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When we decided to adopt, we knew that adoption is a lot different today than it used to be. The agency no longer matches up children with adoptive parents. Rather, the mom and dad get to choose the adoptive parents for their child. And they get to meet the adoptive parents and possibly have an ongoing relationship with them into the future. They call it “Open Adoption” — where the child and her adoptive parents have a relationship with her original mom and dad.

My wife and I were very excited about having an ongoing relationship with our child’s first mom and dad. Even recent research shows that Open Adoption is not only good for the child, but also the mom who relinquished her child. So when we got “the call” that someone had chosen us, we were thrilled.

We met Beth and Lee the next week. Of course, everyone was nervous. I was nervous, my wife was nervous and both Beth and Lee were nervous. When I’m in a nervous situation like that, I make a point of being overly nice. That’s how I handle my nervousness. Lee, on the other hand, talks when he’s nervous—talks and talks and talks. Since he’s young, he talked about things that are cool to young men: driving fast, car accidents, drinking, partying, video games. It was not the easiest conversation to have.

At the end of that meeting, it was suggested that we get together again, which we did. Lee was not able to make it, though, so we met with Beth and her mother. We got to know Beth better. It was a much different meeting than the first one.

For the next meeting, Lee and Beth came to our home. That was a lot of (self-imposed) pressure on us, but it was one of the best meetings we had with them. As it turns out, that would be the last meeting with Lee and Beth together until the birth. Lee didn’t talk nearly as much and he didn’t talk as much about getting drunk and driving 90 miles an hour.

It was after that meeting that things started falling apart. About a week and a half later, we heard from the adoption agency that Lee did not want to relinquish his child. Beth, however, still wanted to move forward with adoption, so we remained involved. We met a couple more times with Beth and her mother and they told us that Lee was “having a hard time with it,” but they seemed confident that in the end, he would do it.

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