What Happened Thursday...

Thursday morning I woke up totally exhausted and gripped by fear.  Baby C was black....was I truly prepared to raise a black son?  could Jay and I provide him everything that he needed to grow into the man we hoped he would become?  would he truly be accepted by our family and friends?   was our desire for a baby overriding what we really could offer to a child of a different race? would be grow up confused and not really sure of where he fit in life? 

Thank goodness for the faith that Jay has.  I think if he could've slapped me to snap me out of it that morning he would've!!  We had a long talk about how it was satan working on me and my thoughts at that moment.  He was the one putting the ideas in my head that I would not be a fit parent.  Jay knew that we were doing God's will in this situation and felt totally confident in our decision.  He knew we were not stepping outside of His will.  As Jay pointed out to me over and over and over we prayed about it and we prayed some more.  How could it not have been God's plan for us to have been picked to be Baby C's parents? 

As the day wore on I did start to snap out of it.  There were so many things that made us feel like this was meant to be.  One of the big things was his name.  The night we were discussing if we would be shown we talked about his name.  His mom had given him a name.  Jay and I have always planned to try to incorporate a part of our child's birthname with our name.  We do have some "criteria" (for lack of a better term) for our future child's name.  Our plan has always been to have their name either start with a C or J.  Not that we planned to have our childrens initials match ours Cade just happened to be a name we liked.  Then we always said we wanted our kids names to start with a C.  Then Jay chose JCS Cattle Company as the name we show under and will register cattle under.  In order to fit in with everything we want their name to start with a C or a J.  This is one of those things we feel is important in our family.  Anyway, we loved the name Baby C's mom gave him and it started with a C.  And we liked this name better than the name we had picked for the baby a year ago.  We just felt like this was going to work out.

I talked to Aimee several times that day about various things....where I could stay while he was in the hospital, if we were bringing Cade, what would happen at placement...and most importantly updates on Baby C.  He was still having problems with sucking and swallowing.  But we all felt that was not a huge issue.  The hospital had never indicated to anyone from BCS that they were overly concerned about anything with Baby C.  Aimee and Donna both really thought that once we got to meet Baby C and start bonding with him and advocating for his care he would improve.  It all made sense to us.  Jay and I both felt confident that all Baby C needed was his mom and dad to get there and give him some encouragement to start eating correctly.

By the time I got home that evening I was feeling much better.  Jay took Cade to practice and I started working on getting things together.  I was pretty overwhelmed and didn't know where to start.  It was one of those nights where I'd start doing something and then get sidetracked easily.  After Jay and Cade got home we headed out to deliver Cade to Jim and Sharon.  When we got back I still had to fold the baby's laundry and pack his bag.  Aimee told me that Baby C could start wearing clothes while he was in the hospital.  I picked out a couple of outfits that I couldn't wait to put on him.  I think we got to bed about 11 that night.  Surprisingly we slept better than we thought we would.