Welcome Home Elias!

The day after Elias was born was a flurry of tests, check ups, and adoption paperwork and formalities. Early in the afternoon Ryan and I went to birthmom's room to visit with her before she got discharged. She was healing up fine, and told us that she was very much at peace with her decision to place her baby with us.  So good for us to hear that from her! Emotionally she is not quite ready to see or have a relationship with Elias, but we will always keep that open and available to her whenever she decides that she is ready. Right now the plan is to keep in touch via letters and pictures with her mom and sister. We all shed a few tears, embraced, and said goodbye. For now. :)

As I mentioned in his birth story, we had a phenomenal medical staff. The few that took care of us through our stay had various connections to adoption and they made it clear that they felt happy and privileged to play a role in ours. Dr. Rachel Long, the birthmom's OB, came to visit before we left. 

And we had to take pictures of our wonderful nurses, Kathy and Carolyn, as well. Kathy (pictured on the right below) was the nurse who was responsible for Elias' care right after he was born, and she took care of us during the first day. She came back to visit us before discharge even though she had new patients to tend to. :)

What an added blessing to leave the maternity ward with more hugs and well wishes from the staff. For many adoptions, the events at the hospital can be so anxiety filled. Emotions for all parties are at their peaks, the birthmom could start to question her decision, her family might not be supportive, the hospital could be unaccommodating to the adoptive parents, the nursing staff could be uneducated about adoption and respond negatively to it, there are so many factors that could be make everything difficult. But we really feel like the Lord not only handed us this precious gift right out of the blue, but He wrapped it up all nice and pretty and put a bow on it at the hospital. Nothing went wrong. Everything and everyone was more wonderful than we could have asked or hoped for.

We had arranged for our siblings (and close friends who might as well be siblings) to meet us at home when we arrived. Since only Elias' grandparents were able to go to the hospital, it was really nice to have our family there to welcome him home.

Those are just a few snapshots of our evening. I'm working on uploading a lot more in an album on our Facebook page if you'd like to see them. :) Our baby boy is so loved.