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You’re Really Giving ME A baby? |
There is a saying in adoption circles that when you
can’t wait one more day for your referral, that is the day it will
come. That was so true in
this case.
Mary called me back a couple of hours later and said
“you’re not going to believe it, but your referral came
today.” I immediately called
my sister and said, “I have a referral” and then promptly lost my
hearing for a short time as she literally screamed
“AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH” in the phone.
Shortly afterwards, I received the medical report
for an infant girl, aged 5 months.
But, alas no picture! WPA
only had a VHS videotape that they were overnighting to me.
It was a long 24 hours. As I paced on Saturday morning, the
Fedex truck finally showed up. I
practically knocked the guy over as I raced out the door. Ran upstairs and threw the tape into the
VCR……
Now, I’ll be honest. Over the previous 24 hours with only the
(completely expected) scary medical report and my overactive imagination to
keep me company, I began to picture this poor, scrawny child with eyes in the
wrong places, scales and a tail. Or
something like that. It certainly
wasn’t rational – I was freaking myself out. Margaret spent the better part of the
night talking to me about her good APGAR scores, in order to (in Marg’s
words) “talk you off the ledge.” So I cannot overemphasize my relief to
see this chubby, adorable little girl who smiled when she was naked (as my
sister Marg likes to yell frequently “naked is best!”), has a lot
more rhythm than her soon-to-be-mother, and yes, her eyes were in the right
place. And all her fingers and
toes. Click here to view
Annabelle’s referral video.
I then passed her medical file and tape to Dr. Dana Johnson at the University of
Minnesota for evaluation. He gave her a thumbs up and – to this new
mother’s delight – declared her “adorable.” And with that, I accepted her
referral.
Is this
girl cute or what?? *
*thanks to
Cindy Kaplan for the photos
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