Here is the story.
Reward for being chosen so very special
Click image to enlarge  |
| Stacey, Roger, and Tyler Collier |
BY JO-ANN JENNINGS
News Editor
joj@bixbybulletin.com
Everyone wants to be “chosen.” Whether it be for the baseball team, the choir, president of a company, or partner in a firm, being “the one” or “the ones” may be the collective dream of humanity.Roger and Stacey Collier, Bixby, will never forget the day they were chosen. After eight years of the wish for pregnancy bringing disappointment, and after five and a half months of paperwork, they received their first call to meet a young mother who was looking for parents for her six and a half month old son.
They were interviewed by phone on a Saturday and met Tyler and his birth mother the following day––the day they were chosen.
They talked. They clicked. “You’re the ones,” said Tyler’s birth mother. “Go get him.”
After the long wait of wanting a child, “Going to instant family was a huge adjustment,” said Stacey. “It was surreal.”
Tulsa Crisis Pregnancy Outreach instructs its hopeful parents to at least have a car seat so that if a call comes, and they need to pick up a baby, they’ll be prepared. Roger and Stacey had a crib and a car seat, but after getting the first call from the mother, decided to pull together some other things––like diapers. They knew the birth mother had also interviewed other couples, so they were not the only ones being considered.
“We did a lot of scrambling after he came home,” Stacey said. Once their families had met him and gone home, the couple looked at Tyler and experienced that realization that all young parents feel when they get their baby home for the first time. “What now?”
“It’s much like having a baby,” said Stacey, “but it’s more surreal because there isn’t nine months to prepare.”
Stacey had done one other thing to prepare which really helped when the time came. She stopped working for Family and Children’s Services full-time and started taking contract work.
Now she wants people not to be afraid to talk about adoption and try it.
Stacey said many people know about adoption but not open adoption.
“Even though open adoption sounds scary at first, it isn’t, so at least look into it,” Stacey advises others who want children. “A lot of people don’t look into it because of fear,
and CPO does many adoptions of beautiful babies every year.”
Stacey had heard the stories of others who had said adoption was impossible, that the waiting lists were five years long, but with an open adoption through Tulsa Crisis Pregnancy, it was possible.
Tyler was placed in the Collier home in February; his adoption was finalized in October. Now that everything has been legalized, the Collier’s are going to put together another “Life Book” to hopefully be chosen again, giving Tyler a little brother or sister.
(See Part II, Open Adoption, in this edition.)
No comments:
Post a Comment