Abby's Story - Part 2: Why We Had The Opportunity To Adopt Her

When I went and talked with Cathy, my coworker, the next day (Thursday), I learned most of Abby's story up to that point - but not all. But even though I didn't learn all of this until later I will just include it all here.

Cheyenne, her daughter and Abby's birthmother, was young – 17. She had not yet graduated from high school and didn't have her driver's license. Because of these things, even though she would have LOVED to raise Abby herself, she knew she would not be able to provide for her so she was courageous and selfless and had chosen to place her for adoption. Through Gladney she had chosen an adoptive family from New York – they had a 4-year-old daughter I think. Cheyenne had become good friends with the mom as they Skyped and texted a lot. They had come for the baby’s delivery – she was born March 26th. During the delivery Abby's heart was not responding as it was supposed to – it did not rise and fall with the contractions like it should. She was also turned face –forward so after Cheyenne pushed for 3 ½ hours they ended up doing an emergency c-section. After they got her out they put a tube in to suck stuff out of her lungs, but they couldn’t get it all out so they had to put a bigger tube in. Once she was cleared out she still wasn’t even trying to breath on her own (her Apgar was only 2) so they did CPR, during which they collapsed one of her lungs. Once they got her stable they sent her immediately to Cooks Children’s Hospital. They kept her on a cold pack off and on for a long time to slow her body functions and decrease the likelihood of brain trauma.

The adoptive couple was there for all the complications and then saw her all hooked up to tubes and wires. The doctors told them what possible long-term effects could result from such trauma and they backed out –they said they were not prepared to take care of a special needs baby. They didn't even wait a day or even the few hours it would take to get back the initial tests. They just disappeared. They had been waiting to adopt for 2 years and then just gave up on it. Crazy!

Poor Cheyenne, she was in the hospital trying to recover from a fairly major surgery, was at a completely seperate hospital from her new baby, and her new "friends" who she thought loved both her and her baby, had backed out. After a few days Cheyennewas released from the hospital and started visiting Abby at Cooks. But Abby was hooked up to so many monitors and tubes and everything that she wasn't able to hold her until April 2nd, when she was a week old.

Although Cheyenne had told the birth father about her pregnancy he had shown little interest – he actually had another daughter born 3 months earlier. Her mom counseled her not to contact him any more so that he wouldn’t cause trouble with the adoption or anything else. In Texas a parent has 30 days from the birth to register their rights as parents. If they don’t do anything then after 30 days their rights are abolished. Since Cheyenne wasn’t in contact with him and didn’t want to ask him to sign his rights over right after the delivery the plan was to place the baby in a transition home for those 30 days at which time Cheyenne would relinquish her rights and the baby could be placed with the adoptive family. Because of this 30 day period I think Gladney didn’t feel any urgency in trying to help Cheyenne find a new adoptive family and Cheyenne was trying to recover physically and emotionally from it all. Cathy was talking to Ken (another assistant professor) about how they didn’t know what they were going to do since the adoptive family had backed out and he said something to the effect of “Amanda really wants a baby and you have a baby – maybe that would work out.” Cathy was highly skeptical that it could work out very easily but decided to contact us anyway. And that’s the point we were at on April 5^th.

She showed me some pictures of the baby, told me that Cheyenne had named her Jenai Marie and would like her to keep the name, that her “demands” were that she see the baby twice a year (on each of their birthdays), and that she wanted us to know that the baby is bi-racial (the birth father is black). So we ended the conversation with a plan for Ryan and me to go to the hospital the next day to meet her.

Pictures from her first few days - poor baby!