Ida Goes Home

Rob and I had been trading responsibilities back and forth at night and I was taking the 3:30 wake-up call, while he was taking the 7:30 one.  While sitting in the dark, rocking Ida while she drank her milk, I realized that I really enjoyed it.  I had expected the nighttime feedings to be really awful, but they were actually kind of sweet and peaceful.  After she finished eating, she went right back to sleep.

It still felt really strange to me that she slept as much as she did.  It wasn't anything like what I expected.  Instead of Ida keeping me up with her crying, I kept waking up wondering why she wasn't crying or wondering if maybe time was moving really slowly and she hadn't been sleeping very long after all.  She did wake up at 7:30 and Rob got up to take care of her.

I stayed in bed, but I kept hearing all kinds of noises.  We have a bottle warmer, so technically Rob should have been able to take a bottle out of the refrigerator, pop it in the bottle warmer, and press a button to heat it.  A couple minutes later, he'd be set to go.  But I kept hearing the microwave door open and shut and the buzzer going off.  Ida's hungry little cry was getting a little more urgent, so I decided to go out and see what was going on.  As I walked into the kitchen, I could see Rob with bottles and lids and nipples all over looking kind of frantic.  Meanwhile, Ida was lying on the floor of the kitchen, all wrapped up in her blanket.  "What are you doing?! And why is Ida on the floor?!" I asked.  It turned out that Rob hadn't been able to figure the bottle warmer out, so he had tried to microwave a bottle of milk but he had over-heated it so he had to try a new one.  When he went to test the milk's temperature, he didn't know where to put Ida and the floor seemed like a safer bet than the counter-top, where she might roll off.  I just happened to walk into the kitchen at the one moment when Ida was on the floor!  Poor Rob - trying so hard to be a good dad.

Ida went right back to bed after she was finished and she slept through until about ten o'clock.  Around that time, Maria called to tell us that she had to come get Ida.  We already knew that was going to happen, so it was not a surprise.  We understood.

Rob texted his family and told them that Ida was going back to LeeAnn, but that it was okay because we hadn't attached yet.  Not five minutes later I walked into the nursery and found him sobbing over Ida while he changed her diaper for the last time.  I took over for him and we did our best to make the morning as nice for Ida as we could.

A short time after Maria called me, LeeAnn called.  She hadn't spoken to Maria yet, so she told me that she was sorry about the text from the night before - she felt a lot better and wanted to go forward with the adoption.  I had to tell her that the agency wasn't going to let the adoption go forward.  She asked what we wanted, and I told her that we love Ida and would love to be her parents, but we didn't want to feel like we were stealing her from LeeAnn - we wanted to be in an open adoption with someone who actually wanted to be in one. I understood that it would be a really sad process, but there's sad and then there's the feeling that it's not the right decision.  I told her what Maria and Heather had told us about LeeAnn not talking the way birth parents who are actually going to complete an adoption plan talk.  She told me that she didn't realize that if she said she changed her mind we wouldn't be able to do the adoption and she wanted us to raise Ida.  Right about then, Maria called through on her call waiting, so she hung up with me and took Maria's call.

Moments later, Maria called to let us know that LeeAnn was very upset.  She had told Maria that she didn't want to parent Ida, and that she hadn't understood the agreement. Maria explained that LeeAnn had essentially revoked her consent numerous times, and that just upset LeeAnn more - she insisted she had not. Just before hanging up on her, LeeAnn asked Maria if she was going to try to force her to parent against her will.

We knew that Ida was going back to LeeAnn no matter what, but her reaction was really difficult to deal with.  It was hard to get Ida ready to go back to LeeAnn when LeeAnn was saying she didn't want to parent Ida and we so badly did want to parent her.  We went ahead and got her dressed and packed up, and Maria came to take her back.  It was really sad to put her in her car seat for the last time, buckling her up, and tucking her blanket around her.  I kept over-explaining what we had packed, when she had eaten, when her diaper would need to be changed.  And then we put her in the car, gave her a kiss, hugged Maria, and sobbed as we walked away.