What It’s All About
Many of the families that come to American Adoptions have struggled with infertility for years. Mike and Silke were one such family. They tried to have children for a decade before adoption renewed their hopes of becoming parents.
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The couple was picked by a birth mother the first day they went active. They could hardly believe that everything was happening so fast after so many years of waiting.
When the call came that their birth mother went into labor, Mike and Silke raced through an ice storm to get to the hospital states away. When they arrived, baby girl Sadie had already been born, and they met with both birth parents at the hospital.
“I think that’s when it really hit Mike that this was for real,” Silke says, who had admittedly already let her guard down.
“Mike wanted to be my rock up until the last minute, but I tell you, when she signed those papers, I think my husband was crying more than she was,” Silke says. “It just hit him. He said, I just couldn’t stop. He said he could feel how hard it was for her to do that. And so, you know, everyone is consoling my husband.”
Has fatherhood made Mike a softy? “He’s total mush,” Silke says.
During the rest of their time in the hospital, Mike and Silke were welcomed by the extended birth families of their daughter. “We feel like we’re such a part of that family,” Silke says. “I never thought we’d say things like that, but we really do. They’re just such wonderful people.”
So when American Adoptions called a year later with the surprise news that Sadie’s birth mother was pregnant again, Mike and Silke had to make a decision quickly in a swirl of emotions and financial considerations.
Did they want to adopt again so soon? Could they afford it? Why hadn’t Sadie’s birth mother told them herself?
But the couple knew almost instantly what a blessing the situation was and how special it would be for them– and their children’s birth families– for the siblings to be raised together. To read the rest of Mike and Silke’s journey to adopt Sadie and Sawyer, read their adoptive family testimonial.
