All about baby Kylee

Family picture

One day old
Parking where she deserved to park
On the trip to Joplin from St. Louis - 3 days old
Max meets his sister for the first time - 3 days old

This is Luke. Normally I don’t contribute to this blog. I just check it all the time and ask Misty to update it. I get a kick out of checking other blogs but don’t have a knack for writing things down myself. I will attempt to make an update and let y’all know what we’re up to. This is from my point of view. So, when Misty gets back, she will probably make corrections and deflate my embellishments. Misty has been gone the past few days getting things ready in Dallas and picking up her parents at the airport. I have had all this time between conference sessions to write this entry. Sorry for the long drawn out story.

A few weeks ago, Misty and I were talking right before we went to bed. She told me that she felt that the next child we were to adopt was going to be a girl. I just nodded and thought about all the pink frilly things we would have to get.

On Wednesday morning, the 26th of March, Misty received a call from our LDS family services counselor. She told Misty that our information was going to be shown to a birth mother that was going into labor that day. The baby was black and we were one of only a few adoptive parents (who had their paperwork ready at the time) that were open to adopt a baby of any race. Misty called to tell me the news. I cautioned her to not get over-excited because all they were doing was showing the information at that point. A few hours later, in the early afternoon, Misty called me back to tell me that the birth parents had looked at our information and wanted us to be the adoptive parents. They didn’t know if the baby was a boy or girl yet. Misty kept saying that she knew it was a girl.

An outside agency, (one of those places that has the billboards and advertisements that say “Pregnant and alone. We can help.”) from somewhere on the east coast, was coordinating things with LDS family services. The outside agency social worker had contacted Misty directly and said that if we wanted to go forward with this, we would need to wire money to their agency (for their advertising fees) and travel to St. Louis Missouri as soon as we could. I was skeptical and asked Misty to contact LDS family services and make sure this was legit. They confirmed that it was.

Both Misty and I felt good about this opportunity and decided to go forward. We didn’t necessarily have the extra money right then, but we knew we were supposed to do this.

I was trying frantically to finish all my appointments in downtown Dallas and make it back to my office. I finally made it back at 4:00 and went to the bank to wire the money. We found out that we could arrive in St. Louis the next morning because the baby wouldn’t be born until later Wednesday evening. The purpose of getting there quickly was to leave as little time as possible for the birth mother and baby to get attached. The birth mother would be sleeping through the night and it gave us a little more time to get there.

We found out the baby was born at 6:06 pm on Wednesday at it was a GIRL. Misty was able to get things organized at the house and take care of Max. I was able to coordinate loose ends at work to leave by 9:00 pm. I rushed home, packed my bag and we were off by 10:00 pm.

We traveled four hours to Tulsa, OK to drop Max off with my parents, who graciously offered to take care of him while we were in Missouri. We wanted to sleep for a couple hours before continuing on to St. Louis. Well, Max must have felt the excitement of the moment because he was wide-awake for the 2-hour window we needed to sleep. Finally, we took quick showers and took off at 4:00 am. We had a 6-hour drive ahead of us to get to St. Louis. We finally had a chance to talk about names for the baby. We went through the alphabet and reviewed ones we liked. We learned from naming Max that we needed to meet the baby first and then decide on a name.

We arrived at the hospital in St. Louis at 10:00 am. We scouted out the nursery trying to figure out which baby would be ours. We waited in the lobby for almost an hour before the LDS family services counselor (from Missouri) came down from the birth mother’s room. We were feeling the affects of no-sleep but were so excited to meet the baby. We entered the hospital room and met the birth mother and father and their 2-year-old boy. Misty always knows what to say and do in situations like that. She rushed to the birth mother and gave her a big hug and thanked her for giving us this opportunity. We then saw the cutest little baby girl lying in the baby bed. We asked if we could hold her. We traded off holding her and feeding her for the next hour while the birth parents sat there watching us in the room. The counselor encouraged us to tell more about ourselves. The birth mother was extremely quiet and shy. Both of them were 19 years old and just graduated from high school. The birth father opened right up talking about high school football and his plans for college. They said they just weren’t ready for another child and had been thinking about adoption for a while. We took a little break to meet with the hospital counselor for the birth parents and found out that they felt really uncomfortable with us there holding the baby in front of them. They wanted us to let them have the rest of the day holding the baby.

Not much we could do at that point because they have all the leverage. They assured us that they weren’t changing their mind, but needed to do this. So we checked into a hotel just down the road from the hospital and got a few hours of much needed sleep. We knew there was a chance that this wouldn’t go through but were willing to drop everything and take the chance. We only brought a few baby items just in case things didn’t work out. We didn’t tell many people other than family and a few friends about the whole situation because of the chance of it not working out.

We went back to the hospital at 10 pm on Thursday night to see the baby in the nursery and hold her some more. We still didn’t want to decide on a name until the papers were signed. We were quickly falling for this little girl and knew it would be really hard if it didn’t work out.

All right, back to the hotel for more sleep until Friday morning. We were ready to visit the hospital again when we heard from our counselor that the birth parents requested more time alone with the baby until they needed to sign papers that evening at 6 pm (48 hour waiting period from birth). So, we spent Friday morning waiting in the hotel room watching TV. Time goes pretty slow when you have to sit and wait. In the afternoon, we were assured again that everything was going to work out. Then we realized we would need some baby supplies if we were going to take a baby back to the hotel room that night. We went to Target and cleaned out the baby section. It was kind of fun to shop with Misty. We also got some small gifts for the birth parents. At about that time, we finally decided that the baby’s name would be Kylee.

OK, 6:15 and we were waiting in the lobby of the hospital. After 30 minutes of more waiting we were called to go up to the room. They had signed the papers and it was really going to happen. We entered the room and both the birth parents were crying. It was pretty emotional. We were so excited to take the baby with us and they were obviously feeling the finality of the situation. We spent the next hour with them as they held the baby for the last time. Our counselor told us that we should bring a little gift for each of them. We gave the birth mother a bracelet with the birthstones “aquamarine” for the month of March. The 2-year-old boy a truck with blocks and the birth father a gift card. The birth father was the most emotional. He kept asking us to let Kylee know that they loved her and knew this was the right thing to do for her. They had temporarily named the baby “Precious”. We decided to give her that middle name so she would know it came from her birth parents. It was a neat experience to get to know the birth parents briefly.

We sat through a video about taking care of a baby and then finally left the hospital at 10 pm. We headed back to the hotel and began our sleepless nights.

We were told that we needed to wait for two court dates before we could take Kylee out of Missouri and back home. There are laws in most states that have a waiting period of some kind for out of state adoptions. We would find out early the next week when our first court date would be. A judge would need to review the initial paperwork that the birth parents signed to make that valid. Then another judge would review the paperwork and let us take Kylee home. You would think that this could be done quickly, but maybe judges get paid for the waiting period as well. Our first court date is April 9th and then we find out when the second one will be. Most likely we will be able to return home by the 16th.

We decided to stay in Joplin, MO until we could head home. It is the closest city in Missouri to the Oklahoma border. That way we could be closer to Max and my parents. We were able to get a video of Max meeting Kylee for the first time. Little does he know that she is here to stay. I also needed to return to work for a few days and go back and forth. We had some friends offer to let us stay with their relatives, but Misty was sick with a cold and felt uncomfortable imposing on another family. Some great friends from our ward offered to use their Marriott points and pay for a hotel for some of the time we are in Missouri. It was a blessing at that point and much appreciated. We have been able to stay in a hotel room with a kitchen and refrigerator. So for the past week, we have had little sleep, lots of dirty diapers, and a lot of time to stare at our new little baby.

I keep telling Misty “This is our normal”. Other families have to wait for 9 months to have a baby. We are on the fast track and only need a few weeks. Most people know that we will do almost anything to have more children in our family. After our first daughter passed away, shortly after birth, we haven’t been able to have more biological children. Because of that experience, we have considered adoption. We feel strongly that adoption is the right thing for our family. We know that Max is supposed to be in our family and now that Kylee is as well. Heavenly Father is in charge and we are just trying to be ready for the blessings when they come.