Our son was born yesterday – born to his first mom, who’s chosen to stay his mom. We’re not surprised; we are disappointed and heartsore. We have a name for him, this boy of ours – his clothes are in the drawers in his room, and his baby blanket is here in the suitcase I packed for him. But he’s gone.

The agency prepared us, and we understood the risks. Still, it’s hard not to hope. I told myself this was nothing like losing a child; that miscarriage was worse than adoption disruption. I’m not sure I was right. After a miscarriage, you can try again. Same here. But this time, we uprooted our family for a month; we spent a lot of money to be present and to simplify this for everyone from the birthmom to our toddlers. We also postponed a trip to visit Tess’ family to do this, told our offices, friends, etc. All work and life choices from the last few months, including our au pair leaving, have revolved around this child. But my glib words have teeth:

No birthmom is a birthmom until she has the baby and signs the papers.

We’re mourning the loss, but so will our kids. Tess has been talking about the baby for ages. She knows this trip was related to adding a family member. We’ve got a limited linguistic and conceptual toolbox for explaining an adoption that doesn’t happen to her. I know they’re little and it won’t wound them in the long run, but Tess is pretty savvy. She knows something’s up.

We chose to open ourselves up and show you what an adoption looks like. We had a number of potential matches, stork drops to this one, a few months away from the due date. Our hopes rose and fell like the stock market, even though it was a short time frame. Well, true disruption – an adoption plan that doesn’t go through – is a new one for us. We’re pretty devastated, even though we’ve been preparing and talking a big game for a few weeks.

The agency is already lining up profiles for us to consider. They’ve taken the time to understand what we want and need: they talk about the right match coming along (rather than “here’s a baby!” Not our MO), finding the person who will choose us for our next child. They’re going to keep us informed about how things wrap up with S, until we ask them to stop. They’re wonderful. Our heartache and dollars are the price we paid to find this wonderful agency. We’ll cling to that and hug our kids extra hard while we mourn our son.