The Lucky Few

by Heather Avis

  She smiled and hugged me back, her youth offering her some protection from the gravity of the moment.

  Then I made my way toward Sami. We wrapped our arms around each other and sobbed. As I drenched her shoulder with my tears, I thought about how less than forty-eight hours ago, she had August in her womb, where she loved him and cared for him with all that she was. Now her womb and her arms were empty.

  “I’m so sorry this is so hard,” I whispered. “I am so proud of you, Sami. I have never seen someone do such a selfless thing.”

  “I love him so much, Heather.”

  “I know you do.”

  “Promise me you’ll take good care of him.” Her words came out broken and slurred between the sobs.

  “I promise, Sami. The best care possible.”

  We broke our embrace, and she got into the front seat of the car. I stood there in the cold parking garage and watched them drive away.

  12

  The Lucky Few

  We had the joy of bringing August home only forty-eight hours after he was born. This was an unexpected delight. All too often, babies with Down syndrome need some kind of immediate medical attention. When the doctors said that August could go home just two days after he took his first breath of life in this world, I thanked God for his favor.

  I sat next to my son as we drove the two and a half hours home. I could hardly wait to see my girls and watch them meet their new little brother. Though I had only been gone for two days, they were life-altering days, and I was missing my girls something fierce.

  We pulled up to signs littering our lawn and plastered across the door, welcoming our son home. My heart swelled at the love that friends and family continued to pour out on us.

  Josh parked in the driveway, and I unbuckled August’s car seat harness and scooped up all seven pounds of him. Before we opened the door to go inside, Josh put his arm around my shoulder, as he had done two times before in this exact location, and we both stared at the baby in my arms.

  “He’s here. He’s perfect,” Josh said.

  “I know. I’m blown away by God’s goodness.”

  “We have three kids!” Josh laughed.

  “Welcome to Crazyville!” I laughed along with him as we opened the door and stepped inside.

  The second the door opened, we were greeted by the cheers and squeals of two excited big sisters. They ran into Josh’s arms. He gathered them up, one big sister on each hip, and I leaned over to give each of them a kiss and introduce them to their new baby brother.

  “Can I hold him?” Truly asked.

  “Hold him?” Macyn repeated.

  “Of course, girls. Let’s go wash your hands first. You always have to wash your hands before touching your baby brother, okay?” We were in the middle of cold and flu season. Once again, hand washing in the Avis household became as important as breathing.

  Josh walked with the girls to the bathroom. I stepped into the living room, where both my parents and Josh’s parents stood, all four of them anxious to meet their new grandson, all four crying happy tears.

  “Oh, Heather,” my mother-in-law, Jay, said as she came over and put her arm around me and gave me a big squeeze. “He’s perfect!”

  “He really is,” my father-in-law, Steve, agreed as he stared at his new grandson.

  “Yes!” they blurted out simultaneously.

  We spent the next few hours passing August around while he slept through all the excitement. I sat on the couch with my mom and Jay and recalled the events of the past two days. As August went from grandparent to grandparent, sweet big sister Macyn followed him around, never leaving his side.

  That first night home, after the grandparents said their good-byes and the big sisters were tucked into their beds, Josh and I sat on our bed with August lying between us. We didn’t talk; we just stared at the tiny sleeping human. Josh got up to brush his teeth, and I lay down next to August, settling into the fluffy white down comforter, my nose touching his. I closed my eyes and breathed deeply. As I felt his breath on my lips and smelled his fresh, sweet skin, I was overcome by awe and wonder. I was now the mother of three children. I had no control over how these children made their way into the world. Josh and I could never have contributed to the creation of these children with our blood and DNA. I could have searched the world for three lifetimes and never been able to find these three children, my children, on my own.

  I breathed in the miracle of my son and thought about the miracle of the two little girls asleep in the next room. I had so much love for all three of them. Oh, the love! When I was desperate to be a mother and unable to make it happen on my own, I had no idea this kind of love would consume every part of my being. It was unexplainable.

  I always say you can’t know what you don’t know, and if I had never adopted a newborn baby, I would never have known what I was missing during that wonderful phase. Thanks to Jesus, I got to experience what I like to call newborn-baby bliss.

  I know a lot of moms who would say that the first few months with their newborn baby were anything but blissful, but our situation was unique. I got to bring home an angel baby. I mean angel baby. He was a good sleeper and a good eater. He was easygoing and rarely cried, and when he did, he responded to the remedy quickly. And I felt great. Of course, I was tired from the middle-of-the-night feedings, but my body had not just experienced the travail of giving birth.

  August and I also were able to experience the bonding that can more easily take place with a newborn. Of course, there’s something to be said for the nine months in utero where he bonded with his birth mother. But unlike my girls, who spent the first months of their lives bonding with a different mother, I was the only mother August knew. So our bond was strong.

  Life with three kids under five years old, two of whom had Down syndrome, was no walk in the park. Our lives resembled some kind of a circus. But I found myself giddy about being able to wrap my baby on my chest and take a daughter’s hand in each of mine and jump through the fiery hoops or occasionally stick my head in the lion’s mouth.

  It was wild and crazy, but our family life was soaked in God’s grace.

  Within weeks of August’s birth, I found myself in the same waiting room I had been in with Macyn five years earlier. We were there for the same reason—waiting to meet with a cardiologist to discuss the best way to prepare for August’s unavoidable open-heart surgery.

  Behind the desk were the same people signing August in, and behind the doors the same nurses and doctors stood ready to measure, weigh, and prescribe. They all recognized me, and some even knew me by name. But I was not the same woman. As I waited there with August wrapped up against my chest, sound asleep, I felt our hearts beating side by side. His heart was weak, but mine was stronger than it had ever been.

  Five years ago, I held on to Macyn with both hands. Our hearts were beating side by side, but both were weak and sick. Both were in need of healing. As I walked through the valley of the shadow of death with Macyn during her surgery, and really during the first few years of her life, I was too immersed in her healing to be able to recognize the healing taking place in me.

  Now as I waited with August, I did so as a mother who was a child as well. I knew I could not take one step as a parent without first taking the hand of my heavenly Father.

  We scheduled August’s open-heart surgery for the end of April. On that day in 2014, we showed up at the same hospital, made our way through the same double doors, and waited in the same waiting area. The doors and walls of this familiar place reminded us of God’s good, good grace.

  Sending a child into open-heart surgery is never an easy task. But I knew I would be comforted when I rested fully in God. When Josh and I began our journey into parenthood, I never would have chosen a children’s hospital as a significant character in our story, yet somehow she had worked her way into the fabric of our lives. Within her walls, I met God in the most intimate ways. Eventually, every time I entered, I could do so with hope and joy rather t
han fear. And isn’t that just like our God—to take the very things in life we should be terrified of and to cover them with his goodness and beauty?

  Josh, August, and I had been in the pre-op room for about an hour when a nurse came and tapped me on the shoulder.

  “Sorry to interrupt, but there is a woman named Sami in the hallway. She said you’re expecting her?” The nurse seemed confused.

  “Oh yes, she’s our son’s birth mother.” I said it as though having our adopted child’s birth mother at his open-heart surgery was to be expected. “Can she come in?” Sami had contacted me a few weeks before Augie’s surgery, asking if she could come. Josh and I both felt comfortable with her being there.

  The nurse, looking even more perplexed, simply nodded and let Sami in.

  “How’s he doing?” Sami carried a purse and a stuffed bear with a Band-Aid sewn over its heart. She walked toward August, who was in my arms. I gave her a side hug with my free hand.

  “He’s so great. Hasn’t had anything to eat or drink since dinner last night, and he hasn’t complained at all.” I looked at the baby cradled in my arm. “Here, why don’t you hold him?”

  Sami set the purse and bear on the hospital bed. “Hey, buddy.” She lifted him over her shoulder and gave him a squeeze.

  At that exact moment, our son’s heart surgeon came over to give August one last look. He looked at me, then at Sami holding my baby, and then back at me.

  I tried to answer his surprised expression. “This is Sami, August’s birth mother.”

  “Oh.” A common response to a unique situation. No one is ever sure quite what to say. He pulled out his stethoscope and placed it on August’s chest. We all stood there quietly. “Okay, he’s good.” Then he looked at the nurse. “We’re ready.”

  “Wait.” They may have been ready, but I was not. “I’m going to need a one-minute warning.”

  The nurse gave me a sweet smile. “One minute.”

  Sami gave August a kiss on the forehead and handed him back to me. Josh came over and took him from my arms. “I love you so much, buddy. You are strong and brave.” He kissed August’s soft cheeks.

  “I need him back.” I reached for my son, and Josh placed him in my arms once more. I hugged him and kissed him.

  “Okay, it’s time.” The nurse held out her arms.

  “You’ll make sure he’s all right?” I begged through tears.

  “I promise I will not leave his side.” I handed the nurse my son, and we watched her walk away, his tiny head bouncing gently.

  The three of us made our way to the waiting area, where we were greeted by our social worker and friends holding extra-large lattes and vanilla-bean scones. We sat in a corner of the waiting area, moving chairs around, throwing down our purses and bags, claiming our space for the next five or six hours.

  Conversation went from surgery to babies to the weather to favorite travel destinations. A few hours later, Josh grabbed my hand.

  “You wanna go for a walk?”

  “I would love some fresh air.” I said to our waiting-room crew, “We’ll be back soon.”

  We stepped outside to a cloudy and slightly chilly spring day. “I had to get out of there,” Josh said, putting his arm around my shoulder. “I’m not in the mood for small talk right now.”

  “Neither am I.” I wrapped my arm around his waist, and we began to walk the perimeter of the hospital.

  “Do you feel different this time around?” Josh asked.

  “Yes! Like a completely different person.”

  “Me too.”

  “It sounds crazy to say so, but I just feel like open-heart surgery isn’t that big of a deal.” I looked up at my husband. “Is that crazy?”

  “I feel the same way.” Josh’s arm slipped from my shoulder, and his fingers interlocked with mine. “We’ve seen God do so much, and, really, open-heart surgery isn’t that big of a deal.”

  “Yeah, but could you ever imagine we’d be saying this?” I stopped and turned toward Josh. “I mean, look at us. We’re sitting in a waiting room with our son’s birth mother, waiting for him to come out of open-heart surgery, and we’re cool as cucumbers.”

  “Yeah, it’s crazy.”

  “I wish my twenty-four-year-old self could see this and know how good it would all turn out.”

  “Or maybe understand that just because circumstances are hard, it doesn’t mean they’re bad.”

  “Yeah.” I let out a small sigh. “I wish I knew God then like I do now.”

  “Me too. But I don’t think it would have been possible if not for saying yes to Macyn and every other step that led us to this place.” As soon as Josh finished his thought, the pager we had been given to keep us updated on Augie’s surgery went off.

  I jumped. “It says they’re closing him up.”

  “Whoa! That was fast. Let’s go.”

  August’s surgery went great. After a few days in the hospital, his doctors sent him home. A week later, at the follow-up appointment, his surgeon took him off two of the three medications he had been on. A couple of weeks after that, we were back into the swing of our full and crazy life.

  The day-to-day activities and needs that accompany three small children and their special needs is no joke. Our day-to-day routines are anything but normal. The staring and pointing we get when we walk through the Target parking lot or step foot into a restaurant have become a part of our normal. We’ve chosen to make our normal great by meeting the stares with sweet smiles, and the rude or ignorant comments with a little sass.

  We rarely take all three kids to the grocery store at the same time if we can avoid it. But from time to time, we’ll be near a Trader Joe’s, and amnesia will sink in. We’ll forget about the last time we had all three children in the tiny market, and we’ll look at each other with grand confidence and step into the store like fools.

  We place August’s car seat on the handlebar/kid seat of the cart, Augie inside, sleeping like an angel. That’s all the time it takes for Macyn and Truly to break away. They’ve spotted the samples booth at the back of the store.

  “Truly, Macyn, stop!” I yell. Truly obeys, but Macyn keeps going.

  “Macyn!” Truly yells after her.

  I leave Josh with August and pass up Truly, saying, “I’ll get her, Tru.” I catch Macy just in time to grab her before she crashes into an unsuspecting elderly woman walking with a walker.

  “Oh my!” the woman exclaims.

  “I’m so sorry,” I say to her, and then I kneel down next to Macyn. “Macy, you have to stay with Mama in the store. You cannot run away.”

  “Okay.”

  “Well, hello,” the kind elderly woman says to Macyn.

  “Hello.” Macy gives a sweet wave and a smile.

  The woman leans toward me. “She has the Downs, huh?”

  I cringe inside at the crass terminology and try to be gentle in my correction. “She does have Down syndrome.”

  Josh arrives. “Hey, there you are.” He pushes the cart next to our little party by the Trader Joe’s samples booth. The woman glances at Augie, now awake, in his car seat.

  “Oh my. You have two of them.”

  I glance at Josh, and we give each other a look.

  “We have three kids, in fact.” Josh smiles and picks up Truly, whose mouth is full of coffee cake samples.

  The sweet elderly woman leans in again and says conspiratorially, “You know, they’ll be with you forever.” She raises her eyebrows.

  I give her a wink. “Gosh, I hope so.”

  “Mommy! Sample!” Macyn pulls on my hand.

  “You take care,” Josh says as we walk away. Then he looks at me. “Let’s be quick.”

  I hold Truly’s hand and place Macyn in the back of the cart. Josh pushes, and we make our way up and down the aisles, filling the remainder of the cart with some of our essentials.

  By the time we reach the checkout counter, August has begun to fuss.

  “Babe, hand me the diaper bag?” I let go
of Truly’s hand and pull out a bottle and some formula.

  “Hang in there, buddy,” Josh says over and over to our crying baby.

  Macyn begins to shovel our items out of the cart, throwing them toward the cashier.

  “Macyn, stop.” I grab the eggs with one hand, just in time, while shaking the formula bottle with the other.

  “So sorry.” I smile apologetically at the man behind the register.

  “Where’s Truly?” Josh asks as he grabs the bottle from me and places it in our now screaming baby’s mouth.

  The cashier points to a curly-haired girl with boxes of cookies in her hands.

  “Tru!” I run toward her and begin stacking the boxes back on the shelf as neatly as I can. “You have to stay with Mommy and Daddy.”

  The man looks at me as I walk back toward our cart. “You guys have your hands full.”

  I give him a pathetic grin, understanding this statement is never a compliment. Josh says, “Oh man, you’re telling me! We just found out we’re pregnant with twins.”

  The man looks at us in shock. I give a stoic and confirming nod.

  Whenever we take our children out in public, we’re guaranteed to get stares, pointing fingers, and lots and lots of double takes.

  Our family makeup is unique. If I were to see my family out in public, I’d be curious and probably stare a bit. So rather than be easily offended or pretend to be normal, we try to face it with openness, grace, and a little humor. We chose to adopt two kids with Down syndrome and one kid of a race different from ours. We have to be okay with people being surprised by that. We’re proud of our family, and we want others to feel that way too.

  Josh and I have made a conscious decision to be open with our children, as well as with the world, about how our family came to be. People often want to know when we told our kids they were adopted, and our answer is they have always known. Adoption is a part of who they are, so it has never been a secret. Rather, we celebrate it and thank God for it, because without adoption, our family would not exist.

  As a mixed-race, mixed-ability, adoptive family (wow, say that ten times fast), we’ve learned we must be intentional in the way we live our lives and raise our kids. Our relationships with birth parents are one example of this. Josh and I believe it is important for our adopted kids to know where they came from, as much as is beneficial for them. Our situation is unique in that two of our kids come from birth families we are able to have a relationship with. It would have been so much easier for us to have minimal contact with our children’s birth families. It’s difficult enough making quality time happen with our extended family. The effort it takes to maintain intimate and healthy relationships with two more whole families is immense.