Finding Lucy
When I was 12 years old our church had a guest speaker come to talk about adoption. As he spoke, little flyers with the faces of two babies pictured on the front were passed down each row. I couldn't take my eyes away and in that mystical moment, I knew that adoption would be a part of my story someday.
I met my soon to be husband, Jared, at the age of 20. We got married the following year and agreed that when the time felt right, we would have one biological baby and then adopt.
Seven years passed and infertility plagued us. Every miscarriage felt like a death to our dreams. During this time, escaping into the outdoors was the only way to feel alive again. We laid in the back of Jared’s truck staring up into the darkness. We quickly made our wishes as stars more numerous than we could count fell from the sky.
The following year, I became pregnant with a baby that my body would keep, but instead of excitement, I rode on waves of terror for the next nine months. Often times Jared would read me a book from my childhood collection to calm my anxiety. One evening before bed, we read Alice in Bible Land, the story of Esther. Nearing the end of the book, Jared asked, “Do you like the name Estelle?”. We quickly looked it up on our phone, and discovered that Estelle and Esther both mean star.
We were immediately reminded of the wish we made on that starlit night. The name Estelle was a promise that our baby would be safe.
After Estelle turned one, we decided to start the adoption process. We were eager to complete our family and hoped the adoption process would be easier than getting pregnant.
Completing a home study was our first step. It took three months and included countless background checks, multiple home visits from a socialworker, trainings, medical evaluations and a full disclosure of our finances.
Once this was completed, we searched for an agency. Due to state laws, each agency had different requirements, so decided it would be best to have an adoption consultant. The consultant’s job was to send us birth mother cases that they received from various agencies across the country. After reading the case, we had 48 hours to decide and then the birth mother would pick a family from those of us that had submitted our profiles.
We were quickly matched to a birth mom from Kansas. However, two weeks before she was due, she disappeared. We never got to hold the baby we dreamt about and we couldn’t get back the $20,000 we had lost in medical expenses and agency fees.
We grieved for months, and then miraculously found the strength and financial resources to try again.
This time around we said yes to over 30 cases, never getting chosen. After a year of this, we decided it would be best for our family to end the adoption process. This decision felt like defeat and we had no idea how we would ever find our baby.
Three weeks later, on July 15th of 2020, a social worker from Kansas, called to tell us about a baby that had just been born in Oklahoma. The agency didn't have any families willing to adopt her because the birth mom had no prior medical care and tested positive for meth and numerous STD’s. If this baby wasn’t placed with a family, social services would take her she would become another number in the foster system.
I will never forget the night I met our baby girl. She was in the NICU with cords hooked up all over her body. She had a black eye mask on to protect her eyes from the bright lights treating her bilirubin. The very first thought I had was, “she has a black eye mask on just like the one I sleep with every night, this has to be my baby”. Then I noticed her full head of dark hair. Estelle was born with dark hair and I couldn’t believe I was staring at a baby that looked exactly like one I could have given birth too.
~Rebecca Schlender