For many, April fool's day means being on the lookout for pranks and jokes. For Boise State Public Radio's Digital Strategy Manager Lacey Daley, this marks the one-year anniversary of a phone call that changed her and her wife's lives forever.
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Transcript:
It was just a normal Tuesday and then we had a baby.
And she had a cold when she came to us.
April 1st is not a joke day. April 1st is our gotcha day.
I'm Lacey Daley, I'm the Digital Strategy Manager here at Boise State Public Radio and my wife and I, we adopted a baby girl. Obviously, we were in the waiting pool hoping to adopt, but, we went about our Tuesday as normal. Came home from work, had some friends over, who come over weekly for dinner and a workout. And so we were in our garage gym. It was 7 p.m. on the dot. I looked it up in my call log. I was getting a phone call from our social worker and I was like, ‘why is she calling me?’ And she said, ‘Is Jodi with you?’ - that's my wife - and I said, ‘yes.’ And she said, ‘Okay, we want to call in Birth-mom because she has something to tell you.’ And so we are in full panic mode. And our friends -the wife being on the treadmill and the husband being on the bike -and they're both looking at us because they're close friends, they know that we've been waiting and they're like, ‘Is this the call?’ And we got to speak with the birth mom on the phone and we're all just crying.
Can I preface with, we didn't have anything. We had nothing set up. And they were headed back from Twin Falls. They were like, ‘we'll be at the agency in an hour and 45 minutes. And ‘you're like, what? Is this happening?’ So our friends who are just lovely humans, they took down a list of the essentials, like the formula she was on, the bottle brand she was taking. We had no clothes, we had no diapers, we had nothing. And they went to Target. And so it gave us just under two hours to call our families and be like, ‘Mom, dad, this is not a joke. This is not a drill. I know it's April Fool's Day, but we're getting a baby.’
‘What do you mean you're getting a baby? You can't just get a baby! You can't just bring home a baby tonight!’ And we kind of had that feeling, too. Jodi and I arrived to the agency before our social workers came back which is just more time to start panicking. ‘You're like, oh my gosh, this is really happening, right? Pinch me, pinch me!’ kind of moment. And when they arrived, they're like, ‘Here's your baby girl! Do you want to take her out?’ And they just opened the back seat and I was like, ‘We don't know! What do you mean?!’
She came with a car seat, the little bumblebee onesie she was wearing. And one bottle. One little bottle and a blanket. She had a pink and white checkered blanket that we still have and we use all the time.
I mean, obviously the slowest commute home I've ever done in my life. And I just remember, like, the pounding in my chest, like I could hear my heart, not just feel it, but hear it, like in my eardrums, in my chest. Turning the music all the way down, stopping at a red light and be like, ‘oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.’
Gema was two and a half months when she was placed with us, but she was only 8 pounds, so she was like newborn size.
I'm pretty type A, I don't know if you know this about me. I like to plan, I like to organize. And so if you would have given me a form of like, ‘what is your preferred adoption story? I would have been like, ‘hard pass on the two hours to get your life together because I have no time to Google and check out library books and listen to podcasts and get prepared.’ But there's something innate about caring for others, and especially a child, or even, whatever, your pet, a puppy. This was a blessing in disguise because I didn't have time to overthink. I didn't have time to overanalyze. It was just cuing into her needs, which are actually really simple. They need food. They need love. They need sleep. And I think just having to focus on it because it was right there in my life all of a sudden, I was able to block out the distractions, the noise, the mom blogs, everything like that and just be like ‘oh, I think I'm understanding you and I've only known you for two hours,’ you know?
Becoming a mom, especially through, I think the way that we did, it's made me a nicer person. I just have so much more compassion for a lot of things, even outside of child rearing. It gives you a different perspective that you just can't teach, unless you're living it. And so that is something that I'm entirely grateful for because I can always use [being] softer and kinder and to have that happen so naturally and not overtly has been really special.
I don't know, life is brighter than it was a few months ago. We walk her to daycare because -we're very lucky, we have a daycare just a couple streets down- and so I opened the garage door, get her in the stroller and go to push her out, and she notices the moon for the first time because it was early morning hours and she reaches for the moon! And I was like, oh, I'm gonna need a minute. It just like, poetically hit me in the feels. To be able to show her our lilacs blossoming? Day made. And if that's the highlight of my day now, and that's how I'm different a year later? I'm really happy with that.
We're stronger than we even were because we have this shared love for this person who, who makes us better and is a mirror of us, but her own person as well. I don't know. I still like it just feels like such a privilege. People tell us all the time how lucky Gema is, right? To have such loving moms and to be in such a safe environment, because I think they're operating under a lot of assumptions about the birth mom, which are not true because she's the bravest woman we know. And I can't imagine the hurdles she had to go through to make this sacrifice. And it was a decision made out of love and nothing else. And I hold no space for any other thoughts on that.
Gema might be lucky, but we're luckier because we have Gema.
