“Motherhood is something I felt my whole life has prepared me for, from helping in the children’s nursery at church as soon as I was old enough to dedicating my career and education to working with children and families. I have two degrees related to child development and I’ve always looked forward to the time where I would mother my own children. My husband and I talked about raising a family before we were even engaged.
We married in June of 2016 and shortly after, I had some health complications that led me to the discovery of premature ovarian failure. My worst nightmare came to life—my body isn’t able to conceive children. The day I found this news out is one that will live in my mind forever. This day changed the series of events that led me to where I’m at now, raising my adopted daughter, Remi, alongside my incredible husband.
After finding out having biological children would not be a part of our story, my husband and I took some time to heal and plan for the future of our family. We always talked about adopting, but imagined we would pursue it after having a couple of biological children. We didn’t know if we would ever be able to adopt a newborn baby, and we wanted the opportunity to raise a child from birth to gain the most experience we could. Through further research, I found out we could pursue a newborn adoption with an agency in our state.
We attended our first adoption informational meeting and went full-force into this decision for our family. Before we knew it, we were deep into piles of paperwork and home study to-do lists. It took us 6 months to complete our home study, and we became an active waiting adoptive family with our agency in December of 2018. Our adoption journey felt long. We waited 19 months before an expectant mother had any interest in speaking with us. We presented to nearly ten different expectant mothers with our agency and they all chose another family for their newborn baby.
In July of 2020, I connected with an expectant mother who lived 12 hours away from us in another state. We clicked right away and had so much in common. We spent the next few months building a relationship and planning an open adoption for her baby girl, who was due at the end of October (2 days before my birthday). This part of our journey brought us more hope than any other moment of our lives. We finally felt like the moment of becoming parents was in our foreseeable future. We had the opportunity to come up with a name for this baby girl, and we referred to her daily in our lives for months. The idea of her grew in our family and close friend’s hearts as we anticipated her arrival into our lives.
This baby girl decided to arrive 3 weeks early and her mother called us with the shocking news we had to hop in the car and take the overnight drive to their state to meet her. Baby girl ended up in NICU after she was born, and the first time we met her was a moment in my life I’ll never forget. The emotions and the feelings still live on in my heart. For the next 3 days, we lived in her NICU room and slept on the tiny couch together. We spent time with her mother and father and our conversations felt so natural and easy.
On a gut-wrenching day during our time in this hospital, we found out baby girl was not going to actually be our baby girl. Her mother chose to keep her. We couldn’t leave that hospital quick enough and we couldn’t get home as quickly as we wanted to. Our hearts shattered more each mile we drove away from that hospital and to our home 12 hours away. We returned home, not knowing what our next steps would be or if we could endure any more of this adoption journey. But something in our hearts knew we were still meant to be parents.
15 days after returning home from our disrupted adoption, we received a phone call from our social worker. I remember looking down at my phone to see the missed call and was so perplexed she was calling us on a Sunday evening. She usually emails, anyway. Before I could call her back, I heard my husband’s phone ringing. It was her calling him right after she called me, and my heart dropped at that moment. I knew right then she had something important to tell us.
My husband put her on speakerphone and we both heard the words, ‘A mother has chosen you.’ All of this didn’t feel real! We just returned home from what we thought was our moment to become parents, and here we are actually hearing about a new opportunity. Our social worker frantically gave us the details about this mother and her baby girl because she needed to know quickly if we were interested. This mother was already in the hospital about to give birth. We said yes quicker than we’ve ever responded to any large decision in our lives.
The next day, October 26th, our baby girl was born and we met her at the hospital when she was only a few hours old. We also met her birth family and have the most amazing memories of our time in that hospital. The pure opposite of what we just experienced in another hospital earlier that month. Remi was perfect and healthy. We spent the next couple of nights with just the three of us in our own room together. It was starting to hit us everything that led us to this moment was how it was meant to be.
If the first baby girl didn’t come 3 weeks early, then we would have never been able to be presented to Remi’s birth mother. The first baby girl’s original due date was October 27, but Remi was born on October 26. My husband perfectly worded it in a poem he wrote a couple of days after we returned home from our disrupted adoption:
‘We thought we had found you
In fact, we were certain
We thought we had held you
Fed you
Helped you sleep and heard you cry
Turns out, that was someone else
Someone who has become a beacon
A bright light cutting through the inky black
Carving a path to the most important thing in the Universe…
YOU’
The Universe led us to our daughter. As painful of an experience it all was, I would do it all over again to have Remi Rose Lennon in our lives, in our hearts, and in our arms.”
This story was submitted to Love What Matters by Erica Matteson of Michigan. You can follow their journey on Instagram. Submit your own story here, and be sure to subscribe to our free email newsletter for our best stories, and YouTube for our best videos.
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