I’ve put this post off for 3 months and 7 days. Some of that is just us finding our new routine with a newborn at home, but most of that is just because I wasn’t ready.

You see this day, this very specific day where we finally got to meet our son, has been one of the two most highly anticipated days of my life, sharing the roll with the day I got to marry my sweet Caleb. But this day carries a different weight with it because we didn’t know when this day would actually come. We knew it would come at some point because God promised it would, but we just didn’t have any idea when. That type of waiting is indescribable.

So after 3.5 years of waiting, preparing and praying for our future child, the day that we got to meet him just feels so heavy. Not heavy in a negative way at all, but heavy in how HUGE this day was for us and how does one even begin to put words to something so important? This day was simply incredible and the only word that continued to come into my mind on that very day was just how WILD it was!

We were having a baby!!

Let me back up to that morning, May 11th, 2016.

This day was already so special in our family because our niece Jana and her parents were finalizing her adoption in court that morning. I drove with my mom-in-love to the celebration of that day and on our way back to our side of town, she got a phone call. All I heard on the other end was “Sarah needs to check her phone.” I peeked at it to find text after text and multiple missed calls from Caleb and our representative from our adoption agency.

I knew right away that this was it.

I called Caleb to find out that our birth mom’s water had broken and she was on her way to the hospital via ambulance. This was a direct answer to prayer! We prayed that although she had been refusing any medical care for the past 3-4 months, that when the time was right for Crew to come, that she would get herself to the hospital somehow. Well, she didn’t have a choice because her water broke in a public place and an ambulance was called. God is so cool! Caleb explained that we were on standby and that our agency asked us not to come down to the hospital until they gave us the green light that she was actually going into surgery. One of my favorite parts of this story that I never want to forget is when Caleb mentioned that he was going to the gym to get a quick workout in before we had to go the hospital! I died laughing. Our son was being born, our bag wasn’t packed, there was no car seat placed in our car, and my sweet, (committed) hubby wanted to get a quick workout in. Love him.

To say that I panicked, is an absolute understatement! We parked the car and I reclined (read: threw) my chair back as far as it would go as my mom-in-law and I screamed in excitement, cried together and tried to get our minds calm enough for a moment in order to make a plan. At one point, she was rubbing some sort of oils all over me, and then on herself, to try to soothe us. We were nothing short of a hot mess.

All I could think was “But I haven’t cleaned out the hall closets!!” Seriously. You read that right. You see, I had a well planned “To-Do Before Crew” list with all of the tasks that I felt needed to be done before I became a mommy. And those closets never got the attention they deserved! “How could I bring a baby home to those chaotic closets?!”  I was just sure that there would be absolutely no opportunity in the future to ever clean those closets once we had a baby. and in that moment, that’s where my brain went. The closets.

Once I caught my bearings, I decided to run home to pack the overnight bag and get the car seat in the car. Praise the Lord that Caleb chose not to go to the gym and so when I got home, he was there already packing. He had gotten a call on his way home that our birth mom was on her way back for the C-Section. We had to go!

Picture a tornado, or a bull in a glass shop, or something else that spins crazily out of control and you can get an accurate idea of me, flying through our house, trying to pack all of the items that I (and my new newborn) would need for the next 3-4 days in the hospital. (We found out in that very moment who in our marriage was the calm, collected one in these moments, and who is……well, not.)

My husband, the ultimate rule follower, went the speed limit, and not 1 mph over the entire 35 minutes that it took to get to the hospital! I wanted to jump out of my seat because I was bound and determined to have my plan and part of that plan was to get to have immediate skin to skin time with Crew as soon as he was born. Our birth mom decided that she didn’t want to see or hold Crew and so she approved letting us receive him right away and I did not want to miss that moment!

We got to the hospital and found the 3 representatives from our agency that were also there and waiting. The hospital staff was trying to find us an open nesting room to settle into and stay for the next few days, but this was a very busy day and there weren’t any rooms available. My heart sank with the realization that we wouldn’t get that immediate skin-to-skin time.

As the hospital staff worked on trying to find us a room on a different floor of the hospital, we stayed in the waiting room anxious to hear the news that our sweet boy was born. Finally, nurses came in with the announcement. I couldn’t believe it….he, our baby was actually here!

Wild. This is all so wild! Unfortunately, we couldn’t see him yet. Since they didn’t have a room available for us, they took Crew to the NICU to get cleaned up, hooked to monitors and to stay warm.

My heart longed and ached for this baby boy that I had never met, but who was already somehow mine. But we had to wait…

(Part 2 coming soon!)