Preparing for the Potential Hospital Call

Hey everyone, Shane here. It’s been a while since we’ve been able to post an update. Thanks for the patience from all of our friends and family.

We spent time this weekend looking at strollers. We had a lot to learn, but eventually landed on this Uppababy Vista. Who would have thought that so much goes into a stroller?

Why were we looking at strollers? How does that apply to our blog? Well, last week (3/22) we had a seminar/class through our adoption agency. What an eye opener! Actually, this class was a little late for us. We were supposed to have taken it last year (it occurred during Kim’s brother’s wedding, and it’s offered only twice each year). We learned a lot.

There was a moment where a few things were shared that really got us thinking. First of all, it got more real to us. We knew that there is the possibility that we could wind up adopting after receiving a call from our agency, letting us know that a birth mother in the hospital has decided to make an adoption plan. Now, this isn’t as common, but it’s a possibility. We’ve now really come to understand that this is a possibility, and we are going to need to have a few things prepared if this does happen. The one thing that parents kept telling us is that we cannot leave the hospital with an infant in our car, unless we have the car seat. Welp, that’s how we landed on getting the stroller. We knew that we wanted an infant car seat that would work with our stroller, and that’s how we wound up here!

We know that there are a few other things that we are going to have to get- but it’s not that much more than that. It’s our understanding (from our friends and family) that there isn’t too much that is going to be needed that can’t really be received in two days (thank you, Amazon Prime).

Being prepared for the hospital call is probably not an urgent & tremendous focus, but it is important. We feel more prepared now. We will need to get some bottles (coming soon) and some ‘infant supplies,’ but I think we are getting closer to being prepared.

Another thing we learned was about the legal rights of the birth mothers and fathers. So, here is how the legal rights work according to our understanding (disclaimer – this is not legal advice, we are not experts, and this is a lay interpretation of what we understood).

• Baby is born in the hospital. At this time, the baby is covered under mom’s insurance (or medical, if there is no insurance). This is the case until the baby is discharged.
• When the baby is discharged into OUR custody, this is only an arrangement until the mother’s parental rights are terminated.
• After mom is discharged and is no longer under the influence of any medications from the birth, she can sign the paperwork with the agency that terminates her parental rights.
• The birth father if he is consider the ‘presumed’ father (rather than the alleged father) may also need to sign to terminate his rights.

The main thing here is that the mother, between the time of discharge and terminating her parental rights, may change her mind. This is a possibility if we got the hospital call or if we had a chance to get to know the birthmother/father before the baby is born. And if this was to happen, we would need to relinquish custody of the child either back to the mother, or to another intermediary.

This got us thinking about how we are going to communicate to our friends and family as we are going through this process. We have decided for multiple reasons that we are going to hold off on making any public announcements until the parental rights are terminated. So, if we get the hospital call, we will be sharing the story with everyone well after it’s already happened.

We are going to keep on sharing more about this process as we go along. And we can’t wait for the next steps. This is really beginning to become a reality for us, and we are excited. Thanks for staying tuned throughout the journey with us.