After attending a memorial service for a friend who had been murdered by a crazed co-worker, I came home to find an email from our agency -- saying there would be no more matches from the January list. So I went to bed feeling depressed -- I just knew we would get a match from that list. But it was Friday and the list had been released on Monday night, so I knew that the chances were pretty slim. At about 12:30 the phone rang. After I figured out what that noise was, I looked at the caller ID and I knew. There was no other good reason our out of state agency would be calling in the middle of the night. You see I had told them they could call anytime, day or night, if they locked a file for us. Sure enough, they had locked a file for us. A file for a baby girl that would become our daughter. It was a crazy weekend -- getting a file reviewed by a doctor on a weekend, that's fun. But we managed to have it reviewed by 2 doctors. I had searched for a second doctor while I was waiting for Jeff to come home because I wasn't at all sure we would hear from our local IA doctor on a weekend. I'm so thankful we had them both review the file. That second doctor was so supportive and a "glass half full" kind of doctor. Our local doctor was more of a "glass half empty" kind. She was a bit freaked out by the eye lid cleft and was concerned that it indicated clefting of internal organs and all sorts of scary stuff. She sent the file to a geneticist but didn't think we would hear back before the 48 hour deadline. Now, if we hadn't contacted that second doctor, we would have been thinking that this wasn't our daughter. What a mistake that would have been. From the timing, we know that her file had been locked and unlocked twice. Had our agency locked the file first, or even second, we wouldn't have contacted that second doctor (it would have been during the week). Praise God that they locked it when they did! We did hear back from the geneticist and he gave us the all clear, but we were prepared to submit paperwork requesting permission to adopt this little girl whether we heard from him or not. I can't believe it's been a year -- it seems like yesterday and forever ago at the same time. One year ago (in an hour or so) I saw my daughter's face for the first time. Now hers is a face I know as well as my own. And now, that little face smiles! What a difference a year makes.
The first picture we saw
Hadley today
Our family
You are so lucky!! Blessings
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