How I Became a Mom - Part 4

So the next morning, June 13th, 2002, Mr. Sweetie woke up and went downstairs at our hotel to eat breakfast. I was puttering around, taking my time getting ready when Mr. Sweetie’s cell phone started ringing. Ordinarily, I would never answer his phone but thinking that it might be LAA, I did. And it was.

Keira told me that the baby had been born the previous night, that it was a healthy baby girl, African-American, and then she started giving me stats, height, weight, etc. I was thinking to myself, “Gee, I’m happy for the birth mom but this is kind of mean for Keira to go on and on like this about a baby that is not going to be ours.” (I was still thinking that the reason they hadn’t called the night before was because the birthmom had changed her mind.) Keira has the patience of a saint because she finally got it through my thick head that we needed to come home and MEET OUR BABY!

I was so confused. My mind just couldn’t comprehend—this was happening so fast. I still was convinced that the birth mom would change her mind so I would let myself get excited, then come crashing back down. When Mr. Sweetie came back upstairs from breakfast, I was running around throwing things into suitcases, and I quickly let him know what was going on.

After more consultation with Keira, we decided that I would fly home and Mr. Sweetie would follow later in the car. (Part of our vacation was business for him, so we decided it made sense for him to go on and conduct the business portion of our trip while I went to meet the birth mom and the baby.) We rushed downstairs to the hotel’s “business center” to get on the internet and find out what airlines flew out of Durham’s airport.

While Mr. Sweetie was looking that up, I called my mom at her work and blurted out that I needed a ride from the airport to the hospital to meet (what we hoped would be) our baby and her birthmom. Later, she told me that after our conversation, she hung up the phone, stood up at her desk and screamed, “Everybody! Everybody! I need your attention! I may be a grandma!” Isn’t that cute?

After much stress and haggling with the airline, Mr. Sweetie got me booked on a $400 round-trip ticket back to Oklahoma, rather than a $800 one-way ticket (how does that make sense?) and I was on my way. I don’t remember much about my flight from Durham to Dallas-Ft. Worth, except that I was frantically reading the book Inside Transracial Adoption. (Great resource, by the way.) When we got to DFW, it was pouring down rain and there was terrible thunder and lightening. I was so nervous that I wouldn’t get to the hospital in Oklahoma in time and that the birth mom would think I didn’t care and change her mind! Finally, they allowed us to run out to the plane in the pouring rain, run up the steps and board the plane. The rain was blowing in to the plane something terrible. Not surprisingly, FAA won’t let you fly with water standing on the floor of the cockpit so we had to wait for someone to come and mop it up. Further delays. More nerves. Agh!

We finally got airborne and eventually landed in Oklahoma City at the time that I was supposed to be across town at the hospital meeting the birth mom and baby. My mom and dad were waiting for me at the airport, and told me they would wait for my bag while I grabbed a cab and hightailed it to the hospital. So that’s what I did.