The Story of Luke

Lucas Alexander was born on Friday, May 23, 2008 at 11:35 am at St Joseph's hospital in Ann Arbor. Jill was in the delivery room with Luke's birthmother as David fretted* in the hospital waiting room. Lucas was a healthy 6 pounds, 15 ounces and 19 1/2 inches long.

We spent two nights in the hospital in a room next to his birthmom's, thanks to the kind St Joe's staff. Luke's birthmother wanted us to get to know the baby right away, so we were able to care for him in our room. She was also able to spend time with Lucas, and his birthfather met him at the hospital as well. Lucas came home with us on Sunday the 25th.

At this point we entered the scary "legal risk" waiting period. In Michigan, bringing a child you hope to adopt home can be broadly generalized as a three step process. The first step is for the birthparent(s) to sign a guardianship agreement allowing the adoptive parents to care for the child while waiting for a court date. The court date is the second step, at which the birthparents formally relinquish their parental rights and the court grants joint custody to the adoptive parents and the court. The legal risk period is the time between taking the child home and the court hearing, during which the birthparent(s) may change their mind about the adoption and take the baby back. This is a nerve-wracking wait for the adoptive parents, and we are told that birthparents who are looking for closure can find it difficult as well. Fortunately for us, the Washtenaw County Probate Court doesn't drag its feet on adoption cases, and our agency was able to assemble the paperwork and get us a hearing date less than two weeks after Luke's birth. (Some Michigan counties take as long as 12 weeks.)

That court date was this morning! Luke's birthmother appeared in court and agreed to allow us to adopt him. So today we can tell the world about our absolutely perfect son!

The third step is to finalize the adoption, again through Probate Court. This will happen in about six months, after two home visits by our social worker to make sure Lucas is doing well and that everyone is adjusting to our new life together. At that point we'll get a birth certificate showing us as Luke's parents (he'll also have his original birth certificate with his birthmom's name).

This is an open adoption, so we will we be sending photos and letters to Lucas' birthparents, and they're happy to field phone calls about things like medical history questions, or when young Lucas has a burning question that we can't answer (like "what is my birthdad's favorite color?", "did any of my birthparents' relatives play baseball?", or "how did my birthmom and birthdad meet?"). Lucas will also hopefully have contact with his birthparents and older siblings at some point. Open adoption is a wonderful thing, and we're confident that it will help Luke to understand why his adoption took place. We were so happy to have the opportunity to meet with Luke's birthmother before he was born and spend time with her at the hospital; she is a wonderful person and we were able to learn a lot about her that we will share with Lucas over the course of his life. But there is a lot we don't know about her and the rest of Lucas's birthfamily, and we look forward to the opportunity to communicate with them over the coming years so that Lucas can learn more about them.

Though still hair-raising and quite a roller coaster, in many respects this has been the perfect adoption experience. We'd like to thank our agency, Hands Across the Water, for doing a great job and being so supportive throughout this process.

*while attempting to read Immanuel Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, which Tony Chen now affectionately refers to as "Luke's Song".