Part 1: The Departure

Ok, so this story is crazy long...so I thought I would break it up.

What a crazy week it has been! As we sit here bonding with our little girl, it seem remarkable that this has all happened. 

She is here. 

She is safe. 

She is ours. 

We received the official phone call from our birth mama last Wednesday (July 8), but I was unable to answer the phone call before it ended. The voice message was super cryptic and essentially stated that she was at the hospital about to go in for an emergency c-section in 30 minutes. 

We were shocked.  

We had nothing packed. 

We had no flight plans ready.

She wasn't "supposed" to be born for another 3 weeks...We instantly began packing like crazy. Jeremy was so cute and ran around like a chicken with his head cut off.  I was all calm and cool...until we couldn't find a flight until the next morning.  I was devastated. The earliest flight we seemed to be able to find was at 5:15 the next morning.  I was so discouraged. It did however give us more time to pack and get ready. We headed to the airport at 3:00 in the morning, but unfortunately they wouldn't even let us check in until 4:00.  We nervously waited (my stomach in knots).  Finally we boarded and had a layover in North Carolina. I hated having the layover and we even tried to get on a flight that was leaving earlier, but because we had luggage on the other flight, they wouldn't let us.  

Finally we arrived, and sweet friends had arranged for someone to pick us up at the airport. There she stood with "Houghton" written on a large piece of paper.  We were so excited! She sweetly drove us to get our car and then we darted to the hospital.  Our birth mama asked us to grab her a drink at McDonalds and then we headed up to her room. What a surreal moment.  We didn't know of anything at this point, but couldn't wait.  

We arrived at birth mama's room and she told us that baby was in the NICU. She was having tummy troubles.  Apparently she hadn't been able to go to the bathroom after being born, so they had taken her to radiology to have a scan of her bowels taken.  We waited anxiously in the NICU for the arrival of our daughter. Our hearts were racing.  Then in she rolled.

She was born on July 9, 2015 at 1:37A.M. and weighed 7lb at 19.5 in.

More coming soon...