My quest for a family for this sweet baby boy continues.
The teacher doesn't want the baby because her husband "has his heart set on a baby girl". Wow. When I heard that, I was struck speechless which really rarely happens. How could you be choosy at a time like this?
She has contacted her social worker who apparently has a Brazilian family that desperately wants the baby. The social worker was supposed to call me tonight and she hasn't called yet so have they fallen through too?
Then tonight, the American woman in Brasilia had an idea: why not let the birth mother keep the baby until we get habilitated and then we adopt directly from the mother? This would take a number of months but it sounded like a good solution (if, in fact, the Brazilian government would allow us to adopt directly from the mother - and that's a big "IF".)
The American talked to her housekeeper, who is the birth mother's cousin. The cousin said the birth mother will not agree to do this. She's so desperate to get rid of the baby, she will throw him in the garbage if somebody doesn't take him from her in the hospital. I cannot imagine the desperation she must feel to be at that point. It's critically more important to her that he be placed with a family and not "in the system", and I have been told not to tell her yet that we can't adopt him for fear of sending her over the edge.
When I drove her to her house, she told me that she was embarrassed for me to see the poverty in which she lived. I told her that she was rich in something that money couldn't buy me but that she was willing to give me. I feel such an enormous weight that I've failed to live up to my end of the deal with her after she was going to give me a bigger gift than I deserved. I have to find this baby a home so the mother doesn't reach the point of desperate measures where she'll do something awful that she and I will have to live with for the rest of our lives.
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