While Rob went inside to order food and get me some warm water for Ida's formula, I sat out in the car and took care of Ida. She was just a little bit fussy, but not too bad. As soon as we had her bottle going for her, she was a lot happier. It was definitely a "new mom" moment when Rob asked me if I wanted chicken nuggets (what I normally would have gotten) and I told him that I wanted a cheeseburger instead - I knew I wouldn't be able to manage the dipping sauce in the car while also trying to take care of Ida, but I could hold a cheeseburger in one hand.
When we got home we didn't know quite what to do with ourselves. We cuddled Ida and took some photos. We sent some to LeeAnn and then started getting Ida ready for bed.
Luckily, we had come pretty close to getting picked on another occasion, so we had gone into last-minute placement panic and set up our entire nursery. We had pretty much everything we needed - crib, changing table, whole nine yards. Instead of using disposable diapers, we had decided we wanted to try cloth diapers. I read a blog pretty regularly that the wife of a guy I went to law school writes (Life on the Farm) and she had written a pretty compelling post about the benefits and relative manageability of cloth diapering so we decided to try it out. We had a stack of GroVia hybrid diapers at the ready, and changed Ida into one of them, but left her in the jammies she had come in so she would smell familiar smells instead of everything being new.
LeeAnn had mentioned that Ida seemed to cry a lot at night and she thought it might be colic. We had purchased Dr. Brown's glass bottles and they are supposed to really help with any digestive issues (something about the air bubbles going up through this blue tube thing in the center of the bottle?) and, after figuring out that Ida wasn't on a consistent formula at LeeAnn's, gave her Enfamil Gentlease to try to help a little more. Ida took a bottle and then I wrapped her up in a swaddle blanket to rock for a little while. That was when I had that moment everyone talks about when they bring a baby home - I sat there looking at Ida and looking around the nursery and thinking, "I can't believe they actually let me come home with this baby. It seems like it should be a lot harder to bring home a baby!!"
One thing we didn't have was a cradle or bassinet to put in our room, so when Ida was getting sleepy, I put her down in her crib, turned out the light, and closed the door.
She went to sleep.
Isn't that crazy?? She went to sleep! She slept until 3:30 in the morning, woke up and took a bottle and...
Went back to sleep.
She went to sleep.
Isn't that crazy?? She went to sleep! She slept until 3:30 in the morning, woke up and took a bottle and...
Went back to sleep.
I could barely sleep myself and kept wondering why she wasn't keeping us up and crying more. Every time I woke up, I wondered if only a couple of minutes had passed because I couldn't believe she was sleeping so much. She was just really, really good.
In the morning, Rob took our dog out for a walk and I woke Ida up around 7:30 to give her a bottle and start getting ready for our day. I had to go to work for a few hours to try to give information to other people in my unit about what to do on my cases for the next few months and Rob was going to stay home and take care of Ida. I set out an outfit for her for the day, cleaned up what I could, and headed out.
At the office, I didn't get anything done. Everyone was so excited and I spent the whole time telling the story of how Ida had come home to us. It was really nice to feel like everyone was excited and happy for us. We had a plan to meet up with LeeAnn again at 1:00 at a mall south of us to let her visit with Ida and go over the open adoption agreement again, and Rob and I had planned for him to come pick me up at 12:00 to make sure we would have enough time to get down there and settled in.
At 11:55, as I was putting on my coat, LeeAnn called to tell me that she didn't think she was going to be able to go through with the adoption. I let her know that as far as I was concerned, Ida was her baby until the relinquishment was final and that if she wanted to parent, we would support her in that. That said, I also told her that we really loved Ida, we were willing to have an extremely open relationship, and if she decided to go forward, we would do everything in our power to make her feel like she had made a good decision. After laying that out, I told her I thought she should call the adoption counselors and let them know how she was feeling. On my way out to the car, the counselors called me back and let me know that both Maria and Heather would be coming to our meeting at the mall to try to figure everything out.
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