Monday- Day 3/Part 1

I am not sure how much I slept Saturday night. I do know that I was up bright and early. We didn’t want to spend all day at the hospital. It’s not that we didn’t want to see Baby C; it was that we were afraid that things were going to fall through. We were to meet our SW at the hospital at 3pm.

Unfortunately, our truck’s AC had been acting up in the days leading up to all of this. We had scheduled a maintenance appointment for 8am this day. We decided to not cancel. How could we bring a baby home with AC that was messed up? DH had tried to call the service center Saturday and Sunday, but they were closed. We were afraid to take the truck in because we would be stuck driving mine (my car has no AC at all). So, at 8am my DH called the center and told them that we still wanted to bring the truck in but had to have a rental that could fit a car seat. Needless to say a couple of hours later my DH pulled in our driveway with a 2010 Y.ukon that was fully loaded. Sweet!

The week before, we had also scheduled our two puppies for their yearly shots. Again, we didn’t want to cancel. To prepare, I gave the puppies a bath. When my DH got home, we loaded up to head to the appointment. The littlest had an accident in the office and both wanted to sit on the benches with us while we wanted. It was cute. The vet we go to is a family friend. The appointment probably lasted longer than normal due to all of the small talk. I know, he didn’t know that our lives were about to change in a big way and that we were nervous and in a hurry.

We then headed back home to finish getting things ready. I packed our diaper bag and we grabbed our video and still cameras (which we made sure were charged). We installed the car seat and the seat protector (that went…well, we got it in). Then, we finally hit the road.

I can’t remember at this point what we ate for breakfast or if we even did. At this point, that is not what matters most. I do remember still wanting a BIG bow for Baby C. We stopped at M.eijer to see what we could find. We didn’t have any luck.

We then proceeded to head to the hospital. We had been parking in a parking garage the days prior, but the rental truck was too tall to park there. Trust me, we tried. I was afraid that we were going to make the rental truck in to a convertible. So, we found a nearby parking lot that ended up also being free after validating our ticket. As we were parking, we noticed a gentleman filling up his gas tank. Had he ran out? Nope, that didn’t do the trick. We were in a rental, we didn’t have jumper cables. As we crossed the street, the gentleman yelled for us. We were parked close to him and another gentleman (who was parked outside of the lot) had offered his cables for us to use. DH looked at me; we couldn’t say no. So, as my DH moved the rental and helped, I stood in the parking lot holding my purse, the diaper bag, the cameras and the car seat. And, it was hot out! But, we felt like we did the right thing by stopping to help out. Wuldn’t you want someone to help you if this happened to you?

Once we walked into the hospital lobby, we went into the gift shop. The day before I had noticed that they had bows for sale. They were little bows, but I thought that the headband would be small enough for Baby C. We also got something to drink. After a quick potty break, we decided to wait in the lobby. During all of our conversations with our SW, the day before and that day, we never said where we were going to meet. Around 3pm I texted our SW saying that we were in the lobby. It took her a while to text back. She told us to wait there. It made us nervous that it took her a while and that her response was one word. Was something not going as planned? I tried to not let my mind go to crazy places by people watching.

A couple of minutes later she arrived. She had a smile on her face. It took her a while to text us because she was driving and then she had a shake/ice cream to finish before coming in.

We got our parking tickets validated and headed up to the third floor. We scrubbed our hands and met up with the hospital’s SW. We were placed in a small conference room. It was dim and the lamps were bolted to the center of the tables. We had one pen between the four of us (there was student SW there with our SW). We barely had any hard surfaces to write on.

We had to sign a ton of paperwork. Our SW had to read everything to us. We had to sign two of everything. One copy of the documents would be the agency’s and the other would be ours. Our SW kept telling us that there were two pieces that we couldn’t sign until we got the call from the other SW. Our BM was supposed to show up at the agency’s office between a certain time frame to sign her final pieces of paperwork.

I kid you not; our SW’s phone rang a million times. She received calls and messages about other cases. The student SW had to call before she got there to see where we were. Her phone even locked up. She had to take the battery out to fix it. She has one of those s.martphones were you have to enter a password each and every time you want to use it. OMGoodness, it made us so nervous every time we had to pause because of her phone! At one point, we did get word that our BM had gotten lost going to the agency.

We had gotten to the point where all that we had left was the final pieces of paperwork. Our SW had even signed the paperwork that the hospital required. Right then, her phone rang. Our BM had signed. We lost it! I looked up at the clock; it was 4:40pm. Our SW read the last of the paperwork to us and then we signed.

It was time to go met our daughter, Baby C.