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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:
1) Three-month long relationship with birth mother in Florida ends in failed adoption and fraud. MySpace.com to receive most of the blame/credit.
2) David and Kerri both equally crushed.
3) Day takes rapid turn for the better with two-hour case review and adoption placement for 5-day old white/Puerto Rican boy
4) Dave will be out of the office through Wednesday, September 27. -
5) For client related matters, please contact Peter Kappus in my absence.
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THE BAD PART:
As many of you know, Kerri and I have been waiting for an adoption placement for a little over a year now. About three months ago we received a referral for a little girl that was to be born in late-August or early September to a mother in Florida. We met with the mother over a video conference and she sent us several packages of family photos and some very nice thoughtful letters she’s written to us. We named the girl together, Elizabeth (Ellie) and felt that we were very lucky to have made this connection.
We were all quite excited, though we’d been trained to be cautious about the adoption process as about 25% of the cases end up with the birth mother changing her mind after she gives birth. Several weeks ago, our natural curiosity lead us to looking up the birth mother on MySpace.com (we knew her first name and the city she lived in, plus she’d given us photos of herself). What we discovered appeared to be a very different story that what she’d told the agency and us. She didn’t mention the adoption at all, on the contrary, she was telling all her friend how excited she was to be a mom. She also referenced a different man as the father than what she’d told the agency. Kerri and I were quite alarmed and contacted the agency. They timidly felt it out with her, taking care to not alarm her or cause her to think we were stalking her or something. The agency came back to us and assured us that everything looked on the level.
On Tuesday the birth mother posted a comment to her myspace page that she was starting to have contractions. We began to prepare to travel and were feeling very excited. Wednesday morning she posted a comment on her myspace page that she’d given birth to a healthy baby girl and was very happy. No mention of the adoption, no mention of us. We held tight for several hours thinking that perhaps she just wanted a little extra time with the baby before giving her up–then she’d contact the agency and they’d contact us. Around 11 AM we contacted the agency in Florida and pointed them to the MySpace page, asking, “What’s going on?!” The agency said they had not heard from her at all and that they would contact their main office in Miami to get some assistance. The two longest, most painful hours of our life later, around 1 PM, the agency called back to say that the birth mother had disconnected her phone number and instructed the birthing clinic she’d been at to not call the adoption agency.
She had vanished. With the girl. It appears at this point that her MySpace.com version of the story was the true one and that the adoption plan was premeditated in order to cover her living expenses and medical bills which we’d paid through and escrow account over the last three months.
Kerri and I have been devastated by the last 48 hours. We are both really struggling to come to terms with the fact that people can be so evil. And, even worse, that a little girl will now grow up in an environment where things like this are tolerated. She’s the real loser here and we wish dearly that there was something we could do. But there isn’t.
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THE GOOD PART:
So, after breaking the news to us, the agency said that about 30 minutes prior to this another child who’d already been born but placed into adoption right after birth was available. Kerri and I were told that we could take a little time (a couple of hours) to think it over, but if we wanted to adopt the child, he was ours. Otherwise, they had other families they were planning on contacting. We spent to second longest two-hour period of our life trying to sort out the horrific morning and the potential of the afternoon.
So, cutting to the chase, tomorrow at 11 AM we’ll be boarding a plane to Orlando, Florida to adopt a 5-day old boy who’s half-caucasion and half Puerto Rican. We haven’t even had time to talk about names, but we’ll be letting everyone know as soon as we have one picked out. I’ve included a picture of him here.
We’ve spent the last year or so preparing ourselves and our family for having an African American child and we do feel a certain degree of loss in that we won’t have that dimension to our family for the time being, but we do feel very fortunate that we’ll be able to give our son a good home and a safe place to grow up. Chloe’s about a week behind in processing all of this, though, she did dive right in to offer up some names, Sssse, Eeeei, and Thomas (she was opposed to keeping “The Train” as a middle name, fortunately).
