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THE CALL came (not “the call,” but THE CALL) at about 2:30 a.m. on May 2—Beth was in labor. What with waking up, showering, collecting our things and driving the hour and a half to the hospital, we got there at 5 a.m. We saw Beth briefly then waited in the waiting room with Lee. About an hour later, Jacob was born.

As an adoptive parent, it’s hard to know how to act at the hospital with the dad watching everything you do. The hospital staff knew that we were going to be “the parents” and they called us “Mom” and “Dad” right in front of Lee. We even got to be in the nursery with Jacob before Lee did. It was an awkward situation.

Later that day, the adoption case worker came with paperwork, but the hospital did not have a notary, so the paperwork could not be completed. She told Beth and Lee that she would be back the next day with another person from the agency to notarize whatever it was that needed notarizing. She talked with us briefly in private and asked us how we were doing. We asked if Lee would indeed sign the papers and she said that he had not indicated he wouldn’t.

The next morning, we got a call from the case worker. This was not like the other calls. This was the bad news call. Lee was not going to sign relinquishment papers. He wanted to take Jacob home with him. She thought it would be better to minimize any complicating factors, like having us around, so we left the hospital. We were in complete radio silence for about 4 hours.

There’s waiting, and then there’s waiting. Adoption in general involves a lot of waiting. There’s waiting for people to answer questions, fill out paperwork on your behalf, getting appointments scheduled; waiting for tests/forms/various-other-processes to be processed. Then there’s waiting for the choosing. Waiting for “the call” and waiting for THE CALL. This waiting, these 4 hours of limbo, was much different. This was a moment-by-moment kind of waiting. The kind you experience when you’re sitting in a waiting room while a loved one is in surgery. The kind that makes your heart race whenever the door opens and you think for a split second that the doctor (the one doing the operation that you’re concerned about) is going to walk through. Every time the phone rang, I jumped and my heart started racing. We ate, but we weren’t that hungry. We tried napping, but despite the fact that we were exhausted, we couldn’t sleep. It was 4 hours of hell for us.

When we finally got the call from the case worker, she asked if we were still in town. We were. She asked if she could meet with us, so we went back to the hospital and met up with just her. Beth and her mom had left the hospital and took Jacob with them. Lee was threatening legal action, so they left before he could return with a lawyer.

The case worker explained the situation to us. Beth still wanted to move forward with the adoption, but Lee did not. We had three options:

• We could walk away. This meant that either Beth would have to parent, herself; or find a different set of willing adoptive parents.
• We could move forward. This meant that Jacob would be placed in our home, but that it could be a very temporary situation. He may end up going back to his mom.
• Jacob could go into some sort of temporary foster care while this got worked out. So, Jacob would be placed, but not with us.