Conquering Chaos by Catelynn Lowell, Tyler Baltierra Page A

you’ve ever done in your life.” We thought we got that, but we
     didn’t. We couldn’t. She did, though. And what she made sure to do was to make it
     clear that we were in complete control of the situation. She said, “You get to pick
     everything that you want for your child.” Bethany Christian Services is very focused
     on what the birth parents want for the child. They’ll do anything to help the birth
     parents.
    Dawn even told us that we could go through the adoption agreements and add whatever
     we wanted in between the lines. She said we could do everything in pencil so we could
     erase it at any time if we started to feel uncertain or changed our minds about the
     terms. She thoroughly explained that we were in the driver’s seat and we were the
     ones who would choose what happened with our child. The agency was extremely invested
     in the birth parents and what they want.
    And if we changed our minds completely? That was all right, too. Dawn always told
     us: “There’s nothing wrong if the day at the hospital comes and you decide this is
     not what you want after all. That wouldn’t make you a bad person.”
    Tyler:
    Of course, the adoptive parents have to be prepared for that possibility, too. Adoptive
     parents have to go through a lot. They have to take all these classes and go through
     a year of random visits from social workers who will stop by to see how things are.
     They have to write practically a whole book about their lifestyle, their family goals,
     the way they run their homes. They go through background checks and couples’ therapy-type
     investigations to look at how they get along as a married couple. Because of all that,
     it’s not unusual for adoptive parents to wait up to five years to get a child.
    They also go through classes for grief and loss in case the birth parents change their
     minds, and they take classes about what the birth parents go through so that they
     can understand the thoughts and feelings on the other side. There are tons of counseling
     and therapy elements to help prepare them for the possibility that the adoption doesn’t
     go through.
    Catelynn:
    During our talks with Dawn we came up with a list of things that we hoped to find
     in the adoptive family. We wanted them to have been together for a long time. We wanted
     them to be involved in their church. We were hoping to find a couple who were unable
     to have their own child, because we thought it would be such an amazing gift for them,
     and reinforced our idea that they would really cherish our child. We didn’t want the
     couple to have any other kids because we wanted our daughter to be their first. We
     wanted the mom to be a stay-at-home mom. We had tons of points that we wanted.
    Bethany Christian Services has a website where you can look at every single adoptive
     family that they have in every state. Tyler and I spent hours with his mom going through
     families in every state but Michigan — we thought having her in our own state would
     be too hard. We went through and read the entire biographies of these couples. Eventually
     I worked out a list of ten people I’d narrowed down, and I put stars next to the ones
     that I really liked. And the ones who really jumped out were Brandon and Teresa.
    Reading Brandon and Teresa’s biography, I just fell in love with them. They had been
     married for seven years, they’d traveled the world, they had college educations, and
     they were involved in their church. On paper, they were perfect. But what really cinched
     it was the video. They were the only couple on the list that had included a video
     in their biographies, and that gave us a chance to actually see the environment that
     our child could possibly grow up in.
    In the video, Brandon and Teresa sat together on their porch and expressed their gratitude
     to the birth parents who had taken the time to look at their profiles. They explained
     how badly they’d yearned for a child, which