Rich and I went about our week and were very much anticipating our upcoming travel to Florida to meet our son. All day on Friday I had butterflies in my stomach. I can't explain it but I KNEW our birth mom was going to deliver early. My fear with this was that we wouldn't be able to make it in time for delivery and she would change her mind and decide to parent. I had many nightmares where this happened and it was my biggest fear. We were so close this time but still, anything could happen.
I worked all day, butterflies and all. After I got home I immediately walked upstairs and into our closet. I was pulling down a shirt I wanted to pack when my phone rang. It was her. Dana, our birth mom, was calling to tell me that she was in labor and was on her way to the hospital. I explained that we would call the airlines and see what the earliest flight we could take was and that I would keep her posted.
After hanging up I called Kathie, our social worker with the adoption agency, and had a moment of freak out. She didn't answer her phone so I left a message. I told her that we received the call and that I was freaking out and afraid we wouldn't be able to get there. I then called Rich to tell him, he was just moments from the house.
When he came in he jumped on the phone with the airlines to see what could be done and if there were any other flight possibilities. I freaked. I mean, I FREAKED when they said they couldn't get us out that night. Well, they could have gotten us out of Albuquerque and into Chicago but Chicago was experiencing a snow storm and the chances of us getting out of Chicago were grim. They could have flown us to California but we would have had to be at the airport in 30 mins, travel all night and still not arrive in Florida until the next afternoon. The flight they could get us on left the next morning at 7a and got us to Florida at 2p, and hour before the flight that routed us through California. So we booked those tickets, told our birth mom and hit the ground running.
The next couple of hours were a blur. We went to Carter's, Target, Babies-r-Us, the mall and finally sat down to eat at Red Robin around 8:30p. While we were eating my phone buzzed. the very first picture of our son came in. Tears immediately sprung to our eyes. He was the most beautiful baby we had ever seen, even still being all slimy. It took us a moment to catch our breath. This was really happening, we were finally going to be parents and would be holding our baby in less than 24 hours. It was all so unreal.
