After the third miscarriage, the baby we named Elijah who fell out of my body and into our toilet on a cold January night when I was in my 18^th week of pregnancy, we took time off to grieve. In a way, he was the baby that allowed me to grieve for the first two. He was the only one we saw, the only one we held, my husband cut the chord and we brought his perfect tiny body to the hospital for an autopsy that night. The first two we never actually saw, and it felt like a horrible dream that we had been pregnant and then lost them, so how could we really grieve?

For a long time after that, I deadened my heart against babies, turned away during the diaper commercials on t.v., held friend's babies stiffly. Even three years later, when I started trying to get pregnant again, I just couldn't let myself imagine their soft skin and cute little butts. It was too painful.

Two years and two miscarriages later, the specialists still kept saying there was nothing wrong with me, that all the babies seemed to have died for different reasons, that it was just bad luck, and we decided to pursue adoption.

Then we met Amanda and her twins (see previous post) and it was like a beast, this baby lust that was awakened within me. I could feel their little hands clutching at my hair, see their smushy little newborn faces, smell their transparent skin. Even when the hope for that adoption faded, the ache in my heart became a constant throbbing, and now I longed for a baby fiercely.

I saw it in my husband too, my husband who loves children but said he could be happy with just the three of us if we could never have another. We do have a happy little house, Aaron and me and our little Noah, a house full of laughter and creativity.

But now I saw a determination in him that I had never seen before. He and I both sank our grief into trying to find another placement as soon as possible. We sent out our profile everywhere we could and prayed to be chosen again soon. I said a very specific prayer to find a placement of a child that was already born or one that was due within a few weeks—we've had friends who've been so lucky.

One Saturday in November, we'd spent the day out with our 10 year-old walking in the park, taking pictures of the autumn leaves on the lake, when we came home to a message on our phone. It was our adoption attorney Suzanne, asking us to call her back a.s.a.p. My heart skipped a beat. When she called us now, I felt excitement like I once felt at age 13 when a boy I liked would phone.

When we finally reached her later that night, the “situation” (as she called every potential adoption) was even better. It was like a direct answer to my prayer, but it was also like God laughing at me a little bit, too. An adoption attorney in Florida had custody of a two-week old baby and was seeking a placement for him. His mother was in prison for theft and had already signed away her rights and a Swedish couple was going to adopt him but the birth father (also in prison) had contested, so that adoption had fallen through. The Florida attorney, Christine, felt that the placement with the young imprisoned birth father would not be safe for the baby, so she planned to fight for custody.

“I have to be honest with you,” said Suzanne, “I don't know this attorney personally, but she was referred to me by another attorney that I really respect and whom I've worked with on several cases over the last 17 years. She seems extremely confident that she can win this, but there is a possibility that you could lose custody of the baby if she loses her case against the birth father. She did promise that there would be no financial loss for you if she loses the case, except for minimal court fees. If she wins the case, the estimated total costs for the adoption would be around $18,000. If you're interested, you should call her directly and she'll explain everything in detail.”

When we hung up the phone, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. When I said that little prayer about a baby already born, I forgot to be specific about one that was free to be adopted. Having to return a baby that's already been placed in our home was one of my biggest fears going into the adoption process. I worried what effect losing a brother or sister might have on our son, and it was the main reason that we didn't pursue the foster-to-adopt route.

But like moths to the flame we went to the phone and called Christine at her home in Florida.

I could picture her immediately from the sound of her voice: a Southern belle, ambitious career woman, dressed like one of those Red Hat Society ladies, not unlike my wonderful Kentucky mother-in-law. (Later when I checked out her picture on her adoption agency website, I found that I was right on.)

In her sweet drawl, she told us all about the baby, who was born in prison “with perfect apgars!” She said this as if we'd hit the jackpot, and I felt a little bit like we weren't talking about a tiny human but a pedigreed puppy instead. “All 9.9!” she said, and I couldn't help having a flashback to watching that famous gymnast Nadia Comansomethingorother on the Olympics when I was a little girl.

She described how the first adoption of this baby to a Swedish couple had fallen through, because the birth father (who was also incarcerated) had decided to contest the adoption. At first Christine was going to let the father's parents take custody, but then she discovered that they were extremely elderly (in their 70's) and already had 10 other foster and special needs children living in their home, and that they had lived off of their children's support checks from the state for the last twenty years. She felt the family only wanted the baby for the support checks.

She had found another placement for the Swedes, because she needed an American family to adopt this little one for some legal reason having to do with the father contesting. She told us she had never lost a case, but that there was always a risk she could lose. If we were willing to take that risk, we could have the placement.

She spoke to us for about two hours that night, mostly about the baby, but also about Florida judges, and local politics in the prisons where some wardens favored some adoption attorneys over others and tried to influence birth mothers. She emphasized that if we accepted the placement, she would need us to come to Florida to take custody as soon as possible, because she was currently paying for him to be in foster care and it was expensive.

It was all very strange, and Christine talked a mile a minute, but we couldn't escape one thought that kept going through our minds, “If we say yes, we can meet our new baby in less than a week. We can feel his little baby grip on our fingers, we can kiss his smooth cheek, we can hold him in our arms.”

But we are nothing if not level-headed, so we told Christine that we probably would accept the placement, but asked her if we could have a day to think about it. In the meantime, we emailed a copy of our home study to her while still on the phone. She told us that we could have until Monday to decide, and that we could call her at home any time if we had any questions.

As the conversation wound down, Aaron asked if there was anything else that she thought we should know.

“He's just a really really good baby. His foster mother just loves him to death. She named him Levi, but of course you could change that if you want.”

We spent all day Sunday agonizing over the decision. We knew we would accept the placement—even his name was perfect. Levi just went so well with Noah. We also couldn't resist that we would meet this baby so soon, and we weren't dealing with an emotional birth mother who might change her mind. This was a professional who had custody and she'd already offered us the placement.

We were especially careful in deciding how to explain the situation to our child. We knew it wasn't just ourselves taking the emotional risk of loving and losing—we'd be putting our son through it, too. We decided to tell Noah that we had the opportunity to take care of a baby for one month, but that he might not stay with us after that..

The one thing we had a question about was whether Christine would appeal if she lost the case. We didn't want to get our family in a situation where we had custody of the baby for a long period of time and then had to give him up. We tried to reach her all day Sunday by phone and email, but didn't get a response.

Aaron took the original copy of our home study and court filing fees to his office on Monday so that we could overnight them to Christine as soon as we heard from her. She finally responded that she would not appeal and that the longest we would have Levi before either getting or losing permanent custody of him would be one month. We could live with that, and accepted the placement by phone Monday afternoon.

During that conversation, Christine told us that she would file our documents with the courts as soon as she received them the next day. She said we could come get Levi as soon as that weekend and that we could rent her neighbor's home while the interstate compact was coming through. She encouraged us to bring our son with us—“the house is right on the beach, it'll be like a vacation!”

We let our own attorney Suzanne know that we'd accepted the placement, and she called Christine immediately to confirm all the legal details. Christine asked her to prepare the interstate compact documents for New York.

That night we called our families and gave them the good news. I'd had a long standing date with one of my theater nerd buddies, and I told him all about Levi and his strange story over drinks at the local pub later that evening. He's been following our adoption saga and was thrilled for me. “The next time I see you, you'll have a new little person in your arms!” he crowed as we got into our cars.

The next morning, I couldn't believe how much joy I felt, when only a few days earlier I'd been dragging myself hopelessly through the day, the door closed on the nursery with the crib that we'd set up for the Missouri twins. Aaron emailed me from work to let me know that Christine's office had received our paperwork by 9 a.m.

Later when Noah got home from school , I couldn't stop smiling. I told him about how Aunt Kim would come stay with him, while we went to Florida to get Levi. The phone rang and I could see from the caller id that it was Christine's agency. It was an employee from Christine's office.

Her first words were,  "We just wanted to let you know that we decided to give the placement to the other family."  I felt like I'd been sucker-punched in the gut.

When I explained that we had never been told about another family and that we were told by Christine that we had the placement, she said, "Well, we've been working with this family for a really long time and they accepted the placement last night and since your paperwork didn't come in until today, they get the placement."  I  felt stunned and confused and stupidly commented that I had misunderstood and thought that Christine was an ethical attorney, the employee said, "Oh, she is.” I couldn't think of anything to say except goodbye and hung up without waiting for a reply.

My first thought when I'm in distress, is to call Aaron. But he was on the train home by now, and I didn't want to give him sad news over the phone when he was trapped in a public place.

Instead, I called our attorney Suzanne, who was thankfully at that moment easy to reach. “Did Christine ever mention that there was another family also seeking the placement? Because someone from her office just called to tell me that they're giving the placement to “the other family.”

“WHAT? No! She never said there was another family. She told me you had the placement. I've been working on the interstate compact all morning at her request.”

She called Christine immediately. Christine apologized to Suzanne, (but never to us) and claimed that she'd made a mistake because she's on painkillers from a recent operation. She never really could explain what happened or why she changed her mind about placing Levi with us.

Suzanne was wonderful. She had been so cool and professional during the fiasco with the Missouri twins, but this time she was livid. She said she'd never seen anything so unethical and unprofessional in her long career, and she's seen some pretty questionable adoption attorneys over the years. It helped sooth our heartbreak a bit, that she suddenly seemed so emotionally involved with our case.

Since we'd only known about Levi for a few days, it should seem like this one would be easier to get over than the Missouri adoption that we were involved in for months, but it wasn't . This one was much harder for us for reasons I still can't explain.

Maybe because we trusted the attorney so completely when she said we had the placement. (My dad's an attorney so I probably trust them more than most people do.) Maybe because we still felt so fragile from the loss of those twins, it was like getting kicked when you're already down. But this time I smoked two packs of cigarettes in the garage in one week instead of three.

To add insult to injury we heard one last message from Christine two weeks later. It was through Suzanne. Christine's mutual friend with Suzanne had called Suzanne to ask if we were still interested in Levi. It seemed that the family she gave the placement to had an expired home study, so they couldn't adopt Levi after all. Suzanne started to say “No way,” but then thought better of it and decided to ask us.

We wanted that placement so badly, it was hard to say “no.” But we knew we had to. Christine was clearly a sloppy lawyer and we couldn't trust her. Besides, now I knew that if she lost her custody case against the birth father, she'd have an employee call us with the bad news. I needed a lot more sensitivity on her part in order to take that kind of a risk.

The next day we were at a Thanksgiving concert at our son's school, when we got another call from Suzanne, this time about a birth mother in Texas...