Our adoption story — GARRETT ROSS

Some stories just don’t seem real. How these two ended up in our family is nothing short of many little miracles that I never could have seen coming. Some how we knew someone that did though.

Where to start.

We didn’t know what to expect when we decided that we were going to adopt. We just knew it was going to be an adventure full of struggles and hopefully in the end, a beautiful child would be ours. Little did we know we would some how end up with two beautiful baby girls born just 16 days apart. This is our adoption story.

Rather than focus on the struggles we’ve had to have children, I want to highlight a few key things that happened during that time that now makes some sense. It’s important as it conveys that the coming together of our family with these little ones seems to have been in motion for quite a while.

A few years before our adoption, an older lady in our church told my wife that she saw our girls in a dream. The even stranger thing is that she told us that their names were Sarah and Samantha. Now, we had always known that we were going to name our daughter Sarah. But Samantha was not on our minds and my wife didn’t think much of it other than this was kind of a funny story at the time.

We did end up getting pregnant during that time. In fact, it was the day before Christmas and it looked like in-vitro had worked for us. All the numbers indicated that multiples were highly likely. We were mentally preparing ourselves to have twins and were very excited. It was only a week later when we miscarried.

It was actually about a year after that miscarriage that we decided we were going to adopt.

Since we knew some friends that recently adopted an infant through Adoptions From the Heart, that seemed like the best option for us. Especially since our church didn’t do adoptions any more and we knew we wanted to have a baby. International adoptions are also pretty challenging, typically cost more and it is very rare to get an infant. So there really weren’t a lot of options to choose from.

Going through the adoption process is hard. We had to go to classes and figure out how we were going to literally market ourselves. You have to answer challenging questions, such as what level of drugs you are willing to accept and how open of a relationship you will be willing to have with the birth mother and birth father. And then the really hard part is you have to wait.

You go every month with no word. Not even a potential look at our profile as we didn’t even qualify to be shown. We also saw lots of drug babies go through the system and began to wonder if we were being too picky in trying to find our baby. With one child in the home, we knew we had to be careful.

So with the waiting, Ellen decided we needed to broaden our net for finding a family. Fortunately, the church did provide another website for us to host our profile on free for a year and so we posted our profile on adoptions.com to go along with a few other places Ellen identified.

We remember one evening getting an email from someone who had picked us. She was from Virginia Beach and we soon realized that it was someone who was going to try and scam us. She had even taken a fake photo of some baby and passed it on as hers to try and con us.

We also ended up having an opportunity to possibly adopt a five year old girl. In the end, we decided we just couldn’t be the ones to remove her from what appeared to be a nice home with her mother. We also still had a feeling that we were supposed to get a baby. So we decided to keep waiting.

Then it happened, on June 2nd, 2015, we got the call from the agency. We had been picked! A young sixteen year old girl named Jamie from Chesapeake, Virginia had actually selected us. She was healthy and was due in August! And even more importantly, the baby was going to be a healthy baby girl!

The interesting thing is that this day is also the birthday of my sister Shannon, who has passed away. I have to admit that we felt like Shannon and maybe others were helping align things in their own way.

Unfortunately, we were going to have to wait another six weeks to meet with Jamie in person. We were very excited although nervous. What if this young girl didn’t like us? The one thing we did learn though was that what she liked most about us was Will. She wanted her baby to have a big brother to look out for her baby.

It wasn’t but a few days later and we saw a strange email come through. Apparently, we had been picked again. Only this time it was from the website and not through the agency.

The email was from Kim, a single mother of two children living in Florida who was due with her third in September. She had found us on adoptions.com and just felt like we were supposed to be the family for her baby girl.

The hard thing was that even before we could respond to her, Adoptions From the Heart answered on our behalf. “This family has already been picked.” To be honest, this frustrated us. Who were they to answer for us? Besides, we have no guarantees that this baby is going to be ours. In fact, we have no guarantees at all that we’ll get a baby.

I remember feeling the need to call Ellen and see how she felt about it. I also remember seeing that Kim had given her number and I told Ellen she should call her.

When Ellen talked to Kim, she felt a connection right away. Kim knew that she didn’t want to raise this daughter in a joint custody with the birth father and when she started looking for families, our profile stood out.

We decided to be very transparent with Kim from the start. We also were advised by a social worker to not say anything to our agency as nothing is certain and you shouldn’t threaten that adoption. So we immediately had some thinking and praying to do. After all, we weren’t looking for two babies to adopt and the idea of having essentially twins was daunting.

When we took the weekend to pray about it, Ellen and I couldn’t shake the feeling that we should keep moving forward. Let’s do our part and if this is supposed to work out, it somehow will. From Kim’s perspective, she too felt good about moving forward with us and even really liked the idea of having a sister for her daughter that could be there and could relate to her.

A few days into the initial conversations with Kim, Ellen had a key moment take place. Kim was explaining how baby “Sammie” was kicking and that caught Ellen’s attention. She thought she had heard Kim refer to the baby as Sammie before and when she heard this time, she was sure to ask Kim.

“What did you say the baby’s name was?”
Turns out Kim decided to name the baby Sammie, short for Samantha. Ellen immediately thought of Penny’s dream and that strong feeling that something out of our control was taking place came to both of us. Ellen told Kim about the dream and things only seemed to make more sense now that this could work out. Or rather, that it was supposed to work out somehow.

We decided to focus on the things we could control. Another enabling moment happened only a few months earlier when I had managed to get some extra unexpected money through a crazy deal at work and the financial burden of paying for two babies was no longer going to be an issue. The timing was uncanny and it seemed like another key blessing that made it feel like we were supposed to keep pushing forward.

Our day that we got to go meet Jamie for the first time was a very memorable one for us. We drove to Chesapeake and met with Jamie and her mom and dad in the Adoptions from the Heart office. We took Will with us and went there scared and excited. Excited to get to meet such a courageous young woman that could be carrying our baby. Scared that she might change her mind after meeting with us.

We brought Will with us and went into a small room where she soon joined us. She looked great. She was a beautiful, blonde, short, healthy girl with green eyes and a wonderful smile. As soon as I saw her I felt a love for her I couldn’t imagine I would feel. We ended up talking about sharks, music, favorite foods, and hobbies. We learned that she loved Dave Matthews Band, like Ellen and me. We learned she loves music and that her family is into exercise. We learned she loves to cook and that shark week was a must watch.

We had a great conversation and a memorable moment was when she asked us what we wanted to name the baby. When you are in this process, you honestly don’t know if you should say or name as we had heard a lot of birth mothers want to name their child. We told her Sarah Elizabeth and crossed our fingers. Jamie got a big smile. Her best friend’s name was Elizabeth and she loved the name Sarah. She then referred to the baby as Sarah from that point on.

I hate to admit it, but we actually got to a point where we were hoping for a teenage girl to get pregnant. Someone healthy and strong and likely to not be in a position to raise their child. When that situation ended up taking place, never did I ever imagine how mature and smart and loving this young girl would be. It is a crazy thing, basically a baby having a baby and it was a very surreal moment.

One other thing we learned more about Jamie was that she has a twin sister as well as twin siblings. This made us start to think that she just might like the idea of Sarah having a sister so close in age.

As the weeks went on we tried to prepare ourselves. We didn’t want to get too much stuff as the fear of not getting a child was still high for us. Hey, after thirteen years of being let down, it is easy to feel fearful that children are nearly impossible to come into your family.

Our contact with Kim was frequent by phone calls over the next couple of weeks. We got to learn quite a bit about Kim. How she played football as a kid. How she has two kids she adores and how she was focusing on getting her life together in a very positive direction.

We also learned about Samantha’s birth father. That he was not a good person, was on drugs, was prone to anger and was not currently in the best place to be a father. No job, a record, and no money.

The unfortunate thing for both of these girls is that their birth fathers were not the best guys. Sarah’s birth father denied being her dad and Samantha’s you actually hoped that he would just deny to get himself out of the picture.

The great thing though was that it looked like both birth mothers were going to be in a place for the foreseeable future where they could be involved in the lives of these girls. It is our goal to make sure our two girls always know that this decision was due to the immense love both of these women have for them.

The thing that we were starting to get worried about was logistics. Sarah was due the end of August and Samantha was due the second week of September. By state law, we were not going to be able to leave the state of Virginia for ten days after Sarah was born. We also knew that Jamie could change her mind up to ten days after the placement took place.

The other big challenge we had weighing on us was that in order for us to receive Samantha, we were going to have to have an agency represent us. And the Adoption Agency was very against two infants being adopted by the same family.

On August 12th, Jamie’s dad texted us and told us that she was in the hospital and in labor. The labor was not going super fast so it looked like we had the night and morning to get down there without Sarah being born.

The hard thing was that we didn’t have a “birth plan” for the hospital. We didn’t know whether we could be in the room, stay in the hospital, or what Jamie’s wishes were. We were excited and scared once again. We were also terrified that Jamie and her family would change their mind.

When we got to the hospital, Jamie’s dad met us and brought us up to the birthing room to meet with Jamie and visit. It immediately started going well and we were able to spend a lot of time with Jamie, her friend Elizabeth, and Jamie’s family. Jamie was also excited to have Will there, so we called Ellen’s dad to bring Will to the hospital.

The funny thing is that it was a short while after Will got there that Sarah was born. We were able to be with her right from the start. She had a lot of dark hair and was absolutely beautiful. Jamie also spent some time with Sarah and we were once again in this surreal moment. I knew I would love our new baby. I had no idea just how much I would love this baby’s mother.

We ended up spending two nights in the hospital with Sarah and coming home to our new family. We weren’t too concerned after getting to know Jamie’s family more that they would change their minds, but you still are grateful for when milestones are reached. One moment in the hospital we will always cherish was when Jamie’s dad gave Will his troop medallion coin. He told Will he always carried it with him to remind him to take care of his family. Now Will was to take it to always remember to take care of Sarah.

Now Ellen and I weren’t spring chickens any more and getting back home with a newborn was hard. And to think we could have another one literally at any moment was heart-stopping. The range of emotions being felt everyday from exhaustion, gratitude, love and some fear definitely made us appreciate life to the fullest.

With Sarah home, we still had to figure out the next step - find an agency willing to help us. Florida’s laws are a bit different that Virginia’s and we had gotten a good lawyer to walk us through the steps. But we still needed an agency and it seemed that the dozens we called were not willing to help out.

As we passed the ten day hurdle and then met with our family representative to celebrate our growing family, we decided to try once again with this agency. Out family counselor believed that we were doing the right thing in moving forward in adopting both babies. She assured us she would talk to her supervisor and see if she could make something work. She told us again later that day that unfortunately, they were just not willing to help.

As we headed into the weekend, I felt frustrated with the process and just told myself we would continue to figure things out the next week. After all, this was supposed to happen, right?

We didn’t make it through that weekend. It was August 29th and Kim called Ellen to tell us she was on her way to the hospital. We scrambled. Got Ellen on a plane with her mother and they flew down to Florida. I then had to figure out how to pack up our car with our son, dog and brand new baby. We also had to find a place to stay in Florida as we could be there potentially up to twenty-one days before being cleared to leave the state.

The night that Ellen got down to Florida was another night to remember. She was told that the baby was classified as a “drug” baby - meaning a longer period of time in the hospital and more importantly, that the mother had been using lately and the baby could have significant health issues. We also learned that the birth father was going crazy and now there was another thing to worry about. What were we doing? We didn’t need to add more chaos to life. Were we really supposed to adopt a second baby?

I remember not being able to talk to Ellen for a while. I quietly rocked Sarah in my arms and just had this feeling that everything was going to work out. Just keep taking a step forward at a time and things will be ok. When Ellen called me, she was calm. She was holding baby Sammie and said that when she thought about giving up, the conviction of Kim and her mother were even stronger. They knew we were supposed to be in their family. Between that, prayers, and that feeling reminding us that these two girls were supposed to be together - we all pushed through.

As I packed up the car and got things squared away, it was time to have the real conversation I was hesitant to have. That was essentially telling Jamie that we were adopting a second baby and that we were hopeful she would be ok with that. My assumption is that with the birth mom on board, the agency would also be willing to finally help us.

I remember telling Jamie on the phone that we honestly aren’t crazy, but here is a crazy story. She once again blew me away when she answered back pretty frankly “why are you even asking me? I picked you to be Sarah’s parents and trust you.” This sixteen year old was incredible. I mean really really incredible. She then followed it up that she thought it would be pretty cool that Sarah would essentially have a twin sister as she was extremely grateful to have her twin sister and twin siblings.

So we drove to Florida, ready for the next challenges. That first night we were together was pretty incredible. I remember laying both of the girls into their bed and seeing them literally fist bump. It was almost as if they were saying that their side of the journey was just as crazy and that they were glad to finally be back together again.

Sarah and Sammie spend their first night together.

We ended up getting the paperwork cleared in about ten days. We did have some ongoing court battles with Sammie’s birth father that required me to go back down and meet with the judge. But in the end, the problems melted away and we were able to focus on meeting the challenges of raising our “twin” girls.

Our first night together. Daddy’s girls.