It has been over a month now since our adoption fell through. I have not known what to write about it for some time because of the intense heart break that we have gone through. For those that don't know what happened, I thought I would describe the events that led up to the failed adoption. As posted on my last entry, our birth mom did not fly out here to give birth as planned. She had told us that her doctor wasn't going to let her fly and that he pushed back her due date by a couple of weeks. It was at that point that I instinctively knew something was wrong. We weren't able to reach her for a few days after that because she said she was helping out her grandmother. When we finally did speak to her, we told her that we would be flying out there in a few days so we would be there for the delivery. As we spoke to her she told me how excited she was to meet us and that she wanted me in the delivery room with her.
My husband and I made plans to take the red eye out to Monroe, Louisiana the following week. We left her a voice mail the night before saying that we would see her the next day and wanted to take her out to dinner before she went into the hospital to get induced. The next morning is when the heartbreaking truth began to unfold. We were in Atlanta on a layover and were waiting to board our plane to Louisiana. As we were about to board the plane, our adoption agency received a text from the birth mom saying that she had the baby last night and that the birth father wanted to raise the baby. I quickly called the agency and told them that all of this was too suspicious seeing how we left her a message last night and then all of the sudden she had the baby. I told our agency we were going to board the plane and while we were on our way I wanted them to call all the hospitals in Monroe and see if she is actually there.
As we landed in Monroe about 2 hours later, our agency called and told us that the birth mom shut off all of her phones and they have no way of reaching her. They called all the hospitals and she was not in any of them. So there we sat in a small hotel in Monroe, LA wondering what to do next. Our agency was going to call the police and she if they could get any answers. As we were waiting to hear back from the agency, my husband started doing his own investigation. (Keep in mind we only knew her first name at the time, the city where she lived, and her birthday.) With just that information, my husband came across a facebook page with a picture of a brand new baby boy and her first and last name. We quickly called the agency and asked them to confirm her last name. It was her page!
As we looked at her facebook page she created just 3 weeks prior to when we arrived, we then realized the horrific truth about this women. Apparently the day after she was to fly out to here, she had given birth! The three days she was "taking care of her grand mother", she was actually recovering in the hospital. We felt so betrayed. I couldn't believe that the day she told me she wanted me in the delivery room, she had actually had the baby already! According to her status updates even the due date she told our agency was a lie. As the truth started to unfold we realized that she never had intended on ever giving the baby up for adoption, but only did this to get her living expenses paid for the last six months. We found out when she told our agency that her due date was pushed back it was so the agency would use our "good faith" money to pay for her rent. One of the most disturbing things she posted was her main comment about herself... it stated, "CEO of getting what's mine".
As you can imagine, my husband and I were horrified! We knew going into this that there is always the potential emotional and financial risk of losing a child if the birth parents changed their minds. To us it wasn't about the thousands of dollars that were lost, it was about the horrible betrayal that came from this women. We had spoken to this women every other week since Christmas and thought we had built a lasting friendship with her. Since she had cut off all communication with our agency, we decided to confront her and send her a message on facebook. As you can imagine, she didn't expect our message Of course she came up with a million excuses, but ultimately she knew she had been caught.
Unfortunately, with the ways the adoption laws are written, there really is nothing that can be done. We were able to put her on the national adoption registry to tell everyone she is a fraud. That way she won't be able to ever do this again to another couple. However, that doesn't leave us much consolation as we still are left without what we wanted the most... our baby boy.
