When the shock of all that transpired had passed, my husband and I chose life. We were a home that needed a baby. It was time to find a baby that needed a home. Fragile, hopeful, we started the adoption process.

There was a steep learning curve as we gingerly stepped onto the roller coaster of trying to adopt. Oh, the decisions to make! Domestic or international; private or agency; infant or older child—the considerations were endless.

Our initial plan was to adopt a newborn. We wanted a chance to experience what we had lost . . . the miracle of birth followed by the exquisite happiness of taking a healthy baby home from the hospital. That was our plan.

Plans are a comical formality, however, when you enter the adoption process. Opportunities to adopt fell through left and right. Some birth mothers did not choose us because we were Jewish; others did not choose us because they chose to parent (a choice I absolutely support every woman’s right to make, even late in the game, no matter how hard it is for adoptive parents); yet another birth mother brought us to the brink of adopting and then we discovered she was a fraud—she was not even pregnant.

And then a birth mother in severe crisis called us. Her two children had been removed from the home months before and were in foster care. The birth mother was seven months pregnant with her third baby, and DFS intended to take the baby at birth and also place the baby into foster care.

Read the full story at Adoption Network Law Center…