At 4:47 P.M., her water broke. Stephanie was in the bathroom and we were at the other end of the suite in our room. She asked that we leave, so Josh, Eric and I took a walk across the street. We were gone about twelve minutes when everyone’s phone started to beep and we raced back to the hotel.
Our Connor had finally arrived. We walked into the room the moment he took his first breath and, although we couldn’t see him, we heard his first cry. Fortunately, no one had a camera pointed at us at that time—our faces would have made quite the picture.
About thirty minutes later, Kathy came into our room to give us an update. She had a puppy pad for an apron that was covered in blood. So much for there not being a mess! The midwife told us that Connor had gotten stuck on his way into the world. His cord had wrapped around his neck and snapped upon delivery, spraying blood and stem cells all over the bathroom and its occupants. But thanks to Kathy and her quick responsiveness, a life-threatening situation was avoided and everything turned out fine.
Kathy told us that Stephanie was getting settled and that she would come back to get us shortly when Stephanie was ready. To this day, the hotel has no idea what happened in Room 908 that afternoon. If anyone ever takes a blacklight into that bathroom, they will likely call the FBI.
The next thirty minutes felt like forever. When Kathy finally came back into the room to get us, every possible emotion swept over me. Most of all, I just wanted to see him. As we walked across the hall, our hearts in our throats, I wondered how it was going to feel when my eyes met his for the first time. I soon discovered it was like nothing I’ve ever felt before in my life. There he was, curled up against Stephanie, feeding. We knew he was feeding before we went into the room—it was at the midwife’s recommendation to help Stephanie heal physically—but I couldn’t stop the feeling of dread that suddenly came over me.
We had discussed long before that there would be no breastfeeding, given the bonding it promoted. This was Stephanie’s position and we had supported it. Now I was overcome with doubt that she might change her mind. She smiled as she saw us, looking more beautiful than ever despite being completely exhausted. She motioned for us to come and hold our son. I held him first. I’d never held something so precious in my entire existence, an existence that now felt more complete.
I quickly realized just how instinctive parenting is—although I defy any man to be truly ready to change his first meconium-filled diaper, complete with a birthmother and midwife audience. As we fumbled around, the fear of Stephanie changing her mind about the adoption still lingered in the back of our heads. It had just taken us ten minutes to change a diaper. What if she thought that meant we weren’t ready to be parents?
I mentioned earlier about waiting three days before telling everyone the baby’s name and a three-day ban on buying gifts, but didn’t explain why. Every state has its own adoption laws, including the point at which an adoption can progress after birth. For us, that was three days. The next seventy-two hours were the most complex of the entire process. We were still living in the same hotel room with Stephanie, as we had been for three weeks. Eric and I were in a state of exhausted joy as she began to grieve. It was a humbling irony; there was nothing that could be said, nothing that we could do to fix it or heal it. Of all the unexpected things we had experienced on this journey, those three days were by far the most profound. They made us ever more grateful for Connor as the process reached its conclusion and we could take our son home.
It has been over a year now and we are still in constant contact with Stephanie. We text, phone or video chat once or twice a week. Video chat is wonderful since it allows Connor and Stephanie to see each other and it’s an added bonus when Stephanie’s two children are able to join in as well. We also have an agreement to meet in person once a year. We just flew back to Illinois recently to see Stephanie, Josh and Josh’s mom. We had a wonderful time with plenty of great photo opportunities.
If you were to ask her, Stephanie would tell you that she didn’t give Connor to us; she gave us to him and we are forever blessed that she bestowed that honor upon us. Stephanie is now a part of our family, as we are a part of hers. Although life will take us all in many new and exciting directions, we will be forever bound, because the bond of love between parent and child is the strongest bond of all.
CORYDON, INDIANA
When my wife and I met in 2001, she was twenty-three and I was thirty-eight, so obviously we had a fairly significant age gap between us. But she was clearly an “old soul” and I’m perpetually immature, so we sort of met in the middle and it worked for us. One area in which the age difference was clear, though, was in our different points of readiness for children. I was ready to start a family and hoping to meet someone with whom I could build that family. Novia wasn’t quite ready for children yet, although she did want a family eventually. She just had other things she wanted to do first. Although I wasn’t getting any younger, I hadn’t yet hit that unknown age where I would be uncomfortable as a “mom,” so we waited. We originally planned on artificial insemination, but knew adoption was also a perfectly acceptable possibility to both of us.
Our lives and relationship were certainly complicated and not just because of our age difference. When we met, I was living in Little Rock and working full time as a Major in the Arkansas Air National Guard. In those days of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” being a lesbian in my field was downright oppressive. By law, I couldn’t be “out” in the military and I lived in constant fear of being outed and losing my job. I had been living in the closet my entire military career, which at that point spanned almost seventeen years.
Novia was also in the military. After we started dating, I convinced her to transfer to the Air National Guard and she was eventually hired into a full-time position in my unit. So there we were, both of us working for the same Guard unit, living in a military town and trying to make a relationship work while avoiding getting drummed out for being gay.
Because of the nature of my position, I was very well-known and recognized by virtually everyone in my eleven-hundred-person unit. Pretty much anywhere I went around town, there’d be people who would recognize me. Novia and I were in constant fear of being seen together. We’d drive to the grocery store on base in different cars and shop separately, starting at opposite ends of the store while talking on our cells to make sure we got what we needed. We’d worry about going out to dinner together or Novia being seen mowing our yard and having people realize that she lived there with me. We struggled with trying to figure out how we might raise a child in that environment.
Then something happened during my deployment to the desert in 2005 that significantly changed our lives and our relationship. Just a couple of months into my six-month deployment, my appendix ruptured and I became very ill, almost septic. That event made me realize I didn’t want my entire life centered on hiding who I was and having to hide my family. I realized there was no way we could have the family we wanted if we stayed in the military full time. So we made a huge decision to leave full-time military service and move away.
Now a Lieutenant Colonel, I started job hunting and I eventually landed a federal job with the Department of Veterans Affairs in Louisville, Kentucky. It was a beautiful area, a big enough city where there was lots to do, yet not so big that it was a concrete jungle. I moved there just after Christmas in 2006 and Novia followed me there six months later after also getting a federal job. It wasn’t until we moved out of the “fishbowl” existence in which we’d lived for the previous five years that we realized the stress and emotional toll it had taken on us. We felt like we could finally breathe.
Novia and I were able to be more open at our new workplaces and live more authentic lives, so we moved forward with our plans to start a family. We wanted to get settled first, so we built a new house and moved in about a year later. Then the family planning process started in earnest. At that point, we wanted to just go straight to adoption.