Nobody tells you about failed adoption matches before you start the process.
Not really. They mention it might happen, somewhere in a pamphlet, in a single paragraph, in the tone of a footnote nobody reads. But the actual experience of matching with a birth family, preparing your heart, maybe even holding a baby, and then not bringing that baby home? That part doesn’t get nearly enough airtime.
Monica and Brandon experienced it three times.
The first time was the hardest. They’d held the baby. They were going back the next day to bring her home. And then the birth family decided to parent. The next day never came.
‘It’s devastating,’ Brandon said, carefully. ‘But it’s hard because it’s a human life.’
Their daughter, Layla, is three years old now. And when Monica tells the story of those three failed matches, she doesn’t talk about them as things that nearly broke them. She talks about them as chapters in the story that led to Layla.
Here’s what their experience can teach families who are in the middle of the wait right now.
A failed match is not the end of your adoption.
We want to say that plainly because in the moment, it absolutely feels like it is.
When a birth family decides to parent their child, that is the right outcome for that child and that family. It is also a real and genuine loss for the adoptive family who were prepared to welcome that baby home. Both of those things are true at exactly the same time.
What we’ve seen over 28 years is that adoptive families who experience failed matches and keep going almost always find their child. The path gets harder. The second and third times you prepare your heart, you do it more carefully. But the match that belongs to your family is still coming.
Monica’s survival strategy (and honestly, it’s a good one).
Monica documented her life every month during the wait. Not for her future child. For herself.
Books she’d read. Things she’d made. Small ordinary proof that life was still moving even when everything felt suspended. ‘You can see where you came from and how far you’ve come,’ she said. ‘It helps.’
It’s one of the most practical pieces of advice we’ve ever heard from a waiting family. The wait is long and heavy, and it helps enormously to have something to look back on and say: I was living. I was still living even then.
It’s okay to feel angry. It’s okay to feel all of it.
Monica was honest about the emotions that caught her off guard. ‘I was angry a little bit when I saw my friends have babies,’ she said. ‘And feeling that, that’s normal. It’s okay to have some negative feelings.’
Yes. It is.
Adoption asks you to hold enormous uncertainty for a long time. To love a child you haven’t met yet. To grieve losses that most people in your life don’t fully understand because they’ve never been through it. The emotional weight of that is real, and you are allowed to feel all of it without having to perform gratitude about the process while you’re inside it.
What both families feared, and what they discovered.
When Monica and Brandon finally sat down with Candice, Layla’s birth mother, they discovered something that genuinely surprised them: her biggest fear for Layla, that she might someday reject one side of her family, was the exact same fear Monica and Brandon had been carrying.
‘We realized some of our fears were kind of the same,’ Monica said. ‘Neither one of us wants that.’
Two families. One baby. The same hope. Sometimes that’s what it takes to realize you’re all on the same side.
Read Monica and Brandon’s Full Story
If you’re waiting and finding it hard, we’d love to talk. Call (913) 381-6919 or schedule a free consultation.
