The Story of Joshua

Joshua Ellis was born on Tuesday, February 14, 2012 a little after 9 am at the hospital in Midland, Michigan. He was a healthy 7 pounds, 2 ounces and 20 inches long.

The next day Jill got a call from our adoption agency around 9:15am. They had very little information, but a baby had been born who needed a home. Could we come pick him up the next day? (Actually they didn’t even know it was a “him” at this stage!) The agency would need an answer within a couple of hours, though they’d try to get us a little more information about the baby before we had to decide. In the meantime Jill would call David and talk it through with him.

The night before we had eaten an overly-rich valentine’s day dinner (lobster pizza!) and David had had a lot of trouble sleeping so he had gone back home to nap. Jill held off as long as she could before calling him, but she knew it was swim school day for Lucas, so Dad would have to wake up by 10:15 to pick him up. So the first thing bleary-eyed dad heard when he picked up the phone that had woken him up so rudely was “David, there is a baby, do we want to adopt it?”

Over the next hour or so the information came in that the baby was a healthy biracial baby boy, and by noon we had told our adoption agency that we were ready.

That afternoon was a bit of a blur. Jill raced to the doctor’s office to get the results of our recent drug screens and take them to the adoption agency so they could finalize our nearly-finished homestudy update. (Luckily nobody had indulged in too many poppyseed bagels the month before the drug tests: If they hadn’t come back clean, there wouldn’t have been enough time to get retested, and the whole thing would have come to a halt. Ah, the joys of adoption.) David tied up some loose ends at work -- you know, little details like finding somebody to teach his class the next day (thanks, John!) -- and then ransacked our basement looking for Luke’s old baby stuff: The diaper bag, carseat, bottles, and any clothes that looked tiny got yanked down from the storage shelves and thrown into the trunk of our car. We also tracked down our friend Laura to ask her if she could pick up Lucas from daycare the next day and watch him until we made it back home (another huge thanks to Laura!).

The next morning we were on the road before 9 AM, less than 24 hours after Jill had gotten the first call. After a stop in Farmington Hills to meet with our adoption agency to go over the process, we headed north to Midland for a 2 PM appointment at the hospital. (The drive up was mostly occupied with a futile attempt to come up with a name for him. "Joshua" and "Ellis" had come up occasionally during the drive, though they weren't on the top-five list by the time we made it to Midland. When we finally met him, though, the other names just didn't fit; this one did.)

Baby Erik, as the hospital staff called him at the time, was by this time a celebrity at the hospital. The nurses had held him for most of the past two days, and during our stop in Farmington Hills the adoption agency had gotten a call warning us to “make sure they drive a big car” to carry all the gifts that were going to be sent home with him. And so when we got to the hospital lobby to meet with the hospital social worker she warned us to be ready. It was a little intimidating when the doors opened and every nurse and doctor on duty seemed to be waiting there smiling at us!

After filling out some paperwork -- it wasn’t going to happen after we met Joshua! -- one of the nurses brought this beautiful baby boy into the room and handed him to David. Jill started crying (she cries at Hallmark Card commercials). Both of us were in awe and shock at the same time. The nurses were clearly hanging on every moment to see what our reaction was, and the hospital social worker snapped lots of photos for us. The next two hours pretty much flew by as we stared at this tiny, gorgeous baby with a head full of long black hair!

One of the most important things we did at the hospital was to learn as much as we could about Joshua’s birthmother. (Unfortunately, in our opinion, she chose to make this a closed adoption, so we aren’t able to contact her in the future.) She had gone home from the hospital later in the day that Josh had been born, so we weren’t able to meet her, but the hospital staff told us what they were able. She had clearly thought long and hard about her adoption plan, and she simply felt she was not able to care for the baby herself.

The last few weeks have been another (longer!) blur. We’re told that usually people have 6-8 months or so to get ready for new babies -- little details like furnishing a nursery, giving employers reasonable notice that you’ll need to watch a newborn, and stocking the freezer with frozen enchiladas. Oh, well, at least he came on a Thursday so we had the weekend off before we had to go back to work!

Most important, we feel incredibly lucky that we have had BIG help from both of Joshua’s grandmas. Coincidentally, Sally had already been planning to come visit for the weekend on Friday, and she was able to extend her stay through most of the next week to help out. The following week was spring break for David so he was able to stay home with Josh, and Grandma Jackie came shortly afterwards for a long visit. The bottom line is that there is just no way we could have made it through these first few weeks without Sally and Jackie. Thank you! (Jill will be able to take off work for a few months starting in April, and then David can pick up with baby care after that. By January we plan to enroll him at the same daycare where Luke spent his infant months.)

Over the last few weeks we have been in the nerve-wracking "legal risk" period, when Joshua lives with us but the adoption remains uncertain. During this period we are his legal guardians while we wait for a court date that will bring a little more finality. (The court date won’t actually take place for a couple of more weeks, but this past Friday was the last day for the birthparents to petition the court to regain custody if they had changed their minds about the adoption.) Six months later we’ll reach the final step, when the Probate Court will finalize the adoption, but the legal deadline that just passed is the most significant step in the process -- and we just can’t wait any longer to announce the sweetest baby boy to the world!