Craig was born on the first day of winter in 2003. A small earthquake on the California coast, about a hundred miles away, heralded his pending arrival. Jimmy and I stood next to my son’s birth mom as she labored and delivered.

I snipped his umbilical cord.

Craig’s birth mom asked to see him and the nurse took him over to her. She took in the features of his sweet face and bundled body and said, “Okay, now take him to his parents.”

We were lead to the hospital nursery. The nurse walked ahead of us. Jimmy and I paused in the hallway, delaying our arrival. I looked at him and he at me, and then we cried. Huge gulping sobs shook me. Until then, I never knew happiness tasted like salt water.

“We’re parents again.” It was so hard to believe. After all those years of waiting, Craig was here. In a few minutes I’d hold him and feed him, but at that moment Jimmy and I hugged and reveled in each other over our new found status: Parents of two. A family of four.

In a couple of days it’ll be 30 months since that winter afternoon. While we are a family and very definitely Craig’s mom and dad – the courts, the state and any official capacity has yet to recognize us as such.

On paperwork, we are simply trying to adopt.

Last week I talked to my son’s new social worker – she was cleaning up his file and getting ready to make the final report. There were a few things missing, but that could be remedied in time to file the report with the court in July. As soon as she did that, she said, we could file a motion to finalize. We would be a forever family probably in August.

I felt excited, elated and hopeful. After so long we would see the judge again and sign the papers. Craig and Jared would be there, our families and friends would be there. Craig’s biological mom and his birth grandparents would be there. Afterwards I wanted to have a celebration party with balloons, cake and a barbeque.

Yesterday I called my son’s social worker to ask if they’d release some of our home study to the new agency to get started on our next adoption.

She asked, “Has your lawyer called you yet?”

“Um, no.”

“Darn, I told her I didn’t want to be the one to tell you this.”

“Tell me?”

“The ISP (Independent Service Provider) doesn’t have the paperwork with the original signatures. I talked to the Sacramento office and we can’t move forward with just the copies. I really tried, but it’s a matter of security in the documents.”

So my worst fear had come true. It was true, that paperwork wasn’t there. It was somewhere lost and irretrievable. I had suspected that when it wasn’t sent to the social services agency when it should have been. “So what do we do now?”

“Well, your lawyer is calling her but she’s not calling back. I’ve called her and she’s never returned my calls. But if your lawyer does get her on the line and can get her to come back out and redo the placement papers, then you and Jimmy and you son’s birth mom will have to sign them again.”

“Okay. Then…”

“Then it’s no big deal. We’ll get the papers add them to the file and move forward fast. It won’t be a big delay.”

That wasn’t too bad. It sounded good that way, but this woman we worked with had over two years to mail the paperwork or admit she lost them. I started to feel crushed. Even if we’d met up with her and redid the paperwork, I couldn’t trust her to send them in. I really didn’t believe she’d even call back at this point. “What if the worst happens and she doesn’t call back or she won’t redo the paperwork?”

The lady on the phone let out a big sigh. “Well, you’d have to start over.”

Pain shot through my head and scattered a thousand ways into one big throbbing headache. “Start over?”

“Yes, you’d have to find another ISP and sign new paperwork with her. That would have to be filed in the court like a new adoption.” She sighed again. “Of course the paperwork you’ve done with us would stay good; we’d just have to send it to the district office closest to you. You’re in a different county now – and it was fine to complete the adoption in the old county as long as we were finishing up. But a new adoption petition filed would have to be in your current county.”

The lady on the phone was nice and felt awful for us. She mentioned she never seen anything like this happen before and it was terrible for us to be left hanging like this.

Terrible for us to be left in limbo. Again.