We always call our daughter the “fourth and final.” The situation with her was much different than the boys even though, they share birth parents. She was born in a different and frankly much more efficient county. It did make things hard the year before adoption because I had two counties coming to my house and running kids to visitations. It was stressful. Double the caseworkers and attorneys.
Although by the time my daughter came along all professionals where on board with termination and us adopting her. I get that. Yet the boys’ case had traumatized us. Not ONLY us; but our entire families. I used to hold my daughter and sing ‘You are my sunshine,” and the end I always sang… “Please don’t take my baby away…” It did not matter how many times I heard it was fine, nothing wild was going to happen; no one could assure that fear out of me.
I did not attend my daughter’s parental rights termination trial because the GAL did not think they would be able to get authorized transfer for their birth dad to the courtroom from jail in time. I was already in a panic that day because I was missing the birth of my life long best friends first child and worried that our adoption date would get pushed out even further if we needed a new termination trial date… when my phone wrang. It was our daughters GAL; transport had come through. Rights terminated. Felt like two births in one day. My best friend ended up with some complications and need a C-section; at the end of the day we were both holding OUR babies. Just a state apart.
Our daughters GAL was HER attorney. I was very happy with the fairness he showed to everyone and stayed completely invested in our daughters best interest. As he was supposed to do.
On October 12, 2011. We were much lower key with hers because it had not been the roller coaster the boys had been. We had never been to this courtroom and had no traumatic memories of it. We did not need our lawyer. We had scheduled her Adoption Party for that weekend. My mom, husband, myself, and one of our twins (some days he needed mommy over preschool; this was one of those days) sat through the short hearing with a judge we had never met. We took a photo with the judge, our daughter clutching his shoulder. She was all about mommy and daddy at that age. We also had her Adoption Caseworker hold her in a photo. Genuinely one of the kindest and empathetic humans I have met. We went to pizza hut after for a quite lunch. It was a peaceful and glorious day. It was also the perfect end to our experience with foster care. Grateful forever, but it was time for a new chapter.
That following weekend we had a big party for her to celebrate her adoption. She had a beautiful cake, and everyone got her a present. She had fun opening them. She was 14 months old on adoption day, so we let her have the top of the cake to smash. She needed a little help getting into it, so our friend helped her get messy. The same friend just a few weeks before she had taken her first steps to! She had an absolute ball and so did her brothers.
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