How we got the news about Liliana

After so many months of paperwork and WAITING for news about a baby girl, we were growing more and more impatient and eager to get some news. We have an assigned coordinator at our adoption agency in Indiana that we are in contact with about our process... her name is Kristi. I had called Kristi the first week of December having a bit of a meltdown. I was getting somewhate depressed about the wait, and was looking for any bit of information that she could provide. In reality, the coordinators are not allowed to tell us where we fall on the waiting list. The reason for this is that people are approved for different "types" of babies. Different ages of children, different medical needs, and different "requests" (such as age of birth mother, ethnic background of child, etc). There are some cases where someone that is further down the waiting list will get a referral before someone closer to the top of the list because the child is a better match for the family. In order to prevent people from getting upset about this type of situation, they don't tell you exactly where you fall on the waiting list. So... when I talked to our coordinator, all she could tell me was that we were getting close and to hang in there!!

My patience was restored at least for a few days. Less than a week later, on Thursday 12/14, I sent a follow-up email to Kristi asking if there had been any referrals. I didn't hear back from her that day, but didn't think much of it. The next day, Friday 12/15, Moses and I had scheduled to take the day off and keep Max home from school. We planned to spend a quiet family day before the craziness of the holidays. When our phone rang at 8:00 am on Friday morning, I was slow to grab it figuring that it must be someone from the bank calling for Moses. When he said "It's FTIA in Indiana".... I about lost it! I knew they had to be calling with great news!!!!!

I immediately called our coordinator... and sure enough, they had information about a referral for us! We were asked to review her medical information before we saw her picture.... they didn't want her physical appearance to impact our decision. When we got her medical documents via email, I was SHOCKED and overwhelmed with emotion to see her birth name... Gladys Patricia. My maternal grandmother, whom I was VERY close to, was Gladys Marie. I couldn't believe it.... it was a sign from my grandmother that this was our baby! Sure enough, nothing in the medical was an issue so we called our coordinator and told her we were THRILLED to accept the referral of baby Gladys. She emailed us pictures (WOW! how beautiful!) and gave us a run down of the information about her birth mother, etc over the phone. She promised to send us the referral packet (pictures, birth mother information, medical information, attorney information, foster mother information, etc) overnight if she could get everything together. We were SOOOOOO excited!!!!! We told Max that his baby was born... he immediately asked if we were going to Guatemala to get her and bring her home. I explained to him that she wasn't quite ready to come home. He was a bit confused by this, but excited about his baby sister! We called Grandma Lois & Grandpa Corey to tell them about the baby (especially about her birth name, as Gladys was Grandma Lois' mother). We made a couple more phone calls, stared at her pictures, raced to Target with the pictures so we could print them out, and CELEBRATED our good fortune! The entire weekend was spent on cloud 9... sharing the great news with family and friends, staring at her picture, and marveling in the fact that we had finally met our daughter! Liliana Marie was the name we had chosen for her prior to receiving the referral. This name was a combination of our four grandmother's names. However, in an effort to honor her birth mother and the gift that she had given us, we chose to change the name to Liliana Rose Marie (her birth mother's name is Rosa). That day, Liliana Rose Marie became an immediate member of our family and captured a place in many people's hearts!!