t easy.
Our ears immediately perked up. We wanted to adopt a baby. My husband, being the extrovert he is, walked the GAL to his car to learn more about the newborn. He told the GAL about our desires and the GAL said he’d be in touch via email to get things moving, if we were serious. My husband was definitely serious. I was hesitant. We had been in Hawaiʻi less than a year, we knew nothing about raising a baby, we were fostering a teenager, and we were planning to have a child of our own. It all seemed to be happening too quickly, for my type-A/planning self.
When the newborn was about two weeks old, we were able to go to the house of the foster family looking after him. All my fears and anxiety were instantly gone the moment we held him. (Side note – I’m an only child, so I didn’t have much experience holding babies. The most baby practice I had was during nursing school, which at this point, was almost 10 years prior.) Holding him and looking down into his eyes felt so natural. We immediately fell head over heels for him and would do everything in our power to bring him into our family as our son.
We were oozing excitement out of our pores, but also had fear tucked away in our minds. Could we care for this baby? Could we meet his unique needs? Part of the adoption process for the newborn was ‘family finding,’ where the state does everything they can to try to locate biological family willing to adopt the child, in hopes to keep him with kin. This was a super stressful time for us. What if they found an auntie or grandparent who wanted to adopt him? Could he really be swept out from under us that quickly? While I completely understand the rationale for trying to keep children with their biological family, the possibility of not being able to adopt this beautiful baby boy was real and the fear was tangible.
Two weeks after we met the newborn for the first time, I had a wedding shower to attend in California. On the flight over there, and the car ride to my father’s home afterward, I felt super nauseous. I’m one to get car/motion sickness, so I assumed it was just that. The next morning, I still felt queasy. I was also late. I decided to stop at the store on my way to the shower to take a pregnancy test. I don’t remember how long the box tells you to wait after peeing, but the pregnant symbol was visible almost instantly. I washed my hands and walked outside the store to call my husband.
I facetimed him and my mom answered, but had the phone pointed toward him. They were on their way to my husband’s work. I had texted him earlier, telling him I wasn’t feeling well and was going to take a test, so he knew why I was calling. I told him, ‘Call me back later,’ but he responded with, ‘She’s going to find out anyway,’ referring to my mother. So, I told them the great news! Excitement, nervousness, shock – we felt it all. We were fostering a teenager, potentially adopting a baby, and also pregnant. Oh, and we were both working full-time and I was in graduate school. No sweat, right?
I’m not entirely sure how we got through it, but we did. As challenging as it was, I think having a baby in our care actually pushed me to keep going. There was a child that needed my love and care to survive. Despite the drive and push to keep going, I will admit I did feel like I missed the first-time pregnancy ‘experience.’ I didn’t have time to sit and daydream about the baby growing in my belly. I didn’t get to ‘nest’ or take as good care of myself as I had hoped. I was in survival mode.
About three to four months after we became the official foster parents for the newborn, we got the news – we had an adoption date! Everything fell so perfectly into place, and we were able to adopt our son when he was five months old. Adoptions of this nature RARELY occur so quickly. We felt, and still feel, so grateful for all the events and stars that aligned to bring our son into our family. I still find myself sitting in disbelief from time to time. We moved to Hawaiʻi, fostered a teenager, fostered a newborn, got pregnant, and adopted a baby all within a 15 month timeframe.
Fast forward 2.5 months. I was 37 weeks pregnant and we were having one of our typical Sunday night dinners where we had friends over for dinner, played some games, and just got to enjoy each other’s company (this was all pre-COVID). I started feeling sporadic contractions about half-way through dinner. ‘Eh, they’re just Braxton-Hicks,’ I naively thought to myself. We finished dinner and said our goodbyes. I got some homework done and packed some last minute items in my hospital bag in case this was the real deal.
I couldn’t sleep at all that night. The contractions were coming full-force and started increasing in length and frequency around 2:00 a.m. By 7:00 a.m., we made another call to the hospital and decided it was time to go in. If you’re from the Los Angeles area or Hawaiʻi, you know what morning rush hour looks like, and we were leaving right in the middle of it. By some miracle, it only took us about 30 minutes to get to the hospital, when it would normally take me 1.5+ hours to make a similar drive into town for work at the same time of day. Little did I know, my fear that our daughter was going to be born on the freeway was for nothing, because she wasn’t born until almost 24 hours later.
Luckily, everything was okay. The next morning, I had a routine couplet (my daughter and I) appointment to check-in and make sure we were both doing well. Her bilirubin was high in the hospital after she was born, so we drew labs again at this appointment to see if it was going down. Labs came back, and her bilirubin was still high. She had jaundice and would need to be hospitalized. So, back to the hospital we went. I was nursing, so I went and stayed with her while my husband and son stayed home. Within the first week as a family of four, we were in and out of the hospital three times. If that isn’t the crash course in parenting, I don’t know what is.
Having two children so close in age allows for a special bond between brother and sister. They’re going through many of the same phases together, which is so beautiful to see as parents. On the flip side, we also had two 2-year-olds. Any parent that has had a 2-year-old knows what a fun and also challenging time that is. On top of normal ‘life,’ we are also on a special journey with our son. In utero, he was exposed to illicit drugs, and he was also born with hip dysplasia. He was in a Pavlik harness for most of his infancy, and we were just recently cleared by his orthopedic specialist.
Even though our children have such a strong bond, I, as their mother, found myself comparing them. Our son is older, so I expected him to be developmentally ahead of his sister. When she began to catch up and eventually surpass him, I had mixed feelings – happiness she was achieving great things, but sadness our son was ‘falling behind,’ a feeling of wanting to slow our daughter down so she wouldn’t get too far ahead, and a pressure to speed our son up. These contradictory thoughts and feelings were like a battle inside of me, until one day it just clicked. They are separate human beings with separate development journeys. That sounds so cliché, but I’m not sure how else to explain it. When I stopped comparing, a weight was lifted off my shoulders, but more importantly, off the shoulders of my children.
