Published: Tuesday, Nov. 17, 2009 / Updated: Thursday, Nov. 19, 2009 01:08 PM
Adoption turns former Fort Mill couple into family
ROCK HILL --
Stephanie Buffington had a dream.
She envisioned wrapping her arms around a newborn baby – her baby. Smelling the newborn scent. Counting 10 fingers and then 10 toes.
But the Fort Mill native, who calls Rock Hill home, faced a complication.
“I was told there was a 50-50 chance that I'd get pregnant,” she said.
For years Stephanie Buffington and her husband, Homer, tried to have a child. But the couple never got pregnant.
“We were missing a part of our family,” said Stephanie, 35, a video services cooridinator with a communications company. “We had a lot of love (that) we wanted to share. We had always discussed if we couldn't get pregnant that we were open to adoption.
About four years into their marriage, the couple took a stand, Homer Buffington said.
“We decided to take the step towards adoption,” Homer, a 38-year-old Fort Mill native turned partner services representative, said.
Embarking on adoption's parenthood path wrought pain for the Buffingtons. Yet, at the end of an 18-month journey, they were rewarded with a son.
“It's a joy,” Stephanie said of parenthood. “I've always wanted to be a mother. I dreamed all my life about being a mother.”
November is National Adoption month, a time earmarked to educate and create awareness about domestic and international adoptions, said Sharon Cole, executive director of Christian Family Services, a formerly Fort Mill adoption agency that is now headquartered in Rock Hill.
“Adoption is a wonderful way for some couples to grow families,” Cole said. “When they can not have a child biologically, adoption offers them a way to build their family.”
But sometimes there are unseens.
“Adoptions always involves risks,” Cole said. “It's a leap of faith.”
That can cause heartbreak, one the Buffingtons got to know all too well.
Nearly three years ago, the couple started the adoption process. They completed multiple applications and endured physicals and background checks before Cole studied the couples' home environment.
“Then we went on alert,” Homer Buffington said. “That means you become available to become adoptive parents.”
About a year into their alert status, the Buffingtons met a potential birthmother who was about eight months pregnant. The woman was experiencing hardships and considered putting her baby up for adoption.
“She liked us, and we liked her,” Homer recalled. “We thought, ‘This baby could be our first child.'”
The woman signed a form noting that she was interested in placing her unborn daughter for adoption, and the pregnancy progressed. The Buffingtons' parenthood dream became a nightmare when the birthmother began to have second thoughts about giving up newborn daughter.
“She couldn't decide,” Stephanie recalled. “We waited about a week-in-a-half for her decision. She decided to parent the child.”
That decision left a void in the couples' lives, Homer said.
“Both of us went into a depression,” he said. “We grieved. We were really crushed and hurt.”
As the couple anguished, Cole continued to search for a baby for the couple. About three months after the first failed attempt, Cole telephoned the couple.
“She said, ‘We have a birthmother, who has chosen you and Homer,'” Stephanie recalled. “She (Cole) felt highly certain that this was going to go through.”
Homer and Stephanie had reservations.
“We had one (adoption) fall through,” she said. “We'd been through it before.”
But two days later a dream was realized when the birthmother went into to labor.
“When we got to the hospital, that's when we realized we were going to be parents,” Stephanie said.
Then for a moment, Stephanie got to wrap her arms around her premature newborn son, named Jesse Lee, and take in his 10 fingers and 10 toes.
It would be a more than a week before she would hold her son again.
Meanwhile, the birthmother signed a document relinquishing her parental rights so that the Buffingtons could accompany Jesse Lee, to a Columbia hospital. Once there, doctors treated the newborn's underdeveloped lung and a medical condition.
And a mother and father were beside themselves, Stephanie said.
“It was the hardest time,” Stephanie said. “We could touch him, but we couldn't pick him up. I'll never forget when they said we could hold him. It was like, ‘We'll never put him down again.'”
The new family stayed in Columbia about three weeks before embarking on their Rock Hill homecoming. And a mother heaved a sigh.
“Finally,” she said. “I'm a mom now. I'm ready to get him home to his house and be a family.”
That was just over three years ago, but Homer and Stephanie are still glowing.
“Parenthood has been everything I dreamed of and some things I never dreamed of,” Stephanie said.
And there are almost no regrets, Homer said.
“My only regret is that we didn't start the process earlier,” he said. “Parenthood brings a lot of joy into your life.”
Stephanie spied Jesse Lee across the room. Now, she has another dream.
“We'd love for him to have a little sister,” she said.
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