Semicolon Stories

January 17 – Registering | Mae’s Adoption Journey

January 17, 2012 at 1:25 pm Danielle B Leave a comment

We were on cloud nine after spending a whole evening with the baby girl who would soon be ours. We couldn’t wait to bring her home and begin a new life together. We’d been in contact with our adoption agency who kept giving us updates on what the process looked like. They’d assigned us a lawyer, gotten everything in line for the birth mom, and expected us to be in court by the upcoming Friday if everything fell into place … meaning in four days we’d be coming home with a baby!

Baby Names

We sent out a quick email update again late afternoon letting our friends and family know what our process was looking like. We also told them that we’d not be disclosing the baby’s name. We’d been asked repeatedly about her name, and chose to keep that confidential. It was a sensitive issue, and we wanted to approach it cautiously.

Even before we’d married, we had always had the name of a little girl picked out. It had stuck with us in our dating days and grown to mean so much more to us over the years. However, as we thought through baby names, we’d never expected that our baby would already come with a name. We figured we’d be bringing home an infant from the hospital and the name we chose would be the only name he/she would ever have. We didn’t quite factor in adopting a 4-month-old who’d gone by a previous name for several months.

I struggled with the thought of changing her name, not wanting to show any disrespect to her birth family. However, deep down inside of me I knew it needed to happen. God brought example after example of Biblical stories where names were changed when a transformation occurred. From Sarah & Abraham in Genesis to Paul in Acts – we had a Biblical mandate to change her name. So after prayer and conviction, we proceeded with the plan to change this baby girl’s name to one that God had already put on our hearts. One that would officially make her part of our family.

We left everyone in anticipation and decided not to share until everything was final. We approached the name issue with sensitivity, realizing handling it poorly could jeopardize the situation and relationships. So, we kept everyone guessing on the name, but at least threw them a bone. We went and registered.

Registering for Baby

Now we’d been married for almost six years so we were a little out of practice when it came to registering for gifts. However, once we grasped that Target gun in hand, we were on our way. And it took us very little time to remember how to use it.

Aisle after aisle, we added baby items to our list. Not even knowing what half of them did, we added them anyway. I’d babysat for enough kiddos to know some of the essentials. And then other things just looked really fun.

Bottles, socks, toys – you name it, we added it. It just felt awesome to be “doing” something after a long week of waiting and stalling. We wrapped up our registry list and sent out the news that it was live. It didn’t take long for the gifts to begin pouring in. After all, we had a baby coming – and most likely she’d be moving in by Friday.

Entry filed under: Biracial Adoption, Burgess Adoption, Maeby, Memoir. Tags: adoption after cancer, adoption journey, adoption story, baby names, quick adoption, registering.