As the summer quickly started to fade, we knew it could be weeks or merely days before we had to make the 1,128-mile trip back to Abilene for the birth of Baby T-Rex. When you’re on “baby time,” there are no easy planning or travel solutions. Blogs, books, lists, parenting forums and workshops do not prepare you for getting a phone call saying the expecting mom is at the hospital with contractions and you are over a thousand miles away.
As we entered the last five weeks of pregnancy, Matthew and I worked through several available options to get us to the hospital as quickly as possible. We had tentative travel plans to arrive in Abilene a week before the due date. But what if the baby decided to make her appearance sooner? There was an alternative plan in place for that: One of us would be on the first available flight and the other would drive. We also made arrangements for our cats, mowing the lawn and anything else we could think of. The goal was to have everything packed and ready to go at a moment’s notice by mid-August.
It was the second Thursday in August when we received the news that Mercy’s labor could be imminent. I hate to admit it, but Matthew and I were definitely caught off guard. It seemed as if clothing, baby clothes, diapers, cameras and cats were flying in every direction. The car was packed full with what felt like half our house and a car seat was securely in place. Everything happened extremely fast. Anxiety and excitement took complete control.
On this particular Thursday, travel by air wasn’t an option, so Matthew and I both buckled in and began the seventeen-hour drive to Texas. We received numerous text updates from Mercy’s family throughout the evening. The miles were slowly ticking off. I swore the odometer was not working correctly. Our late night turned into early morning and there had been no change in Mercy’s condition. When we reached Memphis, Tennessee, we decided to stop and get some much-needed sleep.
As the sun rose on a hot and humid Friday morning in west Tennessee, we learned that Mercy’s imminent labor was a false alarm. The expecting mother had a stalled labor and was now receiving medication to stop the contractions. Everyone was grateful that she was resting comfortably. Matthew and I took a deep breath, smiled and buckled in for our trip back home.
After arriving in Johnson City and unpacking the car, we began creating a staging area in our guest bedroom for everything we wanted to take with us on the real trip. Bags and containers were unpacked and repacked more efficiently. The false alarm had been a practice drill that we were able to learn from. Without question, it was an exhausting twenty-four hours, but we made sure that we were better prepared for the next call. Now Matthew and I were ready to leave at any given moment.
Monday, August 19, 2013, started just like any other day. It was business as usual and we were still anxiously awaiting the arrival of Baby T-Rex. Only ten days had passed since our false-alarm trip across the state of Tennessee. Travel plans were being finalized and time away from work had been scheduled. Only twenty-three days until the due date. Then everything completely changed with four text messages:
Dilated 6
We are on our way to labor and delivery
We are having baby tonight
Wahoo
Reading those four messages created feelings of anxiety, excitement and stress. The baby was coming tonight? Seriously? My first phone call was to Matthew while he was still at work. When he answered, I could only muster up a three-word phrase: “Leave work now!”
The next hour included packing clothes, stacking up bags and crates in the car, checking on available flights to Texas, calling our parents and waiting for Matthew to make the thirty-minute drive home from work. We had already experienced our practice drill, so we were prepared to leave as quickly as possible. All in all, it took ninety minutes from the phone call to when we pulled out of the driveway. As the garage door was closing, I thought to myself, The next time it opens, we’ll have our daughter with us and be a family of three.
Matthew and I had barely driven fifty miles before we were hit with the reality of just how long it was going to take to get to Texas. The GPS indicated that we still had seventeen hours to go. In the past, we had talked about listening to an audiobook together, so what better time to try one than now? A quick stop at a bookstore in Knoxville, Tennessee, and I was already over the idea. I hadn’t even heard of half the books available. One of the few titles we recognized was The Help, so forty-nine dollars later and we were back on the road. By Disc 1, Track 3, I was already lost and had no idea what was happening in the story. We had seen the movie while it was still playing in theaters and yet I couldn’t even keep up with someone reading the story to me. This was going to be a long trip.
The miles seemed to pass slowly and the chapters of the book even slower. We both regularly checked our phones for updates from the labor and delivery floor at the hospital. The current plan was to induce Mercy at 8:00 A.M. the next morning. Our GPS indicated that if we continued to drive through the night, we would arrive at 9:15 A.M. Everything appeared to be happening in our favor. Then we received a text message saying that the medical staff had broken Mercy’s water. What? We had just driven through Nashville, Tennessee, and still had hundreds of miles to go.
Less than two hours later, as we were speeding toward the Tennessee state line, we received two more text messages:
Hopefully she won’t have to push for long
Liz says she is done
The baby was here? We were dads! Matthew and I needed a moment to process this, so we took the next available exit off I-40 in Jackson, Tennessee, to fill the car up with gasoline and grab a quick bite to eat.
As I was sitting down with my food, my phone vibrated with another text message. This time it was a small image. It had to be a picture of our daughter. I held off looking at the picture until Matthew seated himself next to me in the booth. We clicked the image and it grew bigger. There she was! The very first picture of our daughter. Reminiscing about that moment still gets me a little choked up: two guys, same side of the booth, looking at a phone and getting very emotional at a fast food restaurant in Jackson, Tennessee. It was definitely a head turner.
After discarding the half-eaten fast food, we hopped back in the car and continued to process everything that was happening. Matthew drove around to the back of the building and that’s when the tears began to flow. Our world had just changed forever. It was very tough to let that reality sink in. There was definitely some sadness about missing her birth, but we were still happy and very excited. It was hard to believe the baby was finally here. We really wanted to be at the hospital with Mercy and Dylan, but were elated that both mother and baby were doing fine.
Before pulling back onto the interstate, we got all of the information that any parent should be able to rattle off to a random stranger. Harper Wade Darnell was born August 19, 2013, at 8:24 P.M. She weighed 5 pounds, 9.6 ounces and was 18.5 inches long. Harper was given my last name. Her middle name is the last name of one of Matthew’s great grandmothers.
Exhaustion had set in. It was well past midnight by the time we crossed into Arkansas. My excitement—or lack thereof—for The Help had not changed. I found myself constantly checking the CD info display. Disc 5, Track 13. Sigh…We were barely able to keep our eyes open, so we chose to stop for a brief nap and a refreshing shower.
Our alarm went off at 6:00 A.M. the next morning and it was time to start the day. Excitement and nerves were overpowering: We were anxious to meet our new baby girl. We had five hundred miles left to go and I immediately wondered if Matthew had forgotten about The Help. No such luck! Disc 6.
Arkadelphia, Texarkana, Dallas…Abilene! Eight hours later, we could see the hospital. We had finally arrived. I have to admit we were very worried about what we would encounter during the hospital stay. Matthew and I had heard about the unpredictable hospital adventures of other families adopting a newborn. Some had great experiences, but some had horrible ones. A same-sex couple adopting in Texas did not sound too positive. As the elevator doors slowly opened with the sound of m
etal rubbing against metal, we had no idea what to expect. The hospital episode had started.
Walking down the hall to Mercy’s room, we were greeted by many of the nursing staff. They were eager to give us the armbands that allowed unrestricted access to our baby and tried to contain their excitement while asking about our drive. I refrained from mentioning The Help. One of the nurses finally apologized and stated that we probably wanted to meet the little girl. We did! As we quickly continued on toward Mercy’s room, Dylan’s mom appeared in the hallway. Her smile immediately put us at ease.
We walked into the room and saw Mercy sitting on the bed holding the smallest human being I had ever seen—sweet little Harper. We quickly hugged Mercy and everyone else in the room before we laid our eyes on the new baby for the first time. It is hard to describe the emotion of that moment.
As the next several hours passed, we had the chance to feed, diaper, cuddle and kiss our little girl. Mercy had been cleared for discharge that afternoon, but Harper had to stay through the night so the medical team could monitor her body temperature. The hospital gave Matthew and I our own room so we could spend our first night together with Harper as a new family. Mercy was ready to be discharged, but she requested some time alone with the baby first. With all the constant visitors, she hadn’t gotten any mother-daughter time with Harper. Everything had been moving in a positive direction until the nursing shift changed. In fewer than ten minutes, it all quickly turned to chaos.
The night-shift nurse entered the room and insisted she needed Harper’s car seat that instant. A few minutes later, the baby was wheeled out of the hospital room for a two-hour car seat test. It didn’t take long for our protective instincts to kick in. Matthew chased the nurse down the hall to explain the circumstances. We pleaded with her, asking to delay the car seat check until later that night, so Mercy could spend some time with Harper before leaving. No luck. Emotions had reached the breaking point. The lack of sleep accompanied by the magnitude of the adoption plan was not the best combination. In the end, Mercy was discharged without having what she really needed: alone time with her baby.
In light of what happened with the night-shift nurse, Mercy decided to get some rest at home and planned to visit the next day. We offered her our room when she did. She was our main concern at that moment: It was our goal to make sure that Mercy had everything she wanted or needed at the hospital. To give her some extra space while visiting with Harper, Matthew and I decided to get some fresh air and grab something to eat.
When we got back to the hospital, we received the good news that Miss Harper was being discharged. We let Mercy pick an outfit for Harper to wear on her way out. Mercy carefully evaluated all of the options and made her selection. Then we, as Harper’s posse, walked out of the hospital with bags, blankets, pillows, diapers, formula and a car seat. The nurse made sure that Harper was buckled securely into her car seat. We hugged everyone and made plans to have dinner later that evening.
When we arrived at our hotel, the staff was waiting patiently for us. Before we even opened the car door, many staff members were peeking out from the lobby. Everyone was hoping for a quick glimpse of the new arrival.
As we opened the door to our room, we were met with another pleasant surprise. The entire hotel staff had signed a banner that exclaimed: “It’s a Girl!” They had also filled the room with pink balloons and pink flowers. We were in awe of their amazing hospitality. It felt like Texas had rolled out the red carpet and welcomed us with open arms.
This was our first real night alone with Harper and the first chance to settle into our new roles as parents. However, like others who have adopted or are in the process of adopting, Matthew and I were just theoretically babysitting until the relinquishment documents had been signed and the revocation period was completed. For an agency adoption, there is no revocation period in Texas and the relinquishment documents cannot be signed until forty-eight hours after the birth of the child. Our counselor was traveling to Abilene from Houston and had scheduled a meeting to sign all of these documents at three o’clock the next afternoon. We began holding our breath. Our nerves were out of control.
Matthew and I had already planned to stay in Abilene through the weekend and leave on Tuesday morning. It is not uncommon for an adoptive family to leave town immediately after the relinquishment documents are signed, but we chose to wait an extra five days. We wanted to spend as much time as possible with Mercy and Dylan and the rest of the birth-family. Matthew and I wanted to reassure everyone that this was not a goodbye: It was a new beginning. We were very committed to the idea of an open adoption.
Thursday, August 22, 2013. The day had arrived that could truly make us dads. The hotel graciously offered a vacant suite for our counselor to use. Mercy and Dylan’s mother, Stacie, came to the hotel a few hours before the meeting. While Stacie and I talked about everything from food to medical insurance, Matthew got carried away with the digital camera. It seemed like every couple of seconds the sound of the camera shutter echoed through the room. The results were phenomenal. We still look at those pictures often.
Soon our adoption counselor from the agency arrived and asked who wanted to go first. My heart started to beat faster. I felt nauseous. I couldn’t think straight and every possible outcome played out in my head.
Everything was happening very fast. After what seemed like only four or five blinks of an eye, she returned and asked Matthew and I to sign two forms. We were now officially dads!
The counselor posed for a couple of pictures, asked if we had any questions, gave everyone a hug and then left. I held my composure as plans were being made with Mercy and Stacie for later that night. Everyone gave hugs and said a quick goodbye, as we would all be back together in just a couple of hours. When the door to our room closed, Matthew started to do his quirky happy dance. We hugged each other, hugged Harper and then one of us asked, “Now what?”
What would any person in the trenches of the social media world want to do after a moment as monumental as this? I quickly typed a status update on my profile and added a picture. But before I pressed the “post” button, we began to worry about Mercy. While Matthew and I were overjoyed, we wanted to be respectful of Mercy and the rest of the family. We agreed to at least tell our parents they were officially grandparents and gave them permission to share the good news with the family, but not online.
As the afternoon quickly faded away, we headed out to spend the evening with the birthfamily. It is hard to describe the feeling of being a new parent. Matthew and I were on cloud nine. We wanted to ask permission to share the news with our friends and family on social media. Matthew mentioned our concerns about making a post to our online profiles and Mercy and the family said they were somewhat disappointed we hadn’t shared the news already. A world record then occurred for the fastest status update ever.
Over the next several days, we spent as much time as possible with Mercy, Dylan and the rest of the family. We watched the MTV Music Awards together. How could we miss *NSYNC’s reunion in honor of Harper’s birth? I think I squealed (inside) five or six times during the ninety-second performance. An indication of a good match is having similar tastes in music.
The weekend ended quickly and we were less than twenty-four hours from leaving Abilene. We had scheduled Harper’s one-week appointment for that morning with the pediatrician who had administered care in the hospital and we invited Mercy to join us. Later that evening, Mercy, Dylan and Dylan’s sister-in-law, Liz, invited us to their home and cooked a wonderful southern meal. During dinner, I could feel the emotions rise to the surface. The excitement of starting our journey home and the sadness of saying goodbye to Mercy and Dylan were at their all-time highest. Abilene had started to feel comfortable. As the night came to an end, we made plans for our final goodbye the next day.
Mercy arrived at our hotel a couple of hours prior to checkout. Our plan for the first leg of our trip home was to drive three hours to Dallas and spend a couple of days there
. Then we were going to slowly make our way to the Texas-Arkansas border while we waited for approval from both the Texas and Tennessee Interstate Compact for Placement of Children (ICPC). Mercy and Harper were able to have some alone time while Matthew and I loaded the car. Over the past week, we had undoubtedly acquired more stuff, so now the car barely had any room left for us. Before the trip was over, we had to return a few things due to the lack of available space.
As checkout time came and went, we began to say goodbye. Matthew and I wanted to reassure Mercy that we would be back soon. This was the beginning of a new journey for all of us. We inched a little closer to the door. All three of us hugged, with Harper sandwiched in the middle. Tears were flowing as we said the last of at least fifteen goodbyes. Mercy slowly walked to the elevator, our room door closed and Matthew and I fell apart. We were delighted to leave Abilene, but we also felt as if we had just broken the heart of our child’s mother. That was a moment I will never forget.
It is very possible that we sobbed for fifteen minutes while leaning up against that door. In my mind, it felt like the all-too-common scene from the movies where two people are crying on either side of a door and neither one of them knows what’s happening on the other side. We managed to compose ourselves and snuck out of the hotel, hoping the staff wouldn’t see us leave. The car was loaded to the brink and we were ready to go.
At that point, we had been in Texas for a week and were beyond ready to be home. Our family was anxious and impatient. It was absolutely exhausting not knowing how long it might take to get approval to leave Texas and then having two full days of driving after that. Add a newborn into the mix and you just want to hit fast forward. Feedings were approximately two to two-and-a-half hours apart and lasted almost forty-five minutes each. We were lucky to make it an hour and a half driving at any given time.
Journey to Same-Sex Parenthood Page 6