By Cindy Moses

Recently my husband and I returned from what will hopefully be the second most memorable trip of our life. Although it was absolutely heart wrenching to leave our baby, it was 5 days in my life that no one can ever take away from me. We chose to do the ‘two trip option” which was recently presented to families in the Guatemalan program. It has legal benefits, but the adoption isn’t final so the birth mom still has the legal right to change her mind. It’s a tough choice that many of the families in CHI’s growing Guatemalan program will be faced with. I now can offer some personal insight into that decision. Our decision to travel twice actually stemmed from an disagreement between Joe and me about whether to take our 6 year daughter, Shelby, with us to Guatemala So we compromised—we would travel first—by ourselves. Then if we felt it was safe  we would bring Shelby on the second trip to bring her baby sister, Sierra, home forever.

Our referral came in January of 2002, and we had one picture of Sierra For the next 5 months, we held copies of that one picture close to us everywhere we went. It was the only thing we had of this child that we loved so much but knew so little about. As time went on, I was more and more convinced that doing two trips option would be right for us. I had begun studying the culture, and it was fascinating to me. I had also been reading about issues of adopted children as they grow older and how important it is for them to know as much about their history as possible. Finally, we got our second picture, and it is a picture that will speak a million different words to Sierra throughout the course of her life. It is the DNA copy of a black and white Polaroid of Sierra with birth mother and Grandmother. It was so shocking to me. First, her mother was only 13 years old when Sierra was born and second - I was as old as her grandmother!!! I could only speculate what they both were thinking at that moment in time - but it is obvious that even though her mother was just a child herself, she loved her. She embraced Sierra so tightly and with both arms, and I knew that she must have known this would be the last time she would see her baby. At that time, I couldn’t imagine how hard it was for her to let go of this beautiful child.

Finally the time came to travel in late May. We weren’t sure how much time we would have with Sierra so we came with the attitude that we would “go with the flow” and we planned to take as many tours as we could during any point in time which we didn’t have Sierra. We were thrilled when we learned that we could have her for three full days. Meeting the foster mom was wonderful and she did leave us a diaper bag full of clothes, bottles, formula, and wipes. I had also brought this stuff because not everyone has been left with as much stuff by the foster moms plus we had no idea of how long we would get to keep her

The first day was exciting—but a little awkward. By the second and third day everything was becoming old hat. We were a family. She was our baby. Life was good. We had met some other families adopting children, and that was such a blessing. We had a great time sharing stories and playing with our babies on the hotel steps. We were starting to learn Sierra’s personality. She loved other babies, she liked to watch herself in the mirror, she liked playing horse with Daddy, she didn’t care for the quiet hotel room. She is so beautiful with such dark eyes and jet black hair, which was wild and stuck straight up in the back. And although we loved this child before we even saw her picture, now we were falling in love with Sierra. 

As I laid in bed holding her in my arms on our last night together, I became overwhelmed with emotion. I couldn’t sleep—I didn’t want to let go of her. I had never really felt a pain like this before, I was going to have to leave my baby. What a horrible feeling. All the sudden, I felt very connected to the birth mom. Now I know what she had to have been feeling in that DNA picture. Then I thought of her foster mom and the feeling that she will have when I come back the next time and Sierra leaves her life for good. I thought of how God put all three of these mom’s in her life and how much all of them loved her in order to create the best life for her regardless of their personal pain. A million thoughts ran through my head, and I didn’t sleep all night. In retrospect, this night has been very good for me. I believe God wanted me to truly experience this feeling first hand. I know that it will have an effect on the way in which I present things to Sierra as she grows up. I will honor these two women on holidays and in my discussions instead of brush their existence under the carpet. When the time came to hand her back over to her foster family, they hugged me and promised that they would take good care of her. I completely believe them and as comforting as it is to know she is in good hands, she wasn’t with me and that hurt.

I have heard people say they won’t take the two trip option because of the fact that they couldn’t leave their baby. Plus, the adoption isn’t final and the birth mom could change her mind which would be so completely devastating after a visit such as ours. I completely understand. It is a total risk of the heart. But I am so undoubtedly grateful for taking that risk. We now know the travel routine and we are comfortable taking Shelby there, we have a better understanding of the culture, we got 10 rolls of film and 2 hours worth of priceless video, and we got to fall in love with our beautiful 7 month old daughter, Sierra. Regardless of what the future holds, this is five days of my life that I’ll treasure for a lifetime.