By Samantha Anderson…

It’s 3 o’clock in the morning on October 20th. We jumped in the car as fast as we could after missing calls from both our birthmother and our adoption counselor. I’m aggressively asking Danny (my husband) why he can’t drive any faster and how he can be so sleepy. I’m also questioning why we agreed to match with a birthmom who lived 3.5 hours away, because at this point I’m irrational … but in my defense, it’s 3 o’clock in the morning.

All along the way, we’re getting updates on the progress of her labor, the labor that was progressing extremely fast. She was trying, as much as any woman in labor can, to wait for us to be there. Something that to this day makes me want to cry.

But somehow, we made it … just in time.

Despite any of my doubts and irrational thoughts along the way, this was one of the most incredible experiences of our lives. Not just the delivery, but the whole journey.

I always describe it as a roller coaster because there were some real highs and some real lows. But Hezekiah was always meant to be our son. We knew it the second we saw him- the second we held him.

I’m speaking from experience because we have been through this journey also without the help of an agency, and the experience was the complete opposite. Everyone from A Child’s Hope was there with us every step of the way, and no one ever made us feel like an inconvenience. We texted, called and emailed — they were always willing and happy to answer our questions.

ACH only has around 15 waiting families at one time. That’s one of the main reason we chose them. When I was doing my research in adoption agencies early on, one thing I really looked at was placement numbers and wait time. I had a nice little spreadsheet comparing them all. It didn’t turn out to mean anything. The large agencies have amazing numbers on paper but what I learned from friend’s experiences was that you can get lost in the shuffle and lose that care that you need as a waiting family.

The other big factor for us was A Child’s Hope practice with adoption counselors. It was so assuring to us to know that someone was taking care of our birthmother in a way that we wouldn’t be able to leading up to the birth of our son. Now, we have grown very close and participate in a very open adoption — that is the best choice for our family.

Without ACH and all the work that was done preparing for this placement for our family, we wouldn’t have Kai.