Dylan Stafford

Last Wednesday I held a baby, a two-day-old infant who might become our son.

We’ve known it could go this way–we’re pre-approved, adoption-waiting parents–but when it happens it’s still like a huge wave lifting and tilting our lives. It’s jarring.

Tuesday Marisa got a call from our adoption agency: a boy was born Monday in a Los Angeles hospital, the birth mom wanted to place the baby for adoption and she had chosen our family. We were given some details and posed the question, “Are you open to this baby?”

Marisa called me at work with the news. I was having lunch with our mutual friend Jen, who coaches me on my career. Jen was one of Marisa’s bridesmaids at our wedding.

Marisa told me the details she’d gotten from our case worker. “What do you think?” she asked. “They want to meet us at 7:00 AM tomorrow morning before the birth mom gets discharged from the hospital.”

“OK,” I replied. I got emotional for a second, Jen’s a champion for our marriage and it was extra special hearing the news with her.

Then I had to set emotions aside. That night I was the main speaker for a UCLA recruiting event with 115 people registered to attend. How would I do the meet-and-greet and deliver my speech when all I wanted was to drop everything and go home and be with Marisa? I was going to need some of Bill Clinton’s famous (or infamous) ability to compartmentalize to get through the evening.

The speech went well and I took home leftover appetizers from the meet-and-greet in a styrofoam box, my post-9:00 PM dinner.

Marisa was on the couch waiting. We had house guests, Marisa’s girlfriend Nancy and her two kids had driven from Arizona to spend spring break with us. Nancy politely asked if we needed privacy but it was actually helpful having another mom listening. I sat on the carpet and nibbled my reheated quesadilla strips and ate onion-heavy guacamole. We talked quietly so our voices wouldn’t carry to the not-yet-sleeping kids.

We made a plan that Nancy tell the kids in the morning that Marisa and Dylan had a meeting. Wednesday was supposed to be Legoland day, but she was confident she could redirect their expectations. I was suspect, that seemed like changing Christmas, but she has two kids and the corollary ninja mommy-skills.

Wednesday I woke at 4:30, a full hour before my alarm. Normally I meditate for twenty minutes. I sit cross-legged in our living room, but it was Nancy’s guest room this week so I sat in the bathroom under the ceiling heat lamp, warm but annoyingly bright.

A saint said, “I meditate an hour every day, except when I am extremely busy. On those days I meditate two hours.”

That quote nudged me to sit longer than my regular 20 minutes. I could only make half an hour as I was anxious to get the day moving. The stillness of the meditation yielded one gold nugget, as always.

Have God enter that hospital room before you; follow him in. That was the advice my sponsor gave me for my wedding day. He’d told me to invite God into the marriage first, to follow him and take his guidance to be a husband. It’s worked for 8+ years in my marriage and it seemed like great advice for today.

Marisa came into the bathroom to take her shower. We wondered what we should wear. Jeans? Khakis? What was appropriate? We didn’t know.

We got dressed and left the house full of three still-sleeping kids. We wanted to miss traffic and we had to find a new hospital we’d never been to before. Our case worker called us during our drive and we helped each other with directions. She suggested we bring flowers and we made a detour to pick up a bouquet.

Again, like choosing clothes, there was the question. “What kind of flowers are appropriate for something like this?” We chose a round bouquet in a glass vase with light purple roses, hydrangea and accent flowers. I got a chocolate covered donut nearby as I’d not eaten any breakfast.

We found the hospital. We found the parking. We found our case workers and sat in the lobby for fifteen minutes getting more background information about how the night before had gone for the birthmom and for baby boy. When there was nothing more to say they looked at us, “Ready?”

“Ready,” we replied as we stood and gathered the bouquet and walked to the elevator bank.

We rode up to the maternity ward and found our room. I took a breath and remembered the meditation. God, I’m following you into this, I said to myself.

What happened inside was private. This may be the baby we adopt. It may not be. The people we met are very real but will remain anonymous.

The birth mother was young. She was beautiful and she looked both peaceful and lost at the same time. She had her mom with her. I was grateful that she had support. We hugged and there were smiles and we all sort of spread out on the hospital room furniture in a rough circle.

Baby boy was brought in a few minutes later by the nursing staff. Birth mom fed him a bottle while we all watched and talked and got to know each other.

He ate half a bottle and seemed satisfied and birth mom asked Marisa, “Would you like to hold him?”

Marisa said yes and baby boy was in her arms. I watched my wife holding an infant again and thought how fast the almost five years have flown since Jackson’s birth. He stayed in her arms about 15 minutes and then a diaper change was in order.

After the diapering I got to hold baby boy and I held him for what seemed like half an hour though I can’t be sure. It was long enough for me to get tired standing, to borrow the glider to sit and hold him. He took the other half of his bottle from me.

His eyes were closed the whole time, both while he fed and after as went back  to sleep. He was precious.

My cousin Joel and my good friend Jeff have both adopted, twice each. They each independently told me that the moment you receive your child, when you are told that this is your child, that you feel it 100%. You are the parent in that moment and you know it to your core.

Holding this baby in my arms, I didn’t feel that. He was precious, but he was not ours. Again, I set the emotions to the side. I was attempting to be in the moment, to be of service to this birthmom who was going through this huge transition, and to keep both my eyes and heart open in parallel.

The birth mom and the new grandmother were attractive people. I told myself this shouldn’t matter, but I couldn’t help thinking, “This child would resemble Marisa, with light eyes, based on looking at the birth mom and her mom. He might look like Jackson.”

Sobriety 101 taught me to stay in the moment, to be here now.

This was a match meeting. That was all.

Our case workers told us that match meetings rarely happen in the hospital. They prefer a neutral location like their office, not a hospital or a home.

They told us that match meetings rarely have the baby present. The purpose of a match meeting is to empower the birth mom that she is choosing a future for her child that she can live with for the rest of her life. The match meeting supports the birth mom feeling that she made the best choice for her baby.

We weren’t in an office, but rather the hospital, and baby boy was in my arms taking a bottle. We were doing it this way at the birth mom’s request and our adoption agency always defers to the wishes of the birth mom.

The morning was beautiful. It was Holy. It was a lot to be with.

We took our leave after two hours together. There are steps that have to be taken now that are outside of our control. There are checks and balances and they have to run their course.

The adoption agency talks about the triangle of the birth mom, the baby and the new family. No solution is a good solution unless it takes care of all three points of the triangle. The words of the serenity prayer fit, as per usual:

God, grant me the Serenity,
to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage, to change the things I can,
and Wisdom to know the difference.